Free (My Travels with) Agnes Moorehead – The Lavender Lady by Quint Benedetti Page A

her hero, Marcel Marceau. She just adored him and kept promising to have him at the school. She told us that he was the finest pantomimist in the world, because he could do a whole two hour show and thrill people the whole time. So basically, that’s what pantomime was all about.
    Here she was talking about pantomime and I was trying to find myself, both as a person and as an actor. She was gone for a couple of weeks after that for a stay at Sutro’s, but when she came back after her lecture, she asked for pantomime. I raised my hand and she called on a few others and then me. When I got up there on the little stage, she said, “Park.” And I just did it. I was beginning to understand her. When she said, “Park” she wanted us to do something in a park. I played an old bum on a park bench covered with newspapers and asleep. The sun prompted me to cock one eye open. Then I sat up, yawned, scratched and stretched. I did all kinds of things. I gleamed, “It’s good to be alive.” I went over to the garbage can to get my dinner.
    Agnes said it was “very imaginative.” But Agnes never praised anyone one hundred percent. She told me “It could have been better.” And she was right, but I had done something on my own and she critiqued it and gave me something else to think about. It was tremendously exciting and, oh, how I looked forward to the next time. I had tasted blood.
    I expected and dreamed and lived every Saturday, hoping and waiting for it to happen again. Some of the others did more pantomime for her. They were more advanced and I was glad to watch them, because I learned a great deal from them. But that park pantomime was the only one that Agnes ever saw me do.
    Agnes saw quite a few students perform that day, so I imagined my own pantomime was lost after a while. But at least I had built the bridge between us.
    The classes had Agnes’ personality. They were without discipline, going from one thing to another, never spending enough time on each. They were interesting, but episodic. The problem with the pantomime class was that it was nebulous. It should have been done religiously every week. It wasn’t. It was just used as a filler, to throw in when there was nothing else. I gradually realized that much of the classes were “stall” techniques. When Agnes wasn’t there, they’d go into scenes, pantomime, a lecture or just comments. The class really sung when she was there, but otherwise it sagged. It was just those four things—scenes, pantomime, lecture or comments—and they just sort of floated in or out and there was no rhyme or reason. This was supposed to be a school. It wasn’t. It was a stage for Agnes. I know Agnes would have liked it to be a school. Like you come in at nine o’clock and you have Religion and at ten o’clock, you have Chemistry. But it never worked that way, except that when she finished her part of the class, the dialectician would come in and do his “thing.” Ballet was ballet and fencing was fencing, but her “thing” was always very loose. There was no strict curriculum. Everything depended on her moods.
    Sometimes she came in and did pantomime right away. And then there would be a lecture. Sometimes she would come in and say sternly, “I want a scene. Don’t let that stage be bare when I get here. I want to see you up there working. You must always be working.”
    On other days, there’d be no scenes at all, just lecture. Drudge, drudge, drudge. It was structurally slipshod. Really, there was no structure at all.
    Leon Charles always saw that we had scenes and pantomimes, but with Agnes you never knew what she was going to do. You never even knew if she was going to be there or what time. Yet, there was something fascinating. Her personality, her aura surrounded us. She knew no ruler, no boss, no conscience. She would be there, then she wouldn’t. She’d show up one week and then disappear for two or three weeks. Then she’d take on a few classes and