FRANK MORGAN, 1890 - 1949
WE'RE OFF TO HEAR THE WIZARD...
When is a star not a star? How many Top Ten shows is a performer required to headline before recognition is finally awarded?
By the time he appeared in the title role of MGM’s 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz, jovial Frank Morgan, then 49, already had two seasons of Network Radio success to his credit - and he was just getting started. Before he was done he would have shared the lead in four Top Ten shows and three more that made the Annual Top 15. Yet the veteran character actor and comedian is virtually forgotten in the lists of leading Network Radio personalities.
Francis Philip Wupperman was born in New York 1890, one of eleven children in a wealthy family who were sole importers of Angostura aromatic bitters, a 44% alcohol flavoring used in cooking and cocktails. Young Francis, (aka Frank), and his older brother Ralphael, (aka Ralph), both opted to leave college and the family’s business for acting careers in their early twenties. (1)
Ralph was the first to adopt the stage name Morgan which Frank took when he entered vaudeville with a comedy skit in 1914. He moved up to the Broadway stage a few months later in a play that closed after one performance. But Frank persevered in plays of varying success while he also appeared in a string of silent films produced in New York. (2) He began commuting to Hollywood in 1930 while his Broadway credits grew, climaxing with the 1931 musical comedy revue, The Bandwagon, starring Fred & Adele Astaire
Frank signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1933 and the studio kept him busy. By 1937 he had appeared in an impressive total of 32 MGM pictures,. With his easily recognizable voice, quick wit and roguish comedy persona, Morgan was perfect for MGM’s new Network Radio venture, Good News of 1938, produced with General Foods on NBC’s Thursday schedule to replace the sinking Maxwell House Showboat. (See Good News on this site.)
Good News presented a parade of MGM stars promoting their films every week with hosts Jimmy Stewart and Frank Morgan as its only continuing personalities. They were joined in December, 1937, by weekly appearances from Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks. (See Baby Snooks.) The new show was a hit, topping Showboat’s last full season’s ratings by 65%.
Morgan worked with Robert Taylor, Robert Young, and a number of other MGM stars billed as the show’s headline co-hosts over the next two seasons while Brice remained in character performing her Snooks skits. By this Good News broadcast of April 20, 1939, Frank had achieved top billing on the show as its resident humorist.
But Morgan left the Good News cast at the end of the 1938-39 season to appear in twelve MGM films during the 1939-40 period, including the title role in 1939’s Wizard of Oz. (3) Meanwhile, Good News was cancelled in July, 1940, when General Foods realized that Fanny Brice and the departed Frank Morgan were the show’s true attractions while MGM’s contributions were merely highly expensive window dressing accounting for the hour’s $25,000 weekly budget.
The elaborate Good News was replaced in September, 1940, by Maxwell House Coffee Time, a simple 30 minute show divided equally between host Frank Morgan’s monologues and Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks playlets. Coffee Time topped Good News’ ratings and scored its first of three consecutive seasons in the Annual Top Ten and four in Thursday’s Top Ten. It helped that Coffee Time had no real comedy competition on Thursday night at 8:00 and that Brice & Morgan were followed at 8:30 by another General Foods’ Top Ten show, The Aldrich Family. (See The Aldrich Family.) (4)
In a classic blunder, General Foods split their winning duo in the fall of 1944, by sending Fanny Brice off to an ill-fated season on CBS. That left Frank Morgan to carry Maxwell House Coffee Time by himself. His new show lost 16% of its ratings but still remained among Thursday’s Top Ten and the Annual Top 30 programs. Meanwhile, Brice‘s new Sunday evening show on CBS lost over half of the duo‘s ratings and plummeted to 79th in the season‘s rankings. (See The 1944-45 Season.)
Despite Morgan’s yeoman effort, General Foods cancelled him at the end of the season and brought in the established comedy team of George Burns & Gracie Allen as his replacements for the 1945-46 season. But while all this was happening, Kraft Foods suddenly needed a replacement for Bing Crosby who refused to report to NBC’s Top Ten hit, Kraft Music Hall in October, 1945. (See The 1945-46 Season.)
Frank Morgan got the emergency call to become the program’s temporary host and took over from Crosby’s summer replacement, Edward Everett Horton, on October 4, 1945. Morgan’s “temporary” job stretched into two months on the broadcast of December 6, 1945, with no signs of Crosby coming back. Bing finally returned to the fold on February 7, 1946 and Morgan was on hand to welcome him back. Frank remained for several more weeks then returned to MGM and four more films in 1946. (5)
By this time Morgan’s weekly radio salary had escalated to $7500, and he didn’t need the money. He preferred to relax on his boat and fish. Nevertheless, he was lured back to accept the title role as The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy in June, 1946. The sitcom was American Tobacco‘s summer replacement for Jack Benny’s top rated Sunday show.
