The Helen Morgan Page

… 1934, Helen Morgan recorded her songs for the independent feature Frankie and Johnnie.

The two selections marked the end of her association with Victor Records.

Frankie and Johnnie ran afoul of Joseph Breen and the censors and was not released in its original cut. Victor went ahead and issued Helen’s recordings anyway.

One of Breen’s primary beefs with the film was the old folk song, which he deemed salacious.

Helen’s second song, “Give Me a Heart to Sing To” …

… also vexed the enforcers of the Production Code due to the risqué set on which Helen sang it.

Ben Goetz took control of the project from director Chester Erskine and arranged a meeting with Joe Breen in September 1934, wherein Breen declared, shot by shot and line by line what footage was permitted and not permitted under the Production Code. Helen’s two vocals were excised.

Retakes, to a revised screenplay by Lou Goldberg, commenced in March 1935. To replace “Give Me a Heart to Sing To,” J. Russel Robinson and Bill Livingston provided “It’s You I Adore.”

When editor William P. Thompson discovered enough original 1934 footage to cut around the offending set, “Give Me a Heart to Sing To” was put back into the film, and Helen’s work on “It’s You I Adore” was discarded, although the tune remained in the film’s underscoring.

Morgan never issued a commercial recoding of “It’s You I Adore,” but others, including Morton Downey and Russ Morgan, took the song and ran with it.

Russel and Livingston’s two other songs ended up in the released version of Frankie and Johnnie.

Helen’s replacement for the title tune was “If You Want My Heart (It Belongs to You)” – but her vocal was cut by half before Frankie and Johnnie was eventually released. Freddy Martin recorded the whole thing.

In the film, Helen watches, but does not sing the final Russel and Livingston offering, “Get Rhythm in Your Feet” (And Music in Your Soul). In the film, the song is sung as a spiritual at an African-American wedding.

Commercial covers, especially this one by Benny Goodman, took a more upbeat approach.

Having obtained permission, if not a blessing, from Joe Breen, Frankie and Johnnie hit theatres in May 1936 – days after the release of the Universal film version of Show Boat. Reviews of Frankie and Johnnie were unanimously bad, and while it did decent box office business, the film marked the end of Helen Morgan’s film career.

One final irony: in the two years between Helen’s F&J waxings, many artists, including Bing Crosby, recorded “Give Me a Heart to Sing To,” with the result that when people finally got to see Helen sing it on film, they hummed along – it might as well have been an old folk song … like “Frankie and Johnnie.”

This site serves as a companion to the book Helen Morgan: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star.