.gif)
Henry Morgan (comedian)
Encyclopedia
Henry Morgan was an American
humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio
, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television
, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret
. Morgan was born Henry Lerner Van Ost, Jr. in New York City
; he was a second cousin of Broadway lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner
.
in 1932, after which he held a number of obscure radio jobs, including announcing. He strenuously objected to the professional name "Morgan". What was wrong with his own name, Henry van Ost, Jr.? he asked. Too exotic, too unpronounceable, he was told. "What about the successful announcers Harry von Zell
or Westbrook Van Voorhis
?" he countered. But it was no use, and the bosses finally told Henry he could take the job or leave it. Thus began a long history of Henry's having arguments with executives.
In 1940, he was offered a daily 15-minute series on Mutual Broadcasting System
's flagship station, WOR
. This show was a 15-minute comedy, which he opened almost invariably with "Good evening, anybody; here's Morgan." In his memoir Here's Morgan (1994), he wrote that he devised that introduction as a dig at popular singer Kate Smith
, who "...started her show with a condescending, 'Hello, everybody.' I, on the other hand, was happy if anybody listened in." He mixed literately barbed ad libs, satirizing daily life's foibles, with novelty records, including those of Spike Jones
. Morgan stated that Jones sent him his newest records in advance of market dates because he played them so often.
He also targeted his sponsors freely. One early sponsor had been Adler Shoe Stores, which came close to canceling its account after Morgan started making references to "Old Man Adler" on the air; the chain changed its mind after it was learned business spiked upward, with many new patrons asking to meet Old Man Adler. Morgan had to read an Adler commercial heralding the new fall line of colors; Morgan thought the colors were dreadful, and said he wouldn't wear them to a dogfight, but perhaps the listeners would like them. Old Man Adler demanded a retraction on the air. Morgan obliged: "I would wear them to a dogfight." Morgan later recalled with bemusement, "It made him happy." This incident appears to have later been incorporated, with the names changed, into the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, with Andy Griffith
playing an iconoclastic radio
and television
personality.
Later, he moved to ABC
(formerly the NBC
Blue Network) in a half-hour weekly format that allowed Morgan more room to develop and expand his topical, often ad-libbed satires, hitting popular magazines, soap operas, schools, the BBC
, baseball, summer resorts, government snooping, and landlords. His usual signoff was, "Morgan'll be here on the same corner in front of the cigar store next week."
He continued to target sponsors whose advertising copy rankled him, and those barbs didn't always sit well with his new sponsors, either. He is alleged to have said of his sponsor's Oh Henry! candy bar (after exhorting listeners to try one), "Eat two, and your teeth will fall out." When Eversharp sponsored his show to promote both Eversharp pens and Schick injector razor blades, Morgan threw this in during a show satirizing American schools: "They're educational. Try one. That'll teach you." He also altered the company's Schick injector blade slogan "Push-pull, click-click" to "Push-pull, nick-nick." Eversharp finally dropped him in December 1947, citing what Dunning called "flabby material," to which Morgan—picked up promptly by Rayve Shampoo—replied, on the air, "It's not my show, it's their razor."
Perhaps most notoriously, Life Savers
candy, another early Morgan sponsor, dropped him after he accused them of fraud for what amounted to hiding the holes in the famous life saver ring-shaped sweets. "I claimed that if the manufacturer would give me all those centers," Morgan remembered later, "I would market them as Morgan's Mint Middles and say no more about it." Radio historian John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, has noted that Morgan also started describing his "mint middles" flavors as "cement, asphalt and asbestos." Notwithstanding, Morgan enjoyed a last laugh of a sort: ABC
had been founded by Life Savers chief Edward Noble—who had bought and re-named NBC Blue as ABC, after NBC was forced to sell the Blue Network following a federal anti-trust ruling.
ABC afforded Morgan his first exposure on television as host of a low-key variety series, On The Corner, produced at affiliate station WFIL-TV in Philadelphia (ABC's New York station and production center was still under construction) and aired on the fledgling TV network as a summer series in 1948. True to his iconoclasm, he satirized his sponsors during the short run of that show as he had so often done on radio.
