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Agnes Moorehead
Agnes Moorehead in The Bat (1959)
Born	Agnes Robertson Moorehead (1900-12-06)December 6, 1900 Clinton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	April 30, 1974(1974-04-30) (aged 73) Rochester, Minnesota, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1937–74
Spouse	Jack G. Lee (1930–52) Robert Gist (1954–58)

Agnes Robertson Moorehead (December 6, 1900 – April 30, 1974) was an American actress.^[1] Although she began with the Mercury Theatre, appeared in more than seventy films beginning with Citizen Kane and on dozens of television shows during a career that spanned more than thirty years, Moorehead is most widely known to modern audiences for her role as the witch Endora in the series Bewitched.

While rarely playing leads in films, Moorehead's skill at character development and range earned her one Emmy Award and two Golden Globe awards in addition to four Academy Award and six Emmy Award nominations. Moorehead's transition to television won acclaim for drama and comedy. She could play many different types, but often portrayed haughty, arrogant characters.

Early life[link]

Moorehead was born in Clinton, Massachusetts, of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry, to a Presbyterian clergyman, John Henderson Moorehead, and his wife, the former Mildred McCauley, who had been a singer. Moorehead later shaved six years off her age by claiming to have been born in 1906. Moorehead recalled her first public performance was at the age of three, reciting "The Lord's Prayer" in her father's church. The family moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and Moorehead's ambition to become an actress grew "very strong". Her mother indulged her active imagination often asking, "Who are you today, Agnes?", while Moorehead and her sister^[2] would often engage in mimicry, often coming to the dinner table and imitating parishioners. Moorehead noted and was encouraged by her father's amused reactions. She joined the chorus of the St. Louis Municipal Opera Company, known as "The Muny". In addition to her interest in acting, she developed a lifelong interest in religion; in later years actors such as Dick Sargent would recall Moorehead arriving on the set with "the Bible in one hand and the script in the other".^[3]

Moorehead graduated from Central High School in St. Louis in 1918. Although her father did not discourage Moorehead's acting ambitions, he insisted that she obtain a formal education. In 1923, Moorehead earned a bachelor's degree, with a major in biology, from Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, and while there she also appeared in college stage plays. She later received an honorary doctorate in literature from Muskingum, and served for a year on its board of trustees. When her family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, she taught public school for five years in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, while she also earned a master's degree in English and public speaking at the University of Wisconsin (now University of Wisconsin–Madison). She then pursued post-graduate studies at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, from which she graduated with honors in 1929. Moorehead received an honorary doctoral degree from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

Career[link]

Moorehead's early career was unsteady, and although she was able to find stage work she was often unemployed and forced to go hungry. She later recalled going four days without food, and said that it had taught her "the value of a dollar." She found work in radio and was soon in demand, often working on several programs in a single day. She believed that it offered her excellent training and allowed her to develop her voice to create a variety of characterizations. Moorehead met the actress Helen Hayes who encouraged her to try to enter films, but her first attempts were met with failure. Rejected as not being "the right type", Moorehead returned to radio.

Mercury Theatre[link]

Moorehead met Orson Welles and by 1937 was a member of his Mercury Theatre Group, along with Joseph Cotten. She appeared in his radio production Julius Caesar, had a regular role in the serial The Shadow as Margo and was one of the players in his The War of the Worlds production. In 1939, Welles moved the Mercury Theatre Group to Hollywood, where he started working for RKO Studios. Several of his radio performers joined him, and Moorehead made her film debut as his mother in Citizen Kane (1941), considered one of the best films ever made. She also appeared in his films Journey into Fear (1943), based on a novel by Eric Ambler and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), based on a novel by Booth Tarkington. She received a New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film.

Moorehead from the trailer for Johnny Belinda (1948)

Moorehead played another strong role in The Big Street (1942) with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, and then appeared in two films that failed to find an audience, Government Girl with Olivia de Havilland and The Youngest Profession with the adolescent Virginia Weidler.

