The Little Things That Make You Wonder

 I have been for ages looking for the marriage certificate for Molly and John. I literally clawed my way through marriage records in the state of Pennsylvania with zero success. Today I decided to take another crack at it but neglected to put the state in for my search and to my surprise popped up a marriage certificate. Then it got seriously weird. I've always known that John was substantially older than Molly. They were married 6 days after her 16th birthday in 1899. That wasn't the surprise though. The surprise was where they were married and what was on the certificate. They got married in Kentucky. Yes, I said Kentucky. Newport Kentucky to be exact which is a suburb of Cincinatti, Ohio. The license gives Molly's age as 21, not 16. Her mother was not a witness nor was her father suggesting they may not have known. Kentucky law allowed for 16-year-olds to marry but only with parental approval. Bring on the surprises I say. We need more. Here's a copy.

Why Did She Do That?

 I have always found the case of Peggy Moorehead compelling. For years I read and read and read looking for her or more aptly her story. I've no doubt that Peggy was a very complex person. Her father was a preacher. Her mother was, well, Molly and that is a whole different complex story. For years I was told she had a "heart seizure." I can only assume this was the story the family told themselves to soften the blow of suicide. Molly wouldn't even use the word on the telephone when she phoned Agnes in New York to say that Peggy was "ill." She wasn't ill in the true sense of the word. She would never recover from what she had done despite her reassurances to her mother that she had nursed a girl who had done the same and recovered. Peggy knew she wasn't going to recover. She was a nurse for heaven's sake. She knew she was dying. She was just waiting for it to happen. She'd made sure it would. For years I've read her story over and over. A story we'd know nothing about saving for a letter from her mother to Agnes explaining that Peggy and "Frank" were over and Peggy had no reason why. We'd never know that  she had been in an argument with her sister driving Agnes to wonder why Peggy couldn't have come to them and find the statement punctuated with the words "You've never loved a man like I have." Plainly it broke Agnes' heart but it would never have come to light save for research done for a book written by somebody else who happened upon the gut-wrenching note in the back of an old notebook that had belonged to Agnes. Every single thing we know comes from other people.

Over the years I've been told many stories about Peggy. She apparently had an abiding love for dance. In particular, she loved the dancing of Isadora Duncan and I was told by a former neighbor in Reedsburg that Peggy would often dance nude in her parent's backyard. Nude I believe is relative in this instance since it likely refers to wearing sheer tunics a la Duncan. Never the less an uptight individual does not dance a la Duncan in her parent's backyard let alone dance that way when her father is a preacher. It seems to me that Peggy was a fanciful thinker who enjoyed freedom not afforded her sister. Peggy just didn't seem to worry about what other folks thought. This brings me back again to 1929 and her suicide.

I think it's worth mentioning again that  Peggy according to the local newspaper was in St. Louis on June 22nd, 1929. This was a Saturday and the announcement was that she was visiting friends in St. Louis and was expected home the following Friday or Saturday. That would have been June 28th or 29th. It's also worth mentioning again that by July 14th she was dead by her own hand. I have always wondered why did she did that. Why? What happened in St. Louis? What happened in Reedsburg? We have a cryptic note from Molly saying Peggy apologized for the nonsense that recently happened. What nonsense? Why???

Often people attempt suicide as a cry for help but those who actually just do it aren't crying for help they're crying out in pain. A pain that is so deep that it shatters their body and soul. A pain that is so deep that they cannot conceive of surviving it nor do they want to. They just want that pain to stop. I've had pain in my life but not like that.

It took Margaret 3 days to die. That means the decision to kill herself happened on or about July 11th. This happens 12 days after she returns from St. Louis. Molly described that "Frank" said they would quit out of the blue, they being Peggy and Frank. How out of the blue was it though? My gut has always said that perhaps Peggy was pregnant and perhaps that is why she told her sister that she had never loved a man the way Peggy had. I can't prove that but her father was a preacher. However, you choose to look at it suicide was absolutely anti-everything her father preached whether it was because she was pregnant or simply emotionally broken. It is by definition of the bible a sin either way. 