Veteran radio announcer Ed Herlihy
, a friend of Morgan, remembered him to radio historian Gerald Nachman (in Raised on Radio): "He was ahead of his time, but he was also hurt by his own disposition. He was very difficult. He was so brilliant that he'd get exasperated and he'd sulk. He was a great mind who never achieved the success he should have." Nachman wrote of Morgan that he was radio's "first true rebel because—like many comics who go for the jugular, from Lenny Bruce
to Roseanne Barr
—he didn't know when to quit."
Morgan had his fans and his professional admirers, including authors Robert Benchley
and James Thurber
, fellow radio humorists Fred Allen
, Jack Benny
, and Fanny Brice
, future Today Show host Dave Garroway
, and Red Skelton
. Morgan, for his part, claimed Allen as a primary influence; Allen often had Morgan as a guest on his own radio hit, including and especially the final Fred Allen Show in 1949, in a sketch that also featured Jack Benny. ("If Fred Allen bit the hand that fed him," Nachman wrote, "Henry Morgan tried to bite off the whole arm.") Morgan's byline appeared in three 1950s issues of the similarly sardonic Mad
magazine.
Another supporter was Arnold Stang
, who worked as one of his second bananas on the ABC shows and was known later as the voice of Hanna-Barbera
's Top Cat
. "He was a masochist, a neurotic man," Stang told Nachman about his former boss. "When things were going well for him, he would do something to destroy himself. He just couldn't deal with success. He'd had an unhappy childhood that warped him a little and gave him a sour outlook on life. He had no close friends." Stang also claimed Morgan's first wife "kept him deeply in debt and refused to give him a divorce"; the divorce occurred in due course, and Morgan remarried happily enough.
. That he was any kind of Communist sympathizer was a dubious proposition at best; Nachman noted Morgan's listing sprang from his former wife's leftist affiliations, and Morgan himself confirmed it in his memoir:
Morgan revealed in his memoir that one of his cousins had been a Communist Party member until the Hitler-Stalin Pact caused him to break with the Party, and that this cousin had told investigators Morgan hadn't been a Party member. This cousin, Morgan continued, had decided to cooperate heavily with investigators "when he learned that his agent, a Party member, had refused to accept assignments for him; his doctor, another Red, knowing of (his) bad heart, had recommended that he play tennis. The Party tried to rape him. It was enough to ruin his faith, it was. He decided to kill them, that was all." Morgan himself was cleared soon enough, and he resumed his broadcasting career.
What is seldom recalled is that Morgan was well on his way to becoming a major comedian with his weekly show when he had a physical altercation with his first wife, striking her with his fist. This was widely reported in the media and caused his show sponsors—already edgy over his freewheeling, sponsor-baiting style as it was—to bail out. The show was canceled, and Morgan never really recovered from this fall from grace. He once referred to that time (mentioning it on the air but without actually saying what it was) as "when the world blew up."
's sophisticated comedy So This Is New York
(1948), which also featured Arnold Stang and was loosely based upon Ring Lardner
's 1920 novel The Big Town. Though Morgan and the film received favorable critical reviews, it didn't go over as well with the public as his radio and later television work did. Morgan also appeared as Brooklyn assistant district attorney Burton Turkus in the 1960 gangster
film Murder, Inc.
, playing in a cast that included Stuart Whitman
, May Britt
, and Peter Falk
. A year earlier, he hosted the short-lived syndicated television program Henry Morgan and Company, which All-Movie Guide has called a kind of precursor to David Letterman
's style of irreverent television.
