Daily News from New York, New York • 618

personalities in the news AN ACTRESS SPEAKS OUT 7 fe- Agnes Moorehead, a great lady of the theatre, calls it a 'sorrowful business' By MAY OKON As the be-witclung mother in TVs Agnes Moorehead consorts with such strange creatures as this raven. The cult of the personality which has taken show business of late fades into oblivion VT7 3 1 "if moved to St. Louis, where, beginning at the age of 10, she acted in summer theatre, then got her first professional training as a singer and dancer with the St, Louis Municipal Opera Company. After receiving a master's degree in F.ngiuh at the University of Wisconsin (she also has a doctorate in literature), Miss Moorehead headed for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which shewas graduated in the class of 1928-1929. She quickly established herself as an excellent actress on Broadway and on radio, too, where her tour de force in the suspense thriller.

"Sorry, Wrong Number," became a classic With Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, Miss Moorehead was a founder and charter member of the famed Mercury Theater Players. She made her movie debut in Welles "Citizen Kane," and has since appeared in over 50 films; the fifth of her Academy Award nominations was for her performance in her "Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte." Twice divorced. Miss Moorehead lives in a huge, luxuriously furnished house in Beverly Hills, complete with swimming pool, gardens and an extensive library. "I bought the house in 1948, and I paid very little for it," she admitted. "It's quintupled in value, which, of course, is very nice.

When I have time, I garden, I paint a little and decorate I'm always fussing and fuming about the house." She has an adopted son, Sean, 16, who is in school in England. "I wanted him to have that background," she explained. "He has quite a flair for design but one never knows what they're going to do. I'm glad that he isn't interested in the theatre. It's an unhappy career.

I think young people should think twice about it but I don't think that will stop anyone who really loves tae theatre. "It's a terribly discouraging business, a sorrowful business, a critical business. You're up there and the people can take the skin off you, bit by bit, and enjoy it. If you get anywhere in it, there's a strange kind of human tendency to tear you down. "You have to keep on developing and maturing and being sincere in your work and just go right on whether audiences or critics are taking your scalp off or not." in the presence of Agnes Moorehead.

As vivid and dynamic off stage as she is on, the red-haired, blue-eyed actress brought into the rather intimate interview room in The News Color Studio the aura of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd that spells theatre. As Miss Moorehead herself put it: This is one of the things I've always battled for that I am an actress and not a personality." One of the foremost stars of the American theatrical scene, equally famed for her highly dramatic portrayals on radio, TV, in movies and on stage. Miss Moorehead is at present costarring as Endora, the sophisticated mother witch on the hit show, "Bewitched" (abc-tv, Thursday night). How did the five-time Academy Award nominee find her way into a light comedy role in a television series? "I was trapped," she said, smiling. "I was sent the pilot film script.

I looked it over and it was charming and had no violence in it; it was clean and had a smile in it, and a little fantasy and a little romance, so I said. This won't sell, and since they offered me a good sum to make the pilot, I did it. Then I went out on the road to do my one-woman show, and when I came back they told me it was sold. and I was committed to do it. "Television is very hard work it has nothing in common with the theatre with the exception of the fundamentals of acting.

I'd be in the theatre now if there were any good parts for me. We don't have the theatre we used to have because there are very few effective writers for the stage. It's an entirely different era we're living in a mechanical, scientific era, and dramaturgy suffers in this world. I think you have to have great contentment and love of doing something and peace to meditate when you're writing as well as creating in the theatre. Everybody's in a jet they have jet minds.

"For 17 years I've been in movies and played theatre from coast to coast, so I was quite well known before and I don't particularly want to be identified as the witch. When my contract expires I'll do what I did before Boston-born Miss Moorehead made her first public appearance at the age of 3, singing "The Lord Is My Shepherd" on a church program sponsored by her father, a Presbyterian minister. When she was still a child, her family 7 COMING SOON Soupy Sales NfWt COtOI'OTO HAMV WACNfCKi AMD OWS SCMOf MAICHlf Agnes Moorehead paom. 4 NEW YORK SUNDAY NEWS JULY IS. 1SSS.