The most curious thing is why her obituary in the Dayton paper says she'd been living there for a year when the Directory of St. Louis in 1929 lists her as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital. Then there is the whole thing of her also being listed as living in Reedsburg in its Directory for the year 1929. What is actually happening here? Let it be said at this point the family had been back in St. Louis where Peggy's father was pastor at Carondelet Presbyterian until June of 1928. He had been there since at least 1925 when his name is first mentioned in the newspaper as pastor. Again I ask what is the gap in Peggy's life from 1922 when she was a freshman in Reedsburg High School and 1925 when the record indicates that her parents moved back to St. Louis. Where in the name of all things holy is she for 3 years??? She allegedly graduated from Cleveland High School in 1925 according to the city of St. Louis. I've looked and I still keep coming up with photos I've already posted but one. The bottom line is Peggy wore glasses and only one picture I can find has a girl with glasses. Admittedly glasses can be removed but Peggy has a very strong chin so and the others I've found do not have that. So this is my newest guess:

The young woman with glasses may be Peggy. The chin is right. The nose is right. The hair is a lighter color as Peggy's was. Of course, they don't list names and she does not have a picture in the Senior photo section. It can never be easy, can it? I have no idea what made Peggy the person she was. I have no idea what drove her to take her own life. I will keep picking it apart though and perhaps in time, I will find out what may have happened.

Joy Throws Little Stones

Phantom No Longer 

Margaret Ann Moorehead has been a mystery to all of us for a very long time. First, we discovered that she had actually committed suicide. Secondly, we learned that she was a nurse. Thirdly we learned that she appeared to have lived in St. Louis after her parents left to go to Reedsburg. I made the assumption that perhaps she had stayed with family friends since by all accounts her parents moved to Reedsburg after they had been in St. Louis and from Reedsburg to Dayton Ohio where Margaret died in 1929. In a serendipitous moment, I stumbled onto a newspaper article that confirmed I was wrong about Margaret and her parents. John and Molly did move to Reedsburg in 1919 but they moved back to St. Louis in 1922 after school ended in Reedsburg taking Margaret with them. Well, what can I say what I write is only as good as what I read on the subject. Every single day new records pop up all over the internet and via my genealogical wanderings, I have discovered a wee bit of a holy grail of sorts. Two photographs from Reedsburg High School dated 1922. One of them is of the Freshman/Sophomore Girls Glee Club and the other of the school Orchestra. Featured in both pictures is Margaret Moorehead. Typical of yearbooks of the time photographs were taken and names were printed underneath but not in any particular order. That left the problem of identifying which one was Margaret. The Girls Glee Club retinue was huge so that was right out the window but the orchestra was small and even better the number of girls even smaller. I took that picture and searched for all the girls in it by name looking for single photos of them so that I could eliminate them one by one. I ended up with two girls and still was not sure which one was Margaret. The other girl was unnamed on the list but I knew since Margaret was also in Glee Club that meant one of the two remaining unidentified girls would be Margaret. Jackpot!!! I took each face separately then scanned through the Girls Glee Club one was eliminated and the other was Margaret Ann Moorehead.

Stories Lie In The Eyes

I cropped the photographs down so that I could study the face. There are stories in those eyes good and bad, imagined and real, happy, and sad. In the orchestra, Margaret played the violin. It's worth keeping in mind that Molly taught herself to play the cello so it is certainly no surprise that Margaret chose a string instrument. While studying Margaret's face I realized that she reminded me of somebody and that somebody was not her sister it was her mother. In fact, Margaret appears to be the spitting image of her mother. The story goes that Molly always favored Margaret and it's no surprise really since they looked so much alike.

Orchestra 1922

Top photo Margaret is on the left and on the right is unknown

The bottom photo is Molly Moorehead

They resemble each other so closely it is uncanny right down to the glasses.

To me, Margaret looks like she has a semblance of a smile but the eyes are sad with a hint of defiance. Molly looks exactly the same way. 

Girls Glee Club 1922

In this picture again the hint of a smile but the eyes seem sad and defiant.

These are full-size pictures from the Reedsburg High School yearbook. Margaret was 16 when these were taken and had only 7 years more on earth.

Joy threw me a little stone. I wish it had done the same for Margaret.

The End of the Sean Saga

Just when you think that you are done with twists and turns and loop the loops you crash headlong into new information. So here goes.

The Tip of the Iceberg

A while back I mentioned in an update that I had found Sean Moorehead. I did of I absolutely did but I made one small mistake. I assumed that he was still alive. Newsflash he is no longer living. The man the world knows as Sean Moorehead died at the age of 48 in 1996. He did come from an extremely large family and they were not incredibly well off but there were never 6 or 7 siblings parsed out as Agnes had said. As far as I can tell there were two parsed out Sean and a younger sister. I have found no evidence that Sean was frail, ill and hospitalized at the time he was parsed out. His family did have relatives in California though and that may be how this all came to pass. His father was a construction worker and the family often moved with him as he went from job to job. In 1963 Sean ran away from Agnes' home for 3 weeks. Everybody assumed he ran to San Francisco but what if he ran home. The family was living in the upper midwest at the time. What if he ran home?

