Agnes Moorehead

Following her death, Moorehead willed her Emmy for Bewitched, her Oscar nominations and her private papers to Muskingum College, along with her family's home in Rix Mills, Ohio. Patrick died suddenly from a heart seizure on the day before her 81st birthday, at Laguna Beach, California. Moorehead herself believed her cancer was related to this exposure, commenting in an interview shortly before her death "I wish I'd never done that damn movie". Starring George Segal as Sam Spade Jr., forced to continue his father's work, and to keep his increasingly sarcastic secretary, the film attempted to turn its revered predecessor into a comedy, and was a box office failure. The irony of this circumstance is that three of Hollywood’s biggest stars may have literally and unknowingly sacrificed their health to make a movie that is consistently rated as one of the worst films of the 1950s. Her final film role was a reprise of her Effie Perine character in a reworking of the Sam Spade story titled The Black Bird (1975). While never confirmed, it is suspected that Moorhead’s cancer was a result of having been exposed to radiation while filming The Conqueror in the Nevada desert. Moorehead, and co-stars John Wayne and Susan Hayward all died from cancer. Among her other films are Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs Parkington (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), Caged (1950), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Vertigo (1958), Auntie Mame (1958), Pillow Talk (1959), and Summer and Smoke (1961).

Agnes Moorhead died in Rochester, Minnesota from lung cancer. As Effie Perine, the loyal and quick-thinking secretary of Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, Patrick created one of her most enduring film characterisations. Moorehead transitioned to television in a seamless fashion, and again won acclaim and accolades for her work in drama and in comedy. Over the next several years she played numerous supporting roles, without attracting much attention until she appeared in The Maltese Falcon (1941). While never a headlining star in films, her skill at charecter development and her range, allowed Moorehead to garner awards and accolades. She remained in Hollywood, and appeared in Border Cafe (1937). She was also part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air radio program in the 1930s and appeared in a Broadway production of Don Juan in Hell in 1950. Her disappointments continued when she was considered and then rejected for the lead role in Stella Dallas in favour of Barbara Stanwyck.

Moorehead was a graduate of Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. Patrick had made her film debut in 1929 but since that time had not appeared in a single film, and RKO Studios were reluctant to allow an unknown actress to take a part in a film which they were beginning to realise had great potential. She was born in Clinton, Massachusetts. Eventually the part was rewritten and split from a single character into two characters which were played by Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Agnes Moorehead (December 6, 1900 - April 30, 1974) was an American character actress. Her success in Stage Door (1937) led her to Hollywood to reprise her role in the film version.
Moorehead as Endora on Bewitched. For more than a decade she was constantly employed and established herself as a popular actress.

Born in New York, New York, Patrick began acting on Broadway in 1924. Lee Patrick (November 22, 1901 – November 21, 1982) was an American theater and film actress. Her difficulties in establishing a career as a leading actress were often attributed to a long standing fued Patrick had with gossip columnist Louella Parsons, about whom Patrick's husband, a journalist, had written very unfavourably. Shaving a decade off her age was a decision she made early in her career, and at the time of her death, many of her friends believed that she was in her early seventies.

After her death it was discovered that she was ten years older than she had ever revealed.