MGM[link]

By the mid 1940s, Moorehead joined MGM, negotiating a $6,000-a-week contract with the provision to perform also on radio, an unusual clause at the time. Moorehead explained that MGM usually refused to allow their actors to play on radio as "the actors didn't have the knowledge or the taste of the judgment to appear on the right sort of show."^[3] In 1943–1944, Moorehead portrayed "matronly housekeeper Mrs. Mullet", who was constantly offering her "candied opinion", in Mutual Radio's The Adventures of Leonidas Witherall; she inaugurated the role on CBS Radio.^[4]

Moorehead skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters, possessive mothers, and comical secretaries throughout her career. She played Parthy Hawks, wife of Cap'n Andy and mother of Magnolia, in MGM's hit 1951 remake of Show Boat. She was in many important films, including Dark Passage and Since You Went Away, either playing key small or large supporting parts. Moorehead was in Broadway productions of Don Juan in Hell in 1951–1952, and Lord Pengo in 1962–1963.

Radio[link]

During the 1940s and 1950s, Moorehead was one of the most in demand actresses for radio dramas, especially on the CBS show Suspense. During the 946 episodes run of Suspense, Moorehead was cast in more episodes than any other actor or actress. She was often introduced on the show as the "first lady of Suspense". Moorehead's most successful appearance on Suspense was in the legendary play Sorry, Wrong Number, written by Lucille Fletcher, broadcast on May 18, 1943. Moorehead played a selfish, neurotic woman who overhears a murder being plotted via crossed phone wires who eventually realizes she is the intended victim. She recreated the performance six times for Suspense and several times on other radio shows, always using her original, dog-eared script. In 1952, she recorded an album of the drama, and performed scenes from the story in her one-woman show in the 1950s. (Barbara Stanwyck played the role in the 1948 film version.)

Later film[link]

In the 1950s, Moorehead continued to work in films and to appear on stage across the country, including a national tour of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, co-starring Charles Boyer, Charles Laughton, and Cedric Hardwicke.

Sorry, Wrong Number also inspired writers of the CBS television series The Twilight Zone to script an episode with Moorehead in mind.^[5] In "The Invaders" (broadcast 27 January 1961) Moorehead played a woman whose isolated farm is plagued by mysterious intruders. In "Sorry, Wrong Number" Moorehead offered a famed, bravura performance using only her voice, and for "The Invaders" she was offered a script where she had no dialogue at all. Alongside Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Mary Astor and Joseph Cotten, she starred in 1964's "Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte" as the maid, Velma, a role for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.

Television[link]

In the 1960–1961 season, Moorehead made guest appearances as Aunt Harriet in the short-lived CBS sitcom My Sister Eileen starring Shirley Bonne and Elaine Stritch as Eileen (an aspiring actress) and Ruth Sherwood, respectively, two single sisters living in New York City. That same season, she appeared in Pat O'Brien's ABC sitcom Harrigan and Son. She starred as a nun in the western TV series, Rawhide episode, "Incident of the Challenge", (1960).

(1961) Season 2, Episode 51 of the Twilight Zone. "The Invaders". Moorehead played a woman living in isolation who is terrorized by space aliens.

In the 1963–1964 season, she appeared in an episode of the ABC series about college life, Channing. In 1967, she portrayed an Indian named Watoma on the ABC military-western series Custer with Wayne Maunder in the title role.

She appeared as the nosy do-gooder "Miss Bertie" in the show The Rifleman.

[edit] Bewitched

As Endora in Bewitched (1969)

In 1964, Moorehead accepted the role of Endora, in the situation comedy Bewitched. She later commented that she had not expected it to succeed and that she ultimately felt trapped by its success. However, she had negotiated to appear in only eight of every twelve episodes made, therefore allowing her sufficient time to pursue other projects. She also felt that the television writing was often below standard and dismissed many of the Bewitched scripts as "hack" in a 1965 interview. The role brought her a level of recognition that she had not received before as Bewitched was in the top 10 programs for the first few years it screened.

Moorehead received six Emmy Award nominations, but was quick to remind interviewers that she had enjoyed a long and distinguished career. Despite her ambivalence, she remained with Bewitched until its run ended in 1972. She commented to the New York Times in 1974, "I've been in movies and played theater from coast to coast, so I was quite well known before Bewitched, and I don't particularly want to be identified as a witch." Later that year she said that she had enjoyed playing the role, but that it was not challenging and the show itself was "not breathtaking" although her flamboyant and colorful character appealed to children. She expressed a fondness for the show's star, Elizabeth Montgomery, and said that she had enjoyed working with her. Co-star Dick Sargent, who in 1969 replaced the ill Dick York as Samantha's husband, Darrin Stephens, had a more difficult relationship with Moorehead, caustically describing her as "a tough old bird."^[3]

Later years[link]

In 1970, Moorehead appeared as a dying woman who haunts her own house in the early Night Gallery episode "Certain Shadows on the Wall." She also reprised her role in "Don Juan in Hell" on Broadway and on tour, in an all-star cast which also featured Edward Mulhare.