's I've Got a Secret
, produced by game show giants Mark Goodson
and Bill Todman
. Morgan's tenure on the show was marked by his periodic complaints about the (allegedly) horrid conditions in which he had to work, in between firing questions at the show's guests with the secrets. Morgan's mordant wit played well against the upbeat personalities of the other panelists, and producer Allan Sherman
would deliberately stage elaborate "secrets" involving Morgan personally. On one occasion, Morgan was sent to Africa; on another he was dispatched to an undisclosed location in the Caribbean to try a theoretical betting system; on a third, he was partially undressed on the air while trying to read a dramatic script (and to his credit, his composure didn't break once during the bedlam); and on a fourth, he was given janitorial equipment and told to clean up a messy, confetti-strewn theater stage.
Still, he stayed with the show for its original 14-season run and rejoined it when it was revived twice: in syndication in 1972, and on CBS once more for a brief 1976 summer run.
(1955–70), which also afforded the final airings to longtime radio favorites Fibber McGee and Molly
, until co-star Marian Jordan's death), as well as playing guest panelist on other game shows produced by the Goodson-Todman team—including What's My Line?
, To Tell the Truth
, and The Match Game
. Morgan also took a turn hosting a radio quiz show, Sez Who, in 1959; the quiz involved guessing the famous voices making memorable comments that had been recorded over the years. Panelists included comedians Joey Adams
and Orson Bean
, model and personality Dagmar, and future Gilligan's Island
co-star Jim Backus
. In the 1960s, Morgan was seen at times on the legendary weekly news satire That Was The Week That Was
in 1964–65, made numerous appearances in the early years of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
, and became a regular cast member of the short-lived but respected James Thurber-based comedy series, My World and Welcome to It
in 1969.
During the 1970s, he wrote humorous commentaries for national magazines. His radio career gained an early-1980s revival in his native New York City, thanks to his two-and-a-half minute The Henry Morgan Show commentaries, broadcast twice daily on WNEW-AM (now WBBR
) starting in January 1981. The following year, he added the Saturday evening show Morgan and the Media on WOR
. In what might be called inadvertent iconoclasm, Morgan used a 1981 WNEW commentary on preinflation prices to sing, rather wistfully, an old Pepsi
jingle ("Pepsi-Cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that's a lot/Twice as much for a nickel, too/Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you"). The irony abounded as well, remembering Morgan's controversies with his sponsors in the classic radio days; the only thing wrong with singing that ancient Pepsi jingle was that that day's Morgan commentary was sponsored by rival Coca-Cola
.
Always known as much for his sarcastic grouchiness as his barbed self-deprecation, Morgan's 1994 memoir, Here's Morgan! The Original Bad Boy of Broadcasting, found him satirizing many of his former co-stars while straining not to examine his professional life beyond a series of in-and-out zaps, asides, and declarative statements—almost as if the reader were listening to a vintage radio satire of Morgan's life. His final national television appearance was on the cable television series Talk Live, in early 1994. A few weeks after that broadcast, Henry Morgan died of lung cancer at age 79.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...
. Morgan was born Henry Lerner Van Ost, Jr. in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
; he was a second cousin of Broadway lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner was an American lyricist and librettist. In collaboration with Frederick Loewe, he created some of the world's most popular and enduring works of musical theatre for both the stage and on film...
.
Radio
His radio career began as a page at New York station WMCAWMCA
WMCA, 570 AM, is a radio station in New York City, most known for its "Good Guys" Top 40 era in the 1960s. It is currently owned by Salem Communications and plays a Christian radio format...
in 1932, after which he held a number of obscure radio jobs, including announcing. He strenuously objected to the professional name "Morgan". What was wrong with his own name, Henry van Ost, Jr.? he asked. Too exotic, too unpronounceable, he was told. "What about the successful announcers Harry von Zell
Harry von Zell
Harry von Zell , born in Indianapolis, made his mark as an announcer of radio programs and an actor in films and television shows....
or Westbrook Van Voorhis
Westbrook Van Voorhis
Cornelius Westbrook Van Voorhis was a narrator for television programs and movies. He is perhaps best known for his work on the March of Time radio and newsreel series, where he became known as the "Voice of Doom", as well as for the catchphrase, "Time...marches on!"...
?" he countered. But it was no use, and the bosses finally told Henry he could take the job or leave it. Thus began a long history of Henry's having arguments with executives.
