1900-1941
Like Eva Tanguay, Helen Morgan was more famous for her live singing performances, and like Tanguay, she had a biopic film--partially fictionalized--made about her life in the 1950's. That is where the similarities end. Morgan was a bluesy jazz singer and Broadway musical specialist with a very sad and tragic short life. Often called the fore-runner of both Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, Morgan was born Helen Riggin on this date to a poor family in Danville, Illinois--farming country--where her father was a dirt farmer and her mother worked in school administration. Early in her life her mother divorced her birth father and remarried with the new surname "Morgan." It was not until after yet another divorce that young Helen relocated with her mother to Chicago. She left school early, after just the eighth grade and took a series of menial jobs, but all along her passion was singing. There isn't a lot of information as to how or when she became interested in music, or perhaps she was simply born with it, but she had a determination as a teen to become successful in the field. Toward that end, she started work in local speakeasies at nights while working during the day. It was during this time that she became a very popular "torch singer" (a torch song can best be described as a kind of blues song, usually accompanied by piano and containing stories of lament--in the 1920's the performers would often where special long flowing clothes, her personal touch was a hand scarf). She relocated to New York City and worked extremely hard. She made it onto the Broadway stage via stage musicals and cabaret in a very short time--reportedly she made her debut in 1923, but it could have been earlier. She was able to spend her days studying instead of working; where she studied music and singing at Metropolitan Opera. She also came to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld in the 1920's; she later became a member of his famous Ziegfeld Follies. Also a sign of the times, Morgan was introduced to her demon at speakeasies early in her performance career. She became an almost full time alcoholic--it could not have helped that the quality of the alcohol at these establishments was very questionable, often was just down right poisonous. She did however succeed and by the late 1920's she was a very popular Broadway actress/singer. She landed the part of Julie LaVerne in the 1927 Broadway production of Show Boat and that started her the path to the film appearances for which she is remembered today. Though she does appear in the non-silent portion of the 1929 film of the stage production of Show Boat -- it was not her film debut. She had two tiny "extra" credits from 1923; assuming that these are legitimate records of the films in question, and that the "Helen Morgan" listed as an extra are indeed to Torch Singer herself, she made her filmed debut in the romantic comedy The Heart Raider (1923). She likewise is listed as an extra on Six Cylinder Love a Elmer Clifton directed Fox comedy starring Ernest Truex, also released in 1923. After Show Boat, she appeared in two more films in 1929, one of which she was the star and both of which were early talkies. In Applause she plays Kitt Darling, a burlesque star with a secret past in a part that Mae West was given serious consideration for. In Glorifying the American Girl she appeared in the Revue scene with Eddie Cantor--Zeigfeld was the producer. She next showed up in the female lead in the romantic comedy, heavy with music, Roadhouse Nights, shot in 1929, the film was released in February of 1930. During this time, she also had roles in Broadway productions and made her radio debut (among her radio credits is a Show Boat production by Orson Welles). Her battle with alcohol, however, had gotten the best of her and her performances in every arena slowed; in film she showed up in shorts until 1934 when she was given a supporting role in You Belong To Me--a b-grade melodrama about vaudeville. In the mid 1930's she made her first attempt at sobering up and appeared in four more films before she was tapped by an enthusiastic James Whale to appear in his version of Show Boat in 1936. It is her most famous role to this day. It would also be her last film appearance. She lapsed back into drink and made one final attempt at sobering in 1940 after a stage revival of Show Boat; by this time she was well off enough in life to have a farm that she could rest at. Hoping this would be a decisive turning point for her, no one in her life knew that it was already too late. Her manager secured her ample stage work, but she collapsed on stage in 1941 and died of liver failure in her home town of Chicago on the 9th of October. She was just 41 years of age. She was buried at the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois (which is located in Cook County). Two biopics of her life were produced in the 1950's; one on the small screen in the series Playhouse 90, and the other a major motion picture The Helen Morgan Story in which she is played by Ann Blyth, and directed by Michael Curtiz.
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| [Source: Scott Michaels (Find A Grave)] |