Moorehead also memorably supplied the voice of the mother Goose in Hanna-Barbera's 1973 adaption of the E. B. White children's book Charlotte's Web

In the 1974 Broadway version of Gigi, Moorehead portrayed Aunt Alicia, in which she recorded the song, 'The Contract.' She fell ill during the production and was so sick that she had to quit and let Arlene Francis take her place. She died shortly after.

In January 1974, three months before her death, Moorehead performed in two episodes (including the very first) of CBS Radio Mystery Theater, the popular series produced by old-time radio master Himan Brown.

Private life[link]

Moorehead married actor John Griffith Lee in 1930; they divorced in 1952. She and Lee adopted an orphan named Sean in 1949, but it remains unclear whether the adoption was legal, although Moorehead raised the child until he ran away from home.^{[citation needed]} Sean had gotten into the 'wrong crowd' and at one point, Moorehead found a gun in his drawer. After he left, neither one ever heard from the other again. Moorehead herself did not bear any children. In 1954, she married actor Robert Gist; they divorced in 1958.

Moorehead was a devout Presbyterian as she grew older, and, in interviews, often spoke of her relationship with God. In one of her last films, What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), she played an evangelist. Shortly before her death, Moorehead sought Christian causes to benefit after her death through her estate.

Rumors about sexuality[link]

There has been a rumor that actor Paul Lynde came late to a rehearsal and Moorehead scolded him for it. Out of vindictiveness, it is said, he started a rumor that she was a lesbian.^{[citation needed]} (Lynde himself was gay.)

In the years since her death, rumors about Moorehead's being of lesbian or bisexual orientation have been widespread. She was challenged to discuss her sexuality when contributing to a book of personal interviews titled Hollywood Lesbians by Boze Hadleigh. All the interviews included in the book were transcribed verbatim from tape recordings. Moorehead told the author that marriage and love often don't go together, and that marriage is often a duty. When asked point-blank about her sexuality, she replied, "You apparently have your own informants. I don't know what you've heard, and I don't want to hear, and some of it may be true." Hadleigh explained that "truth gets around," to which Moorehead responded, "Somehow." She then went on to say why she felt she could not discuss the issue; she deeply feared malice, mockery, sensationalism, a wrong-minded masculine reduction of love between women equated to mere lust and sex, and moral condemnation; that her statements would be misused to represent her sensationally, without regard to illuminating and understanding such romantic love, its emotional intricacy, beauty, spirituality element, or perspective.

Earlier in the interview, Moorehead says, "A woman may love a person who is this or that, male or female. Love doesn't have a sex. Women operate on a different plane; our feelings are emotional, not physical...why always bring up sex?" She felt that men were more sexual and physical in loving, and that by contrast, women were more emotional and even spiritual in loving each other.

Death[link]

Moorehead died of uterine cancer on April 30, 1974 in Rochester, Minnesota. Her mother, Mary M. Moorehead (August 25, 1883 – June 8, 1990) survived her by 16 years, dying at the age of 106 in 1990.^[6]

Moorehead appeared in the movie The Conqueror (1956), which was shot near St. George, Utah – downwind from the Yucca Flat, Nevada nuclear test site. She was one of over 90 (of 220) cast and crew members—including costars Susan Hayward, John Wayne, and Pedro Armendariz, as well as director-producer Dick Powell – who, over their lifetimes, all developed cancer(s); at least 46 from cast and crew have since died from cancer(s), including all of those named above. No bombs were tested during the actual filming of The Conqueror, but 11 explosions occurred the year before. Two of them were particularly "dirty," depositing long-lasting radiation over the area. The 51.5-kiloton shot code-named "Simon" was fired on April 25, 1953, and the 32.4-kiloton blast "Harry" went off May 19. (In contrast, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 13 kilotons.) "Fallout was very abundant more than a year after Harry," says Dr. Pendleton, a former AEC researcher. "Some of the isotopes, such as strontium 90 and cesium 137, would not have diminished much." Pendleton points out that radioactivity can concentrate in "hot spots" such as the rolling dunes of Snow Canyon, a natural reservoir for windblown material. It was the place where much of The Conqueror was filmed. Pendleton also notes that radioactive substances enter the food chain. By eating local meat and produce, the Conqueror cast and crew were increasing their risk. Says Dr. Robert C. Pendleton, director of radiological health at the University of Utah stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up even in a court of law."