In 1940, he was offered a daily 15-minute series on Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
's flagship station, WOR
WOR (AM)
WOR is a class A , AM radio station located in New York, New York, U.S., operating on 710 kHz. The station has a talk format and has been owned by Buckley Broadcasting since 1987, after the station was sold by RKO. The station has conservative, or right-of-center hosts.Its call letters have no...
. This show was a 15-minute comedy, which he opened almost invariably with "Good evening, anybody; here's Morgan." In his memoir Here's Morgan (1994), he wrote that he devised that introduction as a dig at popular singer Kate Smith
Kate Smith
Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith was an American Popular singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia...
, who "...started her show with a condescending, 'Hello, everybody.' I, on the other hand, was happy if anybody listened in." He mixed literately barbed ad libs, satirizing daily life's foibles, with novelty records, including those of Spike Jones
Spike Jones
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...
. Morgan stated that Jones sent him his newest records in advance of market dates because he played them so often.
He also targeted his sponsors freely. One early sponsor had been Adler Shoe Stores, which came close to canceling its account after Morgan started making references to "Old Man Adler" on the air; the chain changed its mind after it was learned business spiked upward, with many new patrons asking to meet Old Man Adler. Morgan had to read an Adler commercial heralding the new fall line of colors; Morgan thought the colors were dreadful, and said he wouldn't wear them to a dogfight, but perhaps the listeners would like them. Old Man Adler demanded a retraction on the air. Morgan obliged: "I would wear them to a dogfight." Morgan later recalled with bemusement, "It made him happy." This incident appears to have later been incorporated, with the names changed, into the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd, with Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...
playing an iconoclastic radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
personality.
Later, he moved to ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
(formerly the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Blue Network) in a half-hour weekly format that allowed Morgan more room to develop and expand his topical, often ad-libbed satires, hitting popular magazines, soap operas, schools, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, baseball, summer resorts, government snooping, and landlords. His usual signoff was, "Morgan'll be here on the same corner in front of the cigar store next week."
He continued to target sponsors whose advertising copy rankled him, and those barbs didn't always sit well with his new sponsors, either. He is alleged to have said of his sponsor's Oh Henry! candy bar (after exhorting listeners to try one), "Eat two, and your teeth will fall out." When Eversharp sponsored his show to promote both Eversharp pens and Schick injector razor blades, Morgan threw this in during a show satirizing American schools: "They're educational. Try one. That'll teach you." He also altered the company's Schick injector blade slogan "Push-pull, click-click" to "Push-pull, nick-nick." Eversharp finally dropped him in December 1947, citing what Dunning called "flabby material," to which Morgan—picked up promptly by Rayve Shampoo—replied, on the air, "It's not my show, it's their razor."
Perhaps most notoriously, Life Savers
Life Savers
Life Savers is an American brand of ring-shaped mints and artificially fruit-flavored hard candy. The candy is known for its distinctive packaging, coming in aluminum foil rolls....
candy, another early Morgan sponsor, dropped him after he accused them of fraud for what amounted to hiding the holes in the famous life saver ring-shaped sweets. "I claimed that if the manufacturer would give me all those centers," Morgan remembered later, "I would market them as Morgan's Mint Middles and say no more about it." Radio historian John Dunning, in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, has noted that Morgan also started describing his "mint middles" flavors as "cement, asphalt and asbestos." Notwithstanding, Morgan enjoyed a last laugh of a sort: ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
had been founded by Life Savers chief Edward Noble—who had bought and re-named NBC Blue as ABC, after NBC was forced to sell the Blue Network following a federal anti-trust ruling.
ABC afforded Morgan his first exposure on television as host of a low-key variety series, On The Corner, produced at affiliate station WFIL-TV in Philadelphia (ABC's New York station and production center was still under construction) and aired on the fledgling TV network as a summer series in 1948. True to his iconoclasm, he satirized his sponsors during the short run of that show as he had so often done on radio.