A Ticket To Die For

I posit this what if he always ran home to his family. I say this because one of the things that often gets mentioned in biographies about Agnes is that in 1967 she had a massive blow out with Sean. Sean had a dismantled gun in a drawer in his room. Agnes found it and immediately demanded Sean leave her home. He obliged and that would be the end of that. Once Sean had departed Agnes learned that he had a warrant out for his arrest for failure to appear in traffic court and failure to have a driver's license. I found an article that correlates to this identifying him by his birth name because it happened where his family lived. He ran a red light then backed up through the red light and had no driver's license. He was charged with careless driving and assessed a fine of $166.00 in October of 1966. That's a steep fine for the time. Perhaps Sean went back to Beverly Hills to escape what had happened.

Enlistment
One of the things Sean wanted to do before graduating from high school was to enlist in the military. In 1968 he did just that under his birth name. He served in the Army for two years. His enlistment actually proves his lungs were fine despite what we were led to believe or he would not have made the medical cut. He also did not wear glasses and his eyes appeared to be just fine.

Tying Up Loose Ends
Sean died at the age of 48 of a cardiopulmonary arrest, pericarditis, and renal disease. He was a 2 pack a day smoker as well as a truck driver. He did reunite with his family. His heritage was Scottish and French Canadian. He married twice and I am unaware of any children. I have opted not to release his birth name because the majority of his siblings are still very much alive and it would be incredibly unfair to do so. His name wasn't Sean or Eric but he did travel under the name Sean Moorehead when he went abroad however he was never legally adopted nor does it appear he ever legally change his name so it was plainly long before you had to ante up mega identification in order to obtain a passport or to board a plane. Since he enlisted on July 24, 1968, we now know he remained in Europe until 1968.

Sean was troubled and when compared to his siblings he definitely lived a colorful life. In the end, it's enough for me to know he's no longer with us and to hope that by the time he left this planet he found peace.

Aggie Calling Orson, Come In Orson

It's All In The Timing
So, here I am back again to take a new run at adding to this blog. My prompt was a meet and greet situation that I found myself at. It was while introducing myself in my normal forward manner to an Australian actress whose stage presence I find akin to what would have happened if suddenly Aggie and Orson found themselves the parents of a daughter. It prompted me to yet again take a run at the seemingly lifelong task of sheltering my talented cousin's memory and trying to find a good way to let everyone see beneath the veil of who Aggie was.

While looking over my notes I was struck by the section that I had copied down ages ago about the interview that Agnes did with Dick Cavett in 1973. It was during this interview that Aggie claimed to have met Orson in 1922 in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria when Orson was a mere 7 years old. She makes no mention of meeting either his father nor his mother just him. There are a couple of reasons this is problematic:

1. Agnes was in college in 1922 in Muskingum Ohio and there are no records to "prove" that she was in New York in 1922. Keep in mind that traveling was an occasion documented by newspapers.
2. There are also no records indicating that Orson was in New York in 1922. See above.

Orson Orson Orson
To call George Orson Welles a gypsy would essentially be an insult to gypsies. He was on the move from the age of 12 or 13 onward. He was all over Europe, Ireland, Canada, and the list goes on. Orson's mother passed away in 1924 and his father in 1930. His father was a wealthy man who, oddly enough, made his money in car headlights and bicycle lamps, see "Magnificent Amberson's" for extremely strange coincidence. In January of 1931, a guardian named Dr. Maurice A Berstein is appointed for Orson and since Orson's brother Richard was 10 years older than Orson no guardian was required for him. By November of 1931, Orson was on his way to Ireland to begin his meteoric rise in the entertainment industry. By 1933 he was touring with Katherine Cornell and by November of 1934 was a married man.  In 1935 Orson began experimenting with radio and this had repercussions that followed him until the day he died. Welles cofounded "Mercury Theatre On The Air" with John Housman and together they created a series of radio plays from classic sources such as Bram Stoker's Dracula but the most memorable of these for most people was H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. Welle's radio show created a panic the likes of which had not been seen before. People thought it was real. But I'm getting ahead of myself. In 1937 Orson took on the role of LaMont Cranston in the radio production of "The Shadow." LaMont had a gorgeous faithful assistant named Margo Lane and she was voiced by none other than Agnes Moorehead. Welle's recognized his costar's skill level and subsequently, Agnes along with the likes of Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, and others were drawn into the "Mercury Theatre" fold.

