During the 1930 showing, Walter Winchell cheekily claimed that an (unnamed) young man offered $35k for the painting. Perhaps, but by the end of the decade, most likely during the 1931 show, Helen Morgan herself purchased it.
Legend has it that in the 1960s, Helen’s mother tried to sell the portrait to Billy Rose, who then owned the Ziegfeld Theatre. Lulu Morgan thought it belonged in the house where her daughter made history in Show Boat. Rose, perhaps already signaling the wrecking ball that would raze the house in 1966, declined.
Brackman’s work stayed in Manhattan and wound up on long-term display in the Art Students League on West 57th Street.
At some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the trail turns cold.
Hopefully, the Art Students League found a good home for “Portrait of a Girl in Black,”
On this date in 1938, Helen opened a week of film-house vaudeville at the Shubert in Newark, NJ.
That may not sound like a particularly auspicious occasion: Morgan spent much of her career doing film-house vaudeville, playing four or five shows a day.
But this time, she shared the stage with her frequent co-star Lou Holtz …
… and Ann Miller …
… and Abbott and Costello …
… and Betty Hutton.
All this – for $0.20.
The show, cobbled together from the recent record-breaking program at Billy Rose’s Casa Mañana in New York, was so strong, the Shubert didn’t bother booking a feature film to accompany its stage show.
To commemorate the day, why not watch the 1936 Universal film version? Or listen to the 1988 McGlinn recording? Or watch the 1989 Paper Mill production, arguably the best pro-shoot of the stage show to date:
… 1931, “Ode to a Porcelain Cat” became Helen Morgan’s first poem to be published. Apropos of nothing, November 21, 1931 also marked the closing day of Ziegfeld Follies of 1931 (Morgan left the production two weeks prior to closing night). Anyway, here’s the poem:
The New York American praised the more ambitious “Mother and Child,” although it escaped publication, as did her subsequent work, “Ode to a Duck” and “Conversation Between Two Cats.”[i]
She sold two poems to College Humor.[ii]A year passed before the magazine published her, a bit of whimsy called “Lover Camels.”
The magazine ultimately passed on the other, a piece of stray verse “about a China doll on the mantelpiece and a snooping bronze cat on the hearthstone.”[iii]
While “Ode to a Porcelain Cat” was Morgan’s first poem to be published, it was not her first time in print. The previous August, she subbed for Julia Shawell’s Evening Graphic column. While it’s nice to get a bit of backstage babble during the run of Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, it’s clear that Morgan, with her overgenerous heart, did not have the makings of a gossip columnist.
[i]New York American, November 7, 1931 and Schurrer, Juanita, “Helen Morgan Enthusiastic about ‘Show Boat’; Began Singing at Six,” unidentified Highland Park, Michigan newspaper, May 1936
[ii] McIntyre, O. O., “New York Day By Day.” Reno Evening Gazette, October 1, 1931
[iii] “… cat on the hearthstone.” – Sobel, Bernard. Broadway Heartbeat: Memoirs of a Press Agent, p. 127
… 1929, Helen Morgan recorded two songs from the Kern-Hammerstein stage musical, Sweet Adeline.
Curiously, she did not record all of her numbers from Sweet Adeline, as she did with Show Boat in 1928.
Thanks to her efforts, the two sings she recorded on this day, “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” …
… and “Why Was I Born?” …
… became standards.
And while we should remain grateful Victor Records gave us what they did, it raises the question, why didn’t they record her other three songs from Sweet Adeline?
Good question.
A mere eight days before, Morgan recorded “What Wouldn’t I Do for That Man” from her films Applause and Glorifying the American Girl, with a song (“More Than You Know”) from the soon-to-open stage musical Great Day.
Clearly, the issue wasn’t a fear of oversaturation. In October 1929, Victor was quite bullish on Helen Morgan.
Nor was it a lack of enthusiasm for Morgan’s other material in the show: they recorded two of her other numbers, “Here Am I” and “‘Twas Not So Long Ago” … with other artists.
What’s particularly odd is that, in the stage musical, “Here Am I” and “‘Twas Not So Long Ago” were Morgan solos. “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” was introduced as a duet, and a triumphant, full-throated duet at that. Only later in the show did Helen reprise it as a torchy solo.
Odder still is that critical reaction in 1929 more often praised Morgan’s other numbers over “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” That’s not to say that critics and the public did not care for “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” – they did, but not with the same level of enthusiasm shown to her other songs in the show, as displayed by Brooks Atkinson’s review in The New York Times:
That fifth Sweet Adeline number, “The Sun About to Rise” was another duet (with chorus) she sang in the show with Robert Chisholm. The baritone cut only a couple of commercial tracks … and for Brunswick, not Victor. Still, the thought of a Morgan-Chisholm disc of “The Sun About to Rise” coupled with “Don’t Ever Leave Me!” – alongside a Morgan solo disc of her other numbers, is the stuff dreams are made of.