Veteran radio announcer Ed Herlihy
Ed Herlihy
Edward Joseph "Ed" Herlihy was an American newsreel narrator for Universal-International. His voice was heard in countless films on every subject, making him one of the best-known voices in broadcast history...
, a friend of Morgan, remembered him to radio historian Gerald Nachman (in Raised on Radio): "He was ahead of his time, but he was also hurt by his own disposition. He was very difficult. He was so brilliant that he'd get exasperated and he'd sulk. He was a great mind who never achieved the success he should have." Nachman wrote of Morgan that he was radio's "first true rebel because—like many comics who go for the jugular, from Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...
to Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Cherrie Barr is an American actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997...
—he didn't know when to quit."
Morgan had his fans and his professional admirers, including authors Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
and James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
, fellow radio humorists Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it...
, Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
, and Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...
, future Today Show host Dave Garroway
Dave Garroway
David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing, relaxed, and relaxing style belied a battle with depression that may have contributed to the end of his days as a leading television personality—and, eventually, his life...
, and Red Skelton
Red Skelton
Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton was an American comedian who is best known as a top radio and television star from 1937 to 1971. Skelton's show business career began in his teens as a circus clown and went on to vaudeville, Broadway, films, radio, TV, night clubs and casinos, all while pursuing...
. Morgan, for his part, claimed Allen as a primary influence; Allen often had Morgan as a guest on his own radio hit, including and especially the final Fred Allen Show in 1949, in a sketch that also featured Jack Benny. ("If Fred Allen bit the hand that fed him," Nachman wrote, "Henry Morgan tried to bite off the whole arm.") Morgan's byline appeared in three 1950s issues of the similarly sardonic Mad
Mad (magazine)
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting not only satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th century.The last...
magazine.
Another supporter was Arnold Stang
Arnold Stang
Arnold Stang was an American comic actor who played a small and bespectacled, yet brash and knowing big-city type.-Career:...
, who worked as one of his second bananas on the ABC shows and was known later as the voice of Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
's Top Cat
Top Cat
Top Cat is a Hanna-Barbera prime time animated television series which ran from September 27, 1961 to April 18, 1962 for a run of 30 episodes on the ABC network. Reruns are played on Cartoon Network's classic animation network Boomerang.-History:...
. "He was a masochist, a neurotic man," Stang told Nachman about his former boss. "When things were going well for him, he would do something to destroy himself. He just couldn't deal with success. He'd had an unhappy childhood that warped him a little and gave him a sour outlook on life. He had no close friends." Stang also claimed Morgan's first wife "kept him deeply in debt and refused to give him a divorce"; the divorce occurred in due course, and Morgan remarried happily enough.
Briefly blacklisted
Morgan was briefly blacklisted after his name appeared in the infamous anti-Communist pamphlet, Red ChannelsRed Channels
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television is an anti-Communist tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare...
. That he was any kind of Communist sympathizer was a dubious proposition at best; Nachman noted Morgan's listing sprang from his former wife's leftist affiliations, and Morgan himself confirmed it in his memoir:
- All her information came from friends whose conversation leaned sharply away from their relatively high incomes, which, apparently, they found to be embarrassing in a world that harbored poor people. Their chosen method of being helpful was to attend meetings at one another's homes and discuss the problems of the hungry hordes after dinner. I am not trying to be amusing; it's what they really did. A Party member was usually invited to lead the discussions. I was apolitical. To some, that meant that I was either stupid or "inner-directed"—which meant according to them that I didn't care about my fellow man. What I really didn't care about was the four or five of her friends who later became known as the Hollywood Ten.
Morgan revealed in his memoir that one of his cousins had been a Communist Party member until the Hitler-Stalin Pact caused him to break with the Party, and that this cousin had told investigators Morgan hadn't been a Party member. This cousin, Morgan continued, had decided to cooperate heavily with investigators "when he learned that his agent, a Party member, had refused to accept assignments for him; his doctor, another Red, knowing of (his) bad heart, had recommended that he play tennis. The Party tried to rape him. It was enough to ruin his faith, it was. He decided to kill them, that was all." Morgan himself was cleared soon enough, and he resumed his broadcasting career.