Moorehead was one of the first members of the company to make a connection between the film and the fallout. Her close friend Sandra Gould, who was featured with her on Bewitched, recalls that long before Moorehead developed the uterine cancer that killed her in 1974, she recounted rumors of "some radioactive germs" on location in Utah, observing: "Everybody in that picture has gotten cancer and died." As she was dying, she reportedly said: "I should never have taken that part."^[7]

Moorehead is entombed at Dayton Memorial Park in Dayton, Ohio.

Moorehead bequeathed her 1967 Emmy Award statue for The Wild Wild West, her private papers, and her home in Rix Mills, Ohio, to her alma mater Muskingum College. She left her family's Ohio estate and farmlands, Moorehead Manor, to Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, as well as some biblical studies books from her personal library. Her will stipulated that BJU should use the farm for retreats and special meetings "with a Christian emphasis", but the distance of the estate from the South Carolina campus rendered it mostly useless. In May 1976, BJU traded the Moorehead farmlands with an Ohio college for $25,000 and a collection of her library books. Moorehead also left her professional papers, scripts, Christmas cards and scrapbooks to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the Wisconsin Historical Society.

In 1994, Moorehead was posthumously inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The Touchdown Tavern in Reedsburg, Wisconsin opened the Agnes Moorehead Lounge, exhibiting memorabilia.

Filmography[link]

Features:

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• The Big Street (1942)
• Journey into Fear (1943)
• The Youngest Profession (1943)
• Government Girl (1943)
• Jane Eyre (1944)
• Since You Went Away (1944)
• Dragon Seed (1944)
• The Seventh Cross (1944)
• Mrs. Parkington (1944)
• Tomorrow, the World! (1944)
• Keep Your Powder Dry (1945)
• Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)
• Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945)
• Dark Passage (1947)
• The Lost Moment (1947)
• Summer Holiday (1948)
• The Woman in White (1948)
• Station West (1948)
• Johnny Belinda (1948)
• The Stratton Story (1949)
• The Great Sinner (1949)
• Without Honor (1949)
• Black Jack (1950)
• Caged (1950)
• Fourteen Hours (1951)
• Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951)
• Show Boat (1951)
• The Blue Veil (1951)
• The Blazing Forest (1952)
• The Story of Three Loves (1953)
• Scandal at Scourie (1953)
• Main Street to Broadway (1953)
• Those Redheads from Seattle (1953)
• Magnificent Obsession (1954)
• Untamed (1955)
• The Left Hand of God (1955)
• All That Heaven Allows (1955)
• The Conqueror (1956)
• Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956)
• The Swan (1956)
• The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956)
• Pardners (1956)
• The Opposite Sex (1956)
• The True Story of Jesse James (1957)
• Jeanne Eagels (1957)
• Raintree County (1957)
• The Story of Mankind (1957)
• Tempest (1958)
• Night of the Quarter Moon (1959)
• The Bat (1959)
• Pollyanna (1960)
• Twenty Plus Two (1961)
• Bachelor in Paradise (1961)
• Jessica (1962)
• How the West Was Won (1962)
• Who's Minding the Store? (1963)
• Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
• The Singing Nun (1966)
• What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)
• Dear Dead Delilah (1972)
• Charlotte's Web (1973) (voice)
• Frankenstein: The True Story (1973)

Short Subjects:

• Operation Raintree (1957)
• Screen Snapshots: Salute to Hollywood (1958)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Lynn Kear, Agnes Moorehead: a Bio-Bibliography. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992). ISBN 0-313-28155-6
• Warren Sherk, Agnes Moorehead: A Very Private Person. (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1976). ISBN 0-8059-2317-9
• Charles Tranberg, I Love the Illusion: The Life And Career of Agnes Moorehead (Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2005) ISBN 1-59393-029-1
• Quint Benedetti, (My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead-The Lavender Lady (Bloomington, Indiana: Xlibris, 2010). ISBN 978-1-4500-3408-1
• Boze Hadleigh, "Hollywood Lesbians". (Barricade Books: February 1, 1996). ISBN 1-56980-067-7, ISBN 978-1-56980-067-6.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Agnes Moorehead

• Agnes Moorehead at Find a Grave
• Agnes Moorehead at the Internet Broadway Database
• Agnes Moorehead at the Internet Movie Database
• Guide to over 100,000 Moorehead documents spanning 1923–1974 at the Wisconsin Historical Society
• Interview with biographer Charles Tranberg from Harpies Bizarre
• Listen to – Suspense 1951-02-15 Agnes Moorehead – The Death Parade with new introduction.
• Listen to – The CBS Radio Mystery Theater 1974-01-06 The Old Ones Are Hard To Kill starring Agnes Moorehead.