Tweedy was well received and Morgan was signed to return in the role for the full 1946-47 season, slotted into NBC’s Wednesday schedule at 10:00 p.m. ahead of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge which had been reduced to 30 minutes and moved to 10:30. Both shows crashed in the ratings. Morgan's contrived sitcom, with top of the show credit given to writer Robert Riley Crutcher, generated just slightly more than half the audience of Bing Crosby’s new Philco Radio Time on ABC. (6) Two episodes of The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy from January 8, 1947, and March 19, 1947 are posted in their highly edited, commercial-free AFRS form. They provide evidence why Tweedy was cancelled by American Tobacco at the end of its 39 week run in May.
Frank Morgan left Network Radio at age 57 - leaving behind a string of hits and one flop. His importance to the success of Good News, Maxwell House Coffee Time and Kraft Music Hall has often been overlooked because his name didn’t appear in the shows’ titles.
Yet, his voice was heard and entertained millions, just like the The Wizard of Oz. He died of a heart attack on September 18, 1949, shortly after the tenth anniversary of his memorable film. (7)
(1) Ralph Morgan was also the father of actress Claudia Morgan, best known for her Network Radio role as Nora Charles in The Adventures of The Thin Man.
(2) Morgan had 20 silent films to his credit between 1916 and 1930.
(3) Versatile Frank Morgan actually played five roles in the 1939 classic: The Wizard of Oz, Professor Marvel, The Gatekeeper, The Carriage Driver and The Guard.
(4) Frank Morgan was also in demand for Network Radio guest appearances, as evidenced by his lead in the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of The Pied Piper on December 21,1942.
(5) Active in movies until 1950, Frank Morgan’s total body of work was 100 films.
(6) Crutcher's previous credit was the failed Eddie Bracken Show in 1945. He later became a contributing writer for television sitcoms Topper, Hazel and Bewitched.
(7) Morgan was filming Annie Get Your Gun when he died. His role of Buffalo Biil Cody was taken over by Louis Calhern.
When is a star not a star? How many Top Ten shows is a performer required to headline before recognition is finally awarded?
By the time he appeared in the title role of MGM’s 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz, jovial Frank Morgan, then 49, already had two seasons of Network Radio success to his credit - and he was just getting started. Before he was done he would have shared the lead in four Top Ten shows and three more that made the Annual Top 15. Yet the veteran character actor and comedian is virtually forgotten in the lists of leading Network Radio personalities.
Francis Philip Wupperman was born in New York 1890, one of eleven children in a wealthy family who were sole importers of Angostura aromatic bitters, a 44% alcohol flavoring used in cooking and cocktails. Young Francis, (aka Frank), and his older brother Ralphael, (aka Ralph), both opted to leave college and the family’s business for acting careers in their early twenties. (1)
Ralph was the first to adopt the stage name Morgan which Frank took when he entered vaudeville with a comedy skit in 1914. He moved up to the Broadway stage a few months later in a play that closed after one performance. But Frank persevered in plays of varying success while he also appeared in a string of silent films produced in New York. (2) He began commuting to Hollywood in 1930 while his Broadway credits grew, climaxing with the 1931 musical comedy revue, The Bandwagon, starring Fred & Adele Astaire
Frank signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1933 and the studio kept him busy. By 1937 he had appeared in an impressive total of 32 MGM pictures,. With his easily recognizable voice, quick wit and roguish comedy persona, Morgan was perfect for MGM’s new Network Radio venture, Good News of 1938, produced with General Foods on NBC’s Thursday schedule to replace the sinking Maxwell House Showboat. (See Good News on this site.)
Good News presented a parade of MGM stars promoting their films every week with hosts Jimmy Stewart and Frank Morgan as its only continuing personalities. They were joined in December, 1937, by weekly appearances from Fanny Brice as Baby Snooks. (See Baby Snooks.) The new show was a hit, topping Showboat’s last full season’s ratings by 65%.
Morgan worked with Robert Taylor, Robert Young, and a number of other MGM stars billed as the show’s headline co-hosts over the next two seasons while Brice remained in character performing her Snooks skits. By this Good News broadcast of April 20, 1939, Frank had achieved top billing on the show as its resident humorist.
But Morgan left the Good News cast at the end of the 1938-39 season to appear in twelve MGM films during the 1939-40 period, including the title role in 1939’s Wizard of Oz. (3) Meanwhile, Good News was cancelled in July, 1940, when General Foods realized that Fanny Brice and the departed Frank Morgan were the show’s true attractions while MGM’s contributions were merely highly expensive window dressing accounting for the hour’s $25,000 weekly budget.