What is seldom recalled is that Morgan was well on his way to becoming a major comedian with his weekly show when he had a physical altercation with his first wife, striking her with his fist. This was widely reported in the media and caused his show sponsors—already edgy over his freewheeling, sponsor-baiting style as it was—to bail out. The show was canceled, and Morgan never really recovered from this fall from grace. He once referred to that time (mentioning it on the air but without actually saying what it was) as "when the world blew up."
So This Is New York
Morgan made one movie in which he had the lead role, producer Stanley KramerStanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
's sophisticated comedy So This Is New York
So This Is New York
So This Is New York is a 1948 movie comedy starring acerbic radio and television comedian Henry Morgan and directed by Richard Fleischer. The cynically sophisticated screenplay was written by Carl Foreman and Herbert Baker from the 1920 novel The Big Town by Ring Lardner.This remains the only...
(1948), which also featured Arnold Stang and was loosely based upon Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
's 1920 novel The Big Town. Though Morgan and the film received favorable critical reviews, it didn't go over as well with the public as his radio and later television work did. Morgan also appeared as Brooklyn assistant district attorney Burton Turkus in the 1960 gangster
Gangster
A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Some gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from mob and the suffix -ster....
film Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc. (1960 film)
Murder, Inc. is a 1960 American gangster film starring Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Henry Morgan, Peter Falk, and Simon Oakland. The Cinemascope movie was directed by Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg. The screenplay was based on the true story of Murder Inc., a Brooklyn gang that operated in the...
, playing in a cast that included Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor.Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967...
, May Britt
May Britt
May Britt is a Swedish actress who had a brief career in the 1950s in Italy and later in the United States. She retired from the screen after she married Sammy Davis, Jr. in 1960.-Career:...
, and Peter Falk
Peter Falk
Peter Michael Falk was an American actor, best known for his role as Lieutenant Columbo in the television series Columbo...
. A year earlier, he hosted the short-lived syndicated television program Henry Morgan and Company, which All-Movie Guide has called a kind of precursor to David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...
's style of irreverent television.
Morgan's Secret
Morgan's longest-lasting television image, however, was struck in June 1952, when he was invited to join CBSCBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
's I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...
, produced by game show giants Mark Goodson
Mark Goodson
Mark Goodson was an American television producer who specialized in game shows.-Life and early career:...
and Bill Todman
Bill Todman
William S. "Bill" Todman was an American television producer born in New York City. He produced many of television's longest running shows with business partner Mark Goodson.-Early life:...
. Morgan's tenure on the show was marked by his periodic complaints about the (allegedly) horrid conditions in which he had to work, in between firing questions at the show's guests with the secrets. Morgan's mordant wit played well against the upbeat personalities of the other panelists, and producer Allan Sherman
Allan Sherman
Allan Sherman was an American comedy writer and television producer who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, My Son, the Folk Singer , became the fastest-selling record album up to that time...
would deliberately stage elaborate "secrets" involving Morgan personally. On one occasion, Morgan was sent to Africa; on another he was dispatched to an undisclosed location in the Caribbean to try a theoretical betting system; on a third, he was partially undressed on the air while trying to read a dramatic script (and to his credit, his composure didn't break once during the bedlam); and on a fourth, he was given janitorial equipment and told to clean up a messy, confetti-strewn theater stage.
Still, he stayed with the show for its original 14-season run and rejoined it when it was revived twice: in syndication in 1972, and on CBS once more for a brief 1976 summer run.
On and off and on the air
Morgan continued radio appearances, most often on the NBC weekend show NBC MonitorMonitor (NBC Radio)
NBC Monitor was an American weekend radio program broadcast from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. Airing live and nationwide on the NBC Radio Network, it originally aired beginning Saturday morning at 8am and continuing through the weekend until 12 midnight on Sunday...
(1955–70), which also afforded the final airings to longtime radio favorites Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...