Granville "Oral" Roberts (January 24, 1918 – December 15, 2009^[2][3]) was an American Methodist-Pentecostal televangelist and a Christian charismatic. He founded the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.

As one of the most well-known and controversial religious leaders of the 20th century, Roberts' ministries reached millions of followers worldwide spanning a period of over six decades.^[4] His healing ministry and bringing American Pentecostalism into the mainstream had the most impact,^[5] but he also pioneered TV evangelism and laid the foundations of the prosperity gospel^[4] and abundant life teachings.^[6]

Early life[link]

Roberts was born in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, the fifth and youngest child of the Reverend Ellis Melvin Roberts and Claudius Priscilla Roberts (née Irwin) (d. 1974).^[7] According to an interview on Larry King Live, Irwin was of Cherokee descent.^[8] Roberts was a card-carrying member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.^[9] Roberts began life in poverty and nearly died of tuberculosis at age 17.^[10] After finishing high school, Roberts studied for two years each at Oklahoma Baptist University and Phillips University. In 1938 he married a preacher's daughter, Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock.^[11]

Roberts became a traveling faith healer after ending his college studies without a degree. According to a TIME Magazine profile of 1972, Roberts originally made a name for himself with a large mobile tent "that sat 3,000 on metal folding chairs" where "he shouted at petitioners who did not respond to his healing."^[12]

Ministry and university[link]

1947 came as a turning point. Up until that time Roberts had struggled as a part-time preacher in Oklahoma. But at the age of 29 Roberts claims he picked up his Bible and it fell open at the Third Epistle of John where verse two read: "I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Roberts decided immediately that it was all right to be rich. The next day he said he bought a Buick and God appeared, he said, telling him to heal the sick.^[13]

Roberts resigned his pastoral ministry with the Pentecostal Holiness Church to found Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association (OREA).^[1] He conducted evangelistic and faith healing crusades across America and around the world. Thousands of sick people would wait in line to stand before Oral Roberts so he could pray for them. He appeared as a guest speaker for hundreds of national and international meetings and conventions. Through the years, he conducted more than 300 crusades on six continents, and personally laid hands in prayer on more than 2 million people.^[10][14][15] He also ran direct mail campaigns of seed-faith, which appealed to poor Americans, often from ethnic minorities. At its peak in the early 1980s, Roberts was the leader of a $120 million-a-year organization employing 2,300 people. This spanned not only a university but also a medical school and hospital as well as buildings on 50 acres (200,000 m²) south of Tulsa valued at $500 million.^[4][13] Another part of the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association, the Abundant Life Prayer Group (ALPG), was founded in 1958.^[1]

The Praying Hands, on the ORU campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma

In 1963, he founded Oral Roberts University (ORU)^[1] in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stating he was obeying a command from God. The university was chartered during 1963 and received its first students in 1965. Students were required to sign an honor code pledging not to drink, smoke, or engage in premarital sexual activities. The Prayer Tower, opened in 1967, is located at the center of the campus.

Roberts was a pioneer televangelist, and attracted a vast viewership. He began broadcasting by radio in 1947,^[16][17] and began broadcasting his revivals by television in 1954.^[4] His television ministry continued with The Abundant Life program reaching 80% of the United States by 1957, and quarterly Prime Time Specials from 1969 through 1980. In 1996, he founded Golden Eagle Broadcasting.^[1]

On 17 March 1968, Roberts and his wife were received as members of the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma by Dr. Finis Crutchfield, then pastor. The United Methodist Church offered more leniency in doctrinal and moral issues than the Pentecostalism. This granted Roberts some leeway, as it was expected that the strictness of the Pentecostal tradition may have impeded his rise in popularity.^[18] Before Roberts' switch to Methodism, Crutchfield arranged a meeting between Roberts and Bishop William Angie Smith, at which the Bishop told Roberts, "We need you, but we need the Holy Spirit more than we need you and we've got to have the Holy Spirit in the Methodist Church." ^[19] Roberts became an elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church. From 1968 through 1987, Roberts was a member of the United Methodist Church’s ministry.^[20][21]