The elaborate Good News was replaced in September, 1940, by Maxwell House Coffee Time, a simple 30 minute show divided equally between host Frank Morgan’s monologues and Fanny Brice’s Baby Snooks playlets. Coffee Time topped Good News’ ratings and scored its first of three consecutive seasons in the Annual Top Ten and four in Thursday’s Top Ten. It helped that Coffee Time had no real comedy competition on Thursday night at 8:00 and that Brice & Morgan were followed at 8:30 by another General Foods’ Top Ten show, The Aldrich Family. (See The Aldrich Family.) (4)
In a classic blunder, General Foods split their winning duo in the fall of 1944, by sending Fanny Brice off to an ill-fated season on CBS. That left Frank Morgan to carry Maxwell House Coffee Time by himself. His new show lost 16% of its ratings but still remained among Thursday’s Top Ten and the Annual Top 30 programs. Meanwhile, Brice‘s new Sunday evening show on CBS lost over half of the duo‘s ratings and plummeted to 79th in the season‘s rankings. (See The 1944-45 Season.)
Despite Morgan’s yeoman effort, General Foods cancelled him at the end of the season and brought in the established comedy team of George Burns & Gracie Allen as his replacements for the 1945-46 season. But while all this was happening, Kraft Foods suddenly needed a replacement for Bing Crosby who refused to report to NBC’s Top Ten hit, Kraft Music Hall in October, 1945. (See The 1945-46 Season.)
Frank Morgan got the emergency call to become the program’s temporary host and took over from Crosby’s summer replacement, Edward Everett Horton, on October 4, 1945. Morgan’s “temporary” job stretched into two months on the broadcast of December 6, 1945, with no signs of Crosby coming back. Bing finally returned to the fold on February 7, 1946 and Morgan was on hand to welcome him back. Frank remained for several more weeks then returned to MGM and four more films in 1946. (5)
By this time Morgan’s weekly radio salary had escalated to $7500, and he didn’t need the money. He preferred to relax on his boat and fish. Nevertheless, he was lured back to accept the title role as The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy in June, 1946. The sitcom was American Tobacco‘s summer replacement for Jack Benny’s top rated Sunday show.
Tweedy was well received and Morgan was signed to return in the role for the full 1946-47 season, slotted into NBC’s Wednesday schedule at 10:00 p.m. ahead of Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge which had been reduced to 30 minutes and moved to 10:30. Both shows crashed in the ratings. Morgan's contrived sitcom, with top of the show credit given to writer Robert Riley Crutcher, generated just slightly more than half the audience of Bing Crosby’s new Philco Radio Time on ABC. (6) Two episodes of The Fabulous Dr. Tweedy from January 8, 1947, and March 19, 1947 are posted in their highly edited, commercial-free AFRS form. They provide evidence why Tweedy was cancelled by American Tobacco at the end of its 39 week run in May.
Frank Morgan left Network Radio at age 57 - leaving behind a string of hits and one flop. His importance to the success of Good News, Maxwell House Coffee Time and Kraft Music Hall has often been overlooked because his name didn’t appear in the shows’ titles.
Yet, his voice was heard and entertained millions, just like the The Wizard of Oz. He died of a heart attack on September 18, 1949, shortly after the tenth anniversary of his memorable film. (7)
(1) Ralph Morgan was also the father of actress Claudia Morgan, best known for her Network Radio role as Nora Charles in The Adventures of The Thin Man.
(2) Morgan had 20 silent films to his credit between 1916 and 1930.
(3) Versatile Frank Morgan actually played five roles in the 1939 classic: The Wizard of Oz, Professor Marvel, The Gatekeeper, The Carriage Driver and The Guard.
(4) Frank Morgan was also in demand for Network Radio guest appearances, as evidenced by his lead in the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of The Pied Piper on December 21,1942.
(5) Active in movies until 1950, Frank Morgan’s total body of work was 100 films.
(6) Crutcher's previous credit was the failed Eddie Bracken Show in 1945. He later became a contributing writer for television sitcoms Topper, Hazel and Bewitched.
(7) Morgan was filming Annie Get Your Gun when he died. His role of Buffalo Biil Cody was taken over by Louis Calhern.
| good_news__4-20-39.mp3 |
| kmh__10-4-45.mp3 |
| kmh__12-6-45.mp3 |
| kmh__2-07-46.mp3 |
| lux__12-21-42.mp3 |
| fabulous_dr._tweedy_1-08-47_.mp3 |
| fabulous_dr._tweedy__3-19-47_.mp3 |