Helen
Morgan (August 2, 1900 – October 9, 1941) was an American quintessential torch
singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. With her sweetly quivering, light soprano
voice, she charmed audiences in the theatre and on the silver screen in its
earliest days.
Before
the tragic legacies of songbird icons Édith Piaf, Billie Holiday and Judy
Garland took hold, there was the one...the original...lady who sang the blues
and started the whole "bawl" rolling. Like her successors, Helen
Morgan lived the sad songs she sang...and more.
She
started her life fittingly enough on August 2, 1900 as Helen Riggins in very
humble surroundings. Her father was an Illinois dirt farmer and school master. After
her mother, Lulu Lang Riggins, divorced and remarried, she changed the last
name to 'Morgan'. Her mother's second marriage ended in divorce, and she moved
to Chicago with her daughter. Helen never finished school beyond the eighth
grade, and worked a number of menial blue-collar jobs -- manicurist, cracker-packager,
counter clerk just to get by.
In
1923, she entered the Miss Montreal contest, even going to New York to meet
Miss America Katherine Campbell, but when she returned, her American
citizenship was discovered and she was disqualified. She also worked as an
extra in films. By the age of twenty, Morgan had taken voice lessons and
started singing in speakeasies in Chicago. By the mid twenties she had secured
backing for her own succession of speakeasies: Helen Morgan’s 45th Street Club,
Chez Helen Morgan, Helen Morgan’s Summer House, and the House of Morgan. She
got busted for her efforts, but her fame also brought her bookings. Within a
few years, she was working under the Broadway lights with the George White
Scandals. In between she studied music at the Metropolitan Opera and performed
in vaudeville shows.
Helen
was the antithesis of the freewheeling "Jazz Age" baby as her deep,
dusky voice seemed born to weave tales of sadness and lament rather than
focusing on fun and frolic. The Chicago mobsters and underground bootleggers
bawled like burly babies and really took to Helen's "torch song"
renditions while glamorously propped on a piano with trademark scarf in hand
(originally used to disguise nerves). It is even remarked that her trademark of
performing while perched on top of a piano was because she was often too drunk
to stand up. Prohibition-era gangsters even bankrolled her clubs which became
very popular...and frequently raided.
Helen
conquered Broadway in the late 1920s with her quintessential role as the tragic
mulatto, "Julie", in the landmark smash musical, "Show
Boat", in 1927. Introducing the standards "Can't Help Lovin' Dat
Man" and "Bill", Helen earned more success with the musical
"Sweet Adeline" in 1929 in which she introduced another favourite
"Why Was I Born?". Her fragile mind and heart, however, couldn't
handle the problems that started surfacing in the 1930s.
Helen
went on to perform with the Ziegfeld Follies in 1931, the Follies' last active
year. During this period, she studied music at the Metropolitan Opera in her
free time.
A
broken marriage, emotional instability and a deep passion for the demon drink
quickly did her in. She couldn't hold jobs and her health worsened by the year.
After spiralling badly for a half-decade, she tried sobering up and made a huge
splash in 1936 with the screen version of Show Boat (1936) starring Irene
Dunne, Allan Jones and Paul Robeson. She also began to redeem herself in clubs
again but it was ultimately too late.
In
the late 1930s, Morgan was signed up for a show at Chicago's Loop Theatre. She
also spent time at her farm in High Falls, New York. Alcoholism plagued her,
and she was hospitalized in late 1940, after playing Julie La Verne one last
time in a 1940 Los Angeles stage revival of Show Boat. She made something of a
comeback in 1941, thanks to the help of manager Lloyd Johnson. However, the
years of alcohol abuse had taken their toll. She collapsed onstage during a
performance of George White's Scandals of 1942 and died in Chicago of cirrhosis
of the liver on October 9, 1941 at age 41.
Morgan
was portrayed by Polly Bergen in a 1957 Playhouse 90 drama, The Helen Morgan
Story, directed by George Roy Hill. Bergen won an Emmy Award for her
performance. That same year, the feature film The Helen Morgan Story, based
directly on the Playhouse 90 drama, starred Ann Blyth as Morgan. However, the
feature film was not as well received, partly because critics felt that Blyth's
real singing voice sounded more like Morgan's than the voice the studio
supplied for her - that of Gogi Grant.
Yes,
before there was a Garland, there was Morgan, and although Garland seems to
have her beat these days as THE musical icon of despair, Helen was the original
tear-stained blueprint.
(Info
edited from IMDb Mini Biography By Gary Brumburgh & Wikipedia)
1 comment:
For the complete Helen Morgan Collection 1927-1935 go here:
https://archive.org/details/HelenMorganCollection1927-1935
37 wonderful recordings in mp3 format
Posted by The Popular Jazz Archive
http://popularjazzarchive.blogspot.co.uk/
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