Agnes was also great as the frumpy grouchy frontier wife (of Karl Malden) in How the West was Won and perfect as the white-trash maid/companion in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlott (“Why that there is some kin’ of a dr-u-g, ain’ it?”). She said she took the role of Endora because it was the most glamorous she’d ever been offered.
Trivia 1: She had a thing for the color purple you know- her houses, her cars, her dressing rooms, clothes, everything was lavender or some other shade of light purple.
Trivia 2: She was doing a pre-Broadway tour for the play Don Juan in Hell and signed to be the spokesperson for Chrysler, but she became too ill from the cancer that killed her to do the commercials. Since time was of the essence, she recommended her co-star, Don Juan from the play, and that’s how Ricardo Montalban and “rich Corinthian leather” came to be.
Trivia 3: The twins who played Tabitha absolutely adored her and called her "Grandma-MA off the set as well as on.
While I wouldn’t say that she has “a face for radio,” I do love her radio work. Most people probably remember her for Sorry, Wrong Number, (and for her early work with Orson Welles on The Shadow) – but she was the star on Suspense dozens of times, and always rocked your socks off. Her performance in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a bit of craft that’s pretty hard to top. Wow.
As for her looks, I think she was a handsome woman. She looked fine (and I mean fine) in The Magnificent Ambersons.
I think of her as being a Colorforms™ person. She could go up (Bewitched, Pollyanna, Who’s Minding the Store?) or down (Charlotte, The Conqueror) or in between (Kane, Show Boat). She was also very flexible in the ages she could play as a young and middle aged woman.
An actress who was trotted out constantly in the 70s when a hag was needed was Jeanette Nolan. She played wizened country women in *Dirty Sally (pic) *, Awakening Land, Chastity Gulch, etc. even though she was stunning as a young woman.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Heather Matarazzo. Here is a girl who made a movie at the age of 13 (Welcome to the Dollhouse) that was pretty much centered around how ugly she was. She hasn’t much grown out of that role, either, playing the ugly friend in all of the movies I’ve seen her in since then. She must have a helluva personality, though. She’s not particularly heinous but definitely on the uglier end of “Hollywood ugly.” Looking at pictures of her, she looks strikingly normal, which is in fact quite refreshing.
Also, the girl who plays Ann (Egg) from Arrested Development is not bad looking IRL but man do they dress her down. The bangs really, really don’t work on her. I have a theory for that show that they are going to turn her into a SeXXX Goddess soon (they have already worked on an underlying plot about how she is a tightly repressed sexual font ready to blow).
Ironically, in Magnificent Ambersons, she plays the part of the dowdy, spinster aunt who’s bitter about never having been loved.
The “Wizard of Oz” DVD has a special feature about the cultural impact the movie has made. It includes a brief bit of a filmed interview Margaret Hamilton gave before her death. In it she states (paraphrasing): "My agent told me they [the studio] were interested in casting me in “Wizard” and I was so excited. I loved that book for so many years! Then I asked my agent what part they wanted me to play. He said “the wicked witch…who else?” The way Hamilton relates the story, you can tell she wasn’t really bitter or bitchy about it; but she does mug a dismayed face to indicate she was a bit nonplussed by that comment.
