American actress Agnes Moorehead was BOTD in 1900. Born in Clifton, Massachusetts and raised in St Louis, Missouri, expressing an early desire to be an actress. She studied biology at Muskingum College, working as a teacher for five years while studying at the University of Wisconsin. In 1929, she abandoned teaching and moved to New York City to attend The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After years of theatre and radio work, she joined Orson Welles’ Mercury Players in 1937, appearing as Kane’s mother in Welles’ Oscar-winning film Citizen Kane. She had a prominent role in Welles’ follow-up film The Magnificent Ambersons, earning an Oscar nomination despite the film’s poor critical and commercial reception. She became one of the great character actors of the post-war period, usually playing frustrated spinsters, shrewish secretaries and acerbic secretaries, and earning two further Oscar nominations for Mrs Parkington and Johnny Belinda and. Notable performances include the Douglas Sirk melodrama All That Heaven Allows with Rock Hudson, The Conqueror with John Wayne, and the Grand Guignol camp-fest Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte with Bette Davis. In 1964, Moorehead had an unexpected career revival as Endora, the vampish, quick-witted mother witch on TV sitcom Bewitched. Though she was dismissive of the show’s cartoonish writing and the limited talents of her co-stars, the series made her a household name, earning her six consecutive Emmy Award nominations. Her drag queenish appearance and arch line readings injected an astringent note of camp into the show’s saccharine set-up, making her a beloved queer icon. Moorehead also had success in the TV series The Wild Wild West, winning an Emmy in 1967. Married and divorced twice, she was widely rumoured to be a lesbian, which she neither confirmed nor denied, though she admitted to being a Republican and friend of actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan. She died of cancer in 1974, possibly as the result of radiation exposure during the filming of The Conquerer, aged 73.