Agnes Moorehead in Dark Passage (1947)

(This post is part of the Third Agnes Moorehead Blogathon hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood)

There can be no doubt that Agnes Moorehead was one of the greatest character actresses of all time. While she is best known today as Endora on the classic television show Bewitched, throughout her career she played a wide variety of roles. Among her most remarkable roles was that of Madge Rapf in Dark Passage (1947), who was a far cry from Endora.

Dark Passage centres on Vincent Parry, a man falsely accused of killing his wife who escapes from San Quentin. Parry takes refuge with a young woman, Irene Jansen (Lauren Bacall), whose father had also been falsely accused of a crime. Unfortunately, among Irene's friends is Madge Rapf (Agnes Moorehead), a woman that Parry had spurned and who falsely claimed at Parry's trial that his wife had identified him as her killer out of spite. Even once Parry has plastic surgery to change his appearance and begins trying to clear his name, he still faces the danger of being discovered.

For the first hour of Dark Passage, the viewer sees things through Parry's eyes. It is after his plastic surgery that viewers finally get to see what Parry looks like. This technique was not exactly new when used in Dark Passage. It had been used as early as 1927 in Abel Gance's Napoleon and in the first five minutes of the classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). It had been used in the previous year for the entirety of Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake (1946), in which nearly the whole film is seen through the eyes of its hero, Philip Marlowe.

Dark Passage was based on the novel of the 1946 novel of the same name, Dark Passage by David Goodis. The novel had been serialized in The Saturday Evening Post from July 20 to September 7 1946, and was afterwards published as a book. Among those who had read the book was Humphrey Bogart, who wanted to make a film version of the novel with himself in the lead role.

Dark Passage was the third movie to star Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but the star attraction in the film is really Agnes Moorehead. The role of Madge Rapf is a sharp break from many of the roles Miss Moorehead played during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Madge Rapf is no dowdy governess or plainly dressed matron. Instead she is a wealthy woman dressed to the nines, making Madge one of Agnes Moorehead's most glamorous roles in her days before she was cast as Endora.

Unfortunately for the film's protagonist, Vincent Parry, Madge is not only glamorous, but venomous as well. Madge is clearly a woman who usually gets what she wants, and can be very vindicative when she doesn't. Indeed, none of the characters in the movie seem to like Madge very much, and some of them appear to outright hate her. In the hands of a  lesser actor, Madge could have easily been a one-note character. In the hands of Agnes Moorehead, she is entirely three-dimensional. Her fear throughout the movie that Vincent Parry will kill her appears genuine. When Madge behaves flirtatiously (something Miss Moorehead rarely got to do in her film career), she simply oozes sex. In the end, Agnes Moorehead makes Madge Rapf one of the great femme fatales in film history.

Agnes Moorhead was capable of playing a wide variety of roles, and she played many throughout her career. That she makes Madge a three-dimensional character with only limited screen time is a remarkable achievement. It certainly stands as one of the best roles of her career.