Roberts had a vast impact on the Protestant community. According to one authority, in conservative Protestant culture, his ministry had a worldwide impact second only to Billy Graham.^[3][22][23] His divine healing ministry called for prayer to heal the whole person — body, mind and spirit.^[24] Many labeled him a faith healer, but he rejected this with the comment: "God heals — I don't."^[3][5] He played a major role in bringing American Pentecostal Christianity into the mainstream.^[25] Even though Roberts was often associated with the prosperity gospel and the faith movement because of his close doctrinal and personal ties with Word-Faith teachers, his abundant life teachings did not fully identify him with that movement.^[26]

In 1977, Roberts claimed to have had a vision from a 900-foot-tall Jesus who told him to build City of Faith Medical and Research Center, and the hospital would be a success.^[27][28][29] In 1980, Roberts said he had a vision which encouraged him to continue the construction of his City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Oklahoma, which opened in 1981. At the time, it was among the largest health facilities of its kind in the world and was intended to merge prayer and medicine in the healing process. The City of Faith operated for only eight years before closing in late 1989, but the importance of treating the whole person – spirit, mind, and body – was conveyed to many medical professionals.^[30][31] The Orthopedic Hospital of Oklahoma still operates on its premises. In 1983 Roberts said Jesus had appeared to him in person and commissioned him to find a cure for cancer.^[32][33]

Roberts' fundraising was controversial. In January 1987, during a fundraising drive, Roberts announced to a television audience that unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would "call him home." ^[34][35] Some were fearful that he was referring to suicide, given the impassioned pleas and tears that accompanied his statement. He raised $9.1 million.^[36] Later that year, he announced that God had raised the dead through Roberts' ministry.^[37] Some of Roberts' fundraising letters were written by Gene Ewing, who headed a business writing donation letters for other evangelicals such as Don Stewart and Robert Tilton.^[38]

Roberts maintained his love of finery and one obituary claimed that even when times become hard, "he continued to wear his Italian silk suits, diamond rings and gold bracelets – airbrushed out by his staff on publicity pictures".^[13][20]

The CityPlex office complex, originally built as Oral Roberts' City of Faith Medical and Research Center in Tulsa.

He stirred up controversy when Time reported in 1987 that his son Richard Roberts claimed that he had seen his father raise a child from the dead.^[35] That year, the Bloom County comic strip recast its character Bill the Cat as a satirized televangelist, "Fundamentally Oral Bill." In 1987 Time stated that he was "re-emphasizing faith healing and [is] reaching for his old-time constituency."^[35] However, his income continued to decrease (from $88 million in 1980 to $55 million in 1986, according to the Tulsa Tribune) and his largely vacant City of Faith Medical Center continued to lose money.^[35]

Harry McNevin said that in 1988 the ORU Board of Regents "rubber-stamped" the "use of millions in endowment money to buy a Beverly Hills property so that Oral Roberts could have a West Coast office and house".^[39] In addition, he said a country club membership was purchased for the Roberts' home. The lavish expenses led to McNevin's resignation from the Board.

Wikinews has related news: Former Oral Roberts University Regent member speaks out

His organizations were also affected by scandals involving other televangelists^[3] and the City of Faith hospital was forced to close in 1989 after losing money. Roberts was forced to respond with the sale of his holiday homes in Palm Springs^[which?] and Beverly Hills as well as three of his Mercedes cars.^[13]

Oral Roberts' son Richard Roberts resigned from the presidency of ORU on November 23, 2007 after being named as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging improper use of university funds for political and personal purposes, and improper use of university resources.^[40][41] The university was given a donation of $8 million by entrepreneur Mart Green, and although the lawsuit was still in process,^[42] the school submitted to an outside audit, and with a good report an additional $62 million was given by Green.^[43][44] Oral Roberts continued in his role as ORU chancellor, helping in the leadership of ORU along with Billy Joe Daugherty, who was named as the executive regent to assume administrative responsibilities of the Office of the President by the ORU Board of Regents.^[45] Oral Roberts continued as the ORU chancellor until his death,^[1] but in 2009 eleven months before his death, handed over the leadership of ORU to its incoming president, Mark Rutland.^[46]