So while I cannot prove that Agnes did not, in fact, meet George Orson Welles at the tender age of 7 I can say with confidence that it likely did not happen.

Svengali
What is undeniable is that Orson was a sort of Svengali for Agnes. For eons, people have spoken of their relationship in terms of an affair but I really think that is a non-starter as an argument. Agnes cared for Orson yes but I think that her affection for Orson was akin to the same affection she felt for her sister. Orson took her to Hollywood. He frequently told her that she undersold herself and that she was worth a much larger salary. Agnes worked with him on his Mobile Gas Almanac productions in 1944 and in those shows, she plays his straight man. In an uncharacteristic burst of humor on one particular Alamanac broadcast March 8, 1944, Agnes let loose a long loud laugh that brings the show to a momentary standstill. The banter between the two is priceless and shows how well they actually worked together. Welles also took Agnes along on his Mercury Wonder Show as well. For her first 7 or 8 years in Hollywood Orson helped Agnes find her way around the maze of Hollywood as she established herself as a Hollywood icon.

We likely would not have one without the other and for that, I'm very, very grateful!

To The Gist of the Matter An Article About Dave Gist Son of Robert Gist

"This is the kind of person I like. When strangers or clerks (or both) ask me how I am -- and they really don't care -- I answer in somewhat the same way, but without so much mini-shout. So I had to get to know this guy.

Everything that came out of Dave Gist's mouth drew me deeper into a world of fascination and admiration. He'd done a lot of outdoor work, he told me, and finally decided he was tired of it. He ended up becoming a screenwriter. He's written 46 films so far -- sold about half of them. They're mostly horror flicks. That was interesting to me. How he got there, though, was a hoot.

"I was in jail and working in the kitchen," he said, without wanting to reveal the offense that landed him there, "and got sick. So they put me in an office had given me a lot of typing to do.
I couldn't type and I told them so."

"'Well, you can now,' they told me," he said with a smile. "So I started hunt-and-pecking with my two index fingers and, by the time I got out, I was a fast typist. I still type with just these two fingers."

When he got out, his new typing skills -- and his disdain for laboring in the hot sun -- opened the gates into the world of screenwriting. It didn't completely come out of nowhere, however. His father was a well-known director who had also played parts in a slew of films and TV shows. Robert Gist's first role was that of the department store window dresser in "Miracle on 34th Street" in 1947. It seems he appeared in just about every television series I enjoyed as a kid -- from "Sea Hunt" and "Hennessey" to "Gunsmoke" and "Have Gun Will Travel." Dave's dad also appeared in episodes of "Death Valley Days" and "Perry Mason."

"Agnes Moorehead was my stepmother," Dave told me.

I checked it out on IMDB.com (Dave is listed there also) and, if the gossip magazines of the day were true, the six-year relationship and short-lived marriage drew a lot of attention. Her first role had been in "Citizen Kane" in 1941, but most people remember her from her role of Endora in "Bewitched."

She was 24 years older than Robert Gist. Even today, that would make for good tabloid fodder.

But back to his son, Dave. His hunting and pecking produces stories that tend to be more about stalking and then packing the bodies away. I love some of the titles: "Merry Axmas," "In Cold Storage" (you guessed it -- it's about hiding the remains of victims at the local U-Store-It) and "Serial Killing 4 Dummies."

Now wonder he's so darned friendly -- I think he takes out his aggression on fictional characters. Sounds healthy to me!

Some Sad News and Other Musings

Life being what it is I've been very remiss in updating this blog. Need to make the time more than I realized. So here is an update.

Tanya Hills passed away on March 22 of this year. She died in a nursing home facility and I have been lucky enough to have been contacted by somebody who was helping to care for her. I'm glad that she is at peace and I hope she's moved on to a much happier place.  Before anybody asks why didn't I straight up ask her the nature of her relationship with Agnes, I did have that chance, I made the decision not to do so for several reasons:

1. She was suffering from Alzheimer's and I did not wish to stress her out.
2. It is 100 percent, not my business.
3. I really did not need to do so. I have my family information on the subject of Agnes' sexuality so it would have served no purpose except to put a punctuation mark at the end of the sentence.

Just know that we know what we know and there comes a point when knowing more just has no relevance. It is down to every person to make up their own mind with the facts as presented and whatever you decide to think is your right. I know what I know and I don't worry about what I don't know.

I've said this before but I'll try to put more out there than the zero that I've managed for the last 12 months.

Be excellent to each other!