But, at the end of the day, Victor had its chance to record all five Morgan numbers from Sweet Adeline and chose only two. Within a few months, the Depression cast its pall over everything. Morgan would wax only two more discs for Victor – one in 1930 and one in 1934 – before cancelling her contract.
Morgan continued to sing her other Sweet Adeline songs in concert and on the radio, as the roster from a September 1929 appearance on The Majestic Theatre on the Air so tantalizingly indicates:
Helen Morgan once appeared in a horror/slasher film.
But not during her lifetime.
Primarily remembered today as the film debut of Brooke Shields, Alfred Sole’s 1976 Hitchcockian thriller Alice, Sweet Alice1 might better be described as the link between the demonic/religious-themed horror films of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen) and the slasher films (Halloween, Friday the 13th) of the late 1970s and 1980s.
The story concerns troubled adolescent, Alice Spages, played by 19-year-old Paula Sheppard. Why is she troubled? Because it’s 1961 and she is growing up in very (pre-Vatican two) Catholic Patterson, New Jersey … and her parents have recently divorced, at a time when Catholics did not do such a thing. And then people start getting stabbed.
Of interest here is Alice’s downstairs neighbor, Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble). He is morbidly obese … and a cat person … and a pedophile.
But he has good taste in music. When he’s not listening to opera, he’s listening to Helen Morgan records.
Perhaps a word is in order.
When Helen Morgan died on October 8, 1941, Victor records responded by going into its vaults and packaged eight of the twelve sides Morgan recorded for them as a Morgan souvenir album. It hit the shelves in time for the 1941 Christmas shopping season.
In 1969, Victor took advantage of the success of the film version of Funny Girl, and the nostalgia craze of the late 1960s and early 1970s, by re-releasing eight more sides, including two “new” titles on the B-side of an LP. The A-side was taken by the original Funny Girl, Fanny Brice.
The point?
That is not a Victor 78-rpm disc playing on Mr. Alphonso’s wind-up phonograph. Sole likely chose vintage music for these scenes to show Mr. Alphonso’s isolation and, well, oddness.
Sole was able to find suitable music thanks to the many re-issues of vintage music during the nostalgia craze.
Why Helen Morgan in particular? Likely to supply this joke during one of the film’s most notable – and violent – scenes.
Sole released the film in late 1976, briefly, with the title Communion – and then retitled it The Mask Murders. A year later, United Artists acquired the distribution rights and retitled it Alice, Sweet Alice. In 1981, after Shields’ rise to stardom, it was re-edited to beef up her screentime and released as Holy Terror. Shields sued. ↩︎
… 1929, Helen Morgan’s busy schedule was busier than usual.
In the evening, Paramount celebrated the world premiere of Rouben Mamoulian’s directorial film debut, Applause.
Helen was unable to attend the film premiere as she was starring on Broadway in the stage musical Sweet Adeline (she would attend a special midnight screening later that week).
Earlier in the day, she waxed the Jay Gorney/E. Y. Harburg song “What Wouldn’t I Do For That Man.”
Note that the song was studio property and was not written specifically for Applause … or for Glorifying the American Girl, in which Morgan also sang it.
Paramount recycled the tune again in the 1930 Lee Morse short A Million Me’s. The song even got the follow-the-bouncing-ball treatment when Harriet Lee led the singing in the 1931 animated short Any Little Girl That’s a Nice Little Girl. The studio even took Morgan’s footage of “What Wouldn’t I Do For That Man” from Glorifying the American Girl and released it as its own short subject.
The second track Helen Morgan laid down on October 8, 1929 was “More Than You Know,” from the Vincent Youmans/Billy Rose/Edward Eliscu/William Carey Duncan/John Wells stage show Great Day, which was still trying out across the river in Newark, NJ.
In addition to being suitable vocal material for Morgan, Great Day was a multi-racial, southern-themed extravaganza, which was right up Helen’s alley.
Mayo Methot, the once and future Mrs. Humphrey Bogart, introduced “More Than You Know” (and “Happy Because I’m in Love”) on stage.
Ms. Methot never commercially recorded her Great Day numbers – or any of her vocals, for that matter. Others, including Libby Holman, rescued Youman’s songs from obscurity.
As did Helen Morgan. Here is her take on “More Than You Know.”
An infamously troubled production, Great Day ran only four weeks on Broadway and proved an early casualty of the Stock Market crash.
Regardless, MGM purchased the rights to Great Day. Once again, the timing could not have been worse: Joan Crawford (!) went before the cameras in August 1930, just as Hollywood began a moratorium on film musicals. The combination of the deepening Depression and an oversaturated market killed the musical genre. MGM saved face by shutting down Great Day after a few weeks, or even days, for “story revision.”
La Craw would wait until 1933, after the great success of 42nd Street to try another musical, Dancing Lady.
Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star is available wherever fine books are sold. If your bookstore of choice doesn’t stock it, ask for it by name. They will!
If you’re in Atlanta, stop by A Cappella Books. You can even order it from their website.
The Helen Morgan Page 