Even though Roberts' prosperous lifestyle, unorthodox fund-raising techniques, and the expanse of his organizations raised criticism and controversy, there was no credible evidence of malfeasance while he was in charge,^[4] he did not have sex-and-money scandals like some other televangelists,^[5] and he was not named among the six prosperity teachers in the financial investigations launched by U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2007.^[47] The Oklahoma Senate adopted a resolution honoring the life of Oral Roberts, and he accepted this honor in 2009 at the age of 91, seven months before his death.^[48] The Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters (OAB) elected Roberts to the OAB Hall of Fame one month before his death.^[17][49]

Personal life[link]

Roberts was married to Evelyn Lutman Fahnestock (April 22, 1917 - May 4, 2005) for 66 years from December 25, 1938 until her death from a fall at the age of 88.^[11][50][51] Their daughter Rebecca Nash died in an airplane crash on February 11, 1977 with her husband, businessman Marshall Nash.^[52][53] Their elder son, Ronald Roberts, committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart on 10 June 1982, five months after receiving a court order to undergo counseling at a drug treatment center and six months after coming out as gay.^[54][55][56] The other two Roberts children are son Richard, an evangelist and former president of Oral Roberts University (ORU), and daughter Roberta Potts, an attorney. Roberts' gay grandson, Randy Roberts Potts, talked about his uncle Ronald Roberts,^[55][56] and wrote an article discussing growing up gay in the Oral Roberts family.^[57]

Oral Roberts died on December 15, 2009^[58][59] at the age of 91. He had been "semi-retired" and living in Newport Beach, California.^[60]

According to a 1987 article in the New York Review of Books by Martin Gardner, the "most accurate and best documented biography is Oral Roberts: An American Life, an objective study by David Edwin Harrell Jr., a historian at Auburn University. Two out-of-print books take a more critical stance: James Morris' The Preachers (St. Martin's Press, 1973) and Jerry Sholes' Give Me That Prime-Time Religion (Hawthorn, 1979)."^[61]

See also[link]

• Healing Revival
• Charismatic Christianity
• List of television evangelists

References[link]

Further reading[link]

About Roberts

• The Faith Healers, by James Randi, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1987. ISBN 0-87975-369-2
• Oral Roberts: An American Life, by David Edwin Harrell, Jr., Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-15844-3

By Roberts

• The Call: An autobiography. by Oral Roberts, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1972.
• Expect a miracle: my life and ministry. by Oral Roberts, Nashville : T. Nelson, 1995. ISBN 0-7852-7752-8
• Oral Roberts' life story, as told by himself. by Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1952.

External links[link]

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• Oral Roberts at Find-a-Grave
• Webcast of Chancellor Oral Roberts' Memorial Service
• Oral Roberts Ministries
• Oral Roberts University
• Oral Roberts: The Man. The Mission. The Ministry., online archive at Tulsa World
• Life With Oral Roberts slideshow by Life magazine
• Voices of Oklahoma interview with Oral Roberts. First person interview conducted with Oral Roberts on August 11, 2009. Last interview before his death. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.
• UM Portal: Q&A: Evangelist Roberts was comfortable with Methodism

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Vincent Price
from the trailer for the film Laura (1944)
Born	(1911-05-27)May 27, 1911 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died	October 25, 1993(1993-10-25) (aged 82) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1935–93
Spouse	Edith Barrett (1938–48) Mary Grant Price (1949–73) Coral Browne (1974–91; her death)

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Early life and career[link]

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company.^[1][2] His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.^[3]

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.

Career[link]

As Mr. Manningham in Angel Street, in which he had a three-year run, photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1942.

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in Wilson (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).

Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film Tower of London. The following year he portrayed the title character in the film The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein).

In 1946 Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films, Dragonwyck and Leave Her to Heaven. There were also many villainous roles in film noir thrillers like The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton. His first starring role was as conman James Addison Reavis in the 1950 biopic The Baron of Arizona. He also did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar. He was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in The Saint that ran from 1943 to 1951.

