Henry Morgan (comedian)

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Henry Morgan (comedian) : biography

March 31, 1915 – May 19, 1994

Henry Morgan (born Henry Lerner Van Ost, Jr. March 31, 1915 – May 19, 1994) 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 a second cousin of Broadway lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner.

So This Is New York

Morgan made one movie in which he had the lead role, producer Stanley Kramer’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.

Later life and death

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.

Radio

His radio career began as a page at New York station WMCA 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.Henry Morgan, Henry. Here’s Morgan! The Original Bad Boy of Broadcasting. New York: Barricade Books, 1994.

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 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.

Morgan appeared in the December 1944 CBS Radio original broadcast of Norman Corwin’s play, The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, taking several minor roles including the narrator, Ivan the Terrible and Simon Legree. He repeated his performance in the December 1944 production of the play.

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.