Cinema Experts

"I guess I'll remain a bridesmaid for the rest of my life."
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.
She 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 and was one of the players in his 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). She also appeared in his films Journey into Fear (1943) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). She received a New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film.
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 Virginia Weidler.
By the mid 1940s, Moorehead joined MGM, negotiating a $6,000 a week contract with the provision to also perform 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 judgement to appear on the right sort of show".
She skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters, possessive mothers, and comical secretaries throughout her career. Moorehead was part of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre on the Air radio program in the 1930s and appeared in Broadway productions of Don Juan in Hell in 1951-1952, and Lord Pengo in 1962-1963. She played Parthy Hawks, wife of Cap'n Andy and mother of Magnolia, in MGM's hit 1951 remake of Show Boat.
During the 1940s and 1950s, she was one of the most in demand actresses for radio dramas, and in 1943 starred in the legendary Suspense play Sorry, Wrong Number, written by Lucille Fletcher. 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 many times on the radio (always using her original, dog-eared script), recorded an album of the drama in 1952, and performed scenes from the story in her one-woman show in the 1950s.
Sorry, Wrong Number also inspired writers of the television series The Twilight Zone to script an episode with Moorehead in mind. In "The Invaders" (broadcast 27 January 1961) Moorehead played a woman whose isolated farm is plagued by a 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.
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 that she would 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 it was cancelled 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 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, but Dick Sargent had a more difficult relationship with Moorehead, and described her as "a tough old bird...very self-involved."