In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, then The Mad Magician (1954), and then the monster movie The Fly (1958) and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). Price also starred in the original House on Haunted Hill (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He played Dr. Warren Chapin, in The Tingler, a 1959 horror-thriller film by the American producer and director William Castle. Price also appeared to great effect in the radio drama Three Skeleton Key, the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.^[4]

Outside of the horror genre, Price played Baka (the master builder) in The Ten Commandments. In the 1955–1956 television season he appeared three times as Rabbi Gershom Seixos in the ABC anthology series, Crossroads, a study of clergymen from different denominations. About this time he also appeared on NBC's The Martha Raye Show.

1960s[link]

In the 1960s, Price had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. In 1968 Price portrayed witchhunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General^[5] (released in the US as The Conqueror Worm). He starred in comedy films, notably Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) and its sequel Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966). In 1968 he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical Darling of the Day opposite Patricia Routledge.

Price often spoke of his pleasure at playing Egghead in the Batman television series. One of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), said Price was her favorite villain in the series. In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of Batman, Price, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when asked to stop, replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes telefilm Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt. In the 1960s, he began his role as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, even becoming a semi-regular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.^[6] He was known for usually making fun of Rose Marie's age, and using his famous voice to answer questions in a playfully menacing tone.

Later career[link]

During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series The Price of Fear. Price accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about the show's various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes.^[7] He appeared in The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), and Theatre of Blood (1973), in which he portrayed a pair of campy serial killers. That same year Price appeared as himself in Mooch Goes to Hollywood, a film written by Jim Backus. Price recorded dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.

Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture^[8]. Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare from 1975, and he also appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy showcasing his art expertise and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, Price appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.

In the summer of 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed it at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide. In her biography of her father, Victoria Price stated that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was the best acting that he ever performed.^[3] In the spring of 1979, Price starred with his wife Coral Browne in the short-lived CBS TV series Time Express.

	Vincent Price – "Thriller" noicon excerpt from the voiceover session for the 1982 album.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in Vincent, Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. That same year, he performed a sinister monologue on the title track of Michael Jackson's Thriller album. A longer version of the rap, sans the music, along with some conversation can be heard on Jackson's 2001 remastered reissue of the Thriller album. Part of the extended version can be heard on the Thriller 25 album, released in 2008. Price appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1983 Price played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death starring Kenny Everett, and he also appeared in the film House of the Long Shadows, which teamed him with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine. While Price had worked with each one of them at least once in the prior decade, this was the first teaming of all of them together. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.^[9]

From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series Mystery! In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo as the mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul, who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and the gang in recapturing 13 evil demons. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser. In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers". In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine, facing the end of their days. In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990).

A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. Price was a noted gourmet cook and art collector. He also authored several cookbooks and hosted a cookery TV show, Cooking Pricewise.

From 1962 to 1971, Sears-Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí,^[10] and Nate Dunn.^[11]

Personal life[link]

Price was married three times and fathered a son, Vincent Barrett Price, with his first wife, former actress Edith Barrett. Price and his second wife, Mary Grant Price, donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery there. The Vincent Price Art Museum was built to house art works and present exhibits. Their daughter, Mary Victoria Price, was born in 1962. Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). He converted to Catholicism to marry her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him.

One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an episode of The Saint titled "Author of Murder",^[12] which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950.^[13] While concluding the episode, Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and stated that Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies.^[14] Price was later appointed under the Eisenhower Adminstration and his remarks were, "which is kind of a surprise since I am a Democrat^[15]."

Death[link]

Price was a lifelong smoker. He suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease; his symptoms were especially severe during the filming of Edward Scissorhands, making it necessary to cut his filming schedule short.

His illness also contributed to his retirement from Mystery!, as his condition was becoming noticeable on-screen.^{[citation needed]} He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993, at UCLA Medical Center at the age of 82. He was cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu, California.^[16]

Legacy[link]

In 1951, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Price donated some 90 pieces from his own collection to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, thus establishing the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the U.S. The collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.^[17]

The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following his death, highlighting Price's horror film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, a show titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995). In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.^{[citation needed]}

Price was an Honorary Board Member, and strong supporter until his death, of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum located in Bristol, Connecticut. The museum features detailed life-size wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death.^[18] A black box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.

Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre. It is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price even had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws. The October 2005 episode of the Channel 101 series Yacht Rock featured comedian James Adomian as Vincent Price during the recording of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s and '60s. Other cast members who have played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season 10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).

In 1999, a frank and detailed biography written by his daughter, Victoria Price, about her father was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th Birthday.^[19] It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.^[20][21]