, until co-star Marian Jordan's death), as well as playing guest panelist on other game shows produced by the Goodson-Todman team—including What's My Line?
What's My Line?
What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
, To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth
To Tell the Truth is an American television panel game show created by Bob Stewart and produced by Goodson-Todman Productions that has aired in various forms since 1956 both on networks and in syndication...
, and The Match Game
Match Game
Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...
. Morgan also took a turn hosting a radio quiz show, Sez Who, in 1959; the quiz involved guessing the famous voices making memorable comments that had been recorded over the years. Panelists included comedians Joey Adams
Joey Adams
Joey Adams , born Joseph Abramowitz, was an American comedian who was inducted into the Friars Club in 1977 and wrote the book Borscht Belt in 1973.-Life and career:...
and Orson Bean
Orson Bean
Orson Bean is an American film, television, and Broadway actor. He appeared frequently on televised game shows in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, including being a long-time panelist on the television game show To Tell the Truth....
, model and personality Dagmar, and future Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island is an American television series created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz and originally produced by United Artists Television. The situation comedy series featured Bob Denver; Alan Hale, Jr.; Jim Backus; Natalie Schafer; Tina Louise; Russell Johnson; and Dawn Wells. It aired for...
co-star Jim Backus
Jim Backus
James Gilmore "Jim" Backus was a radio, television, film, and voice actor. Among his most famous roles are the voice of Mr...
. In the 1960s, Morgan was seen at times on the legendary weekly news satire That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
in 1964–65, made numerous appearances in the early years of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
, and became a regular cast member of the short-lived but respected James Thurber-based comedy series, My World and Welcome to It
My World and Welcome to It
My World and Welcome to It was a US-made half-hour sitcom based on the humor and cartoons of James Thurber. It starred William Windom as John Monroe, a Thurber-like writer and cartoonist who works for a magazine that closely resembles The New Yorker, called The Manhattanite...
in 1969.
During the 1970s, he wrote humorous commentaries for national magazines. His radio career gained an early-1980s revival in his native New York City, thanks to his two-and-a-half minute The Henry Morgan Show commentaries, broadcast twice daily on WNEW-AM (now WBBR
WBBR
WBBR is a radio station broadcasting at 1130 AM in New York City. It airs Bloomberg Radio, a service of Bloomberg L.P. WBBR's format is general and financial news, offering local, national and international news reports along with financial market updates and interviews with corporate executives,...
) starting in January 1981. The following year, he added the Saturday evening show Morgan and the Media on WOR
WOR (AM)
WOR is a class A , AM radio station located in New York, New York, U.S., operating on 710 kHz. The station has a talk format and has been owned by Buckley Broadcasting since 1987, after the station was sold by RKO. The station has conservative, or right-of-center hosts.Its call letters have no...
. In what might be called inadvertent iconoclasm, Morgan used a 1981 WNEW commentary on preinflation prices to sing, rather wistfully, an old Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
jingle ("Pepsi-Cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that's a lot/Twice as much for a nickel, too/Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you"). The irony abounded as well, remembering Morgan's controversies with his sponsors in the classic radio days; the only thing wrong with singing that ancient Pepsi jingle was that that day's Morgan commentary was sponsored by rival Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
.
Always known as much for his sarcastic grouchiness as his barbed self-deprecation, Morgan's 1994 memoir, Here's Morgan! The Original Bad Boy of Broadcasting, found him satirizing many of his former co-stars while straining not to examine his professional life beyond a series of in-and-out zaps, asides, and declarative statements—almost as if the reader were listening to a vintage radio satire of Morgan's life. His final national television appearance was on the cable television series Talk Live, in early 1994. A few weeks after that broadcast, Henry Morgan died of lung cancer at age 79.
Listen to
Sources
- John CrosbyJohn Crosby (media critic)John Crosby was a newspaper columnist, radio-television critic, novelist and TV host. During the 1950s, he was generally regarded as the leading critic of television....
, Out of the Blue: A Book About Radio and Television (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952; 301 pages).