The Helen Morgan Page

During the Broadway run of Sweet Adeline, Russian-born artist Robert Brackman asked Helen Morgan to sit for a portrait.

The result, “Portrait of a Girl in Black,” was first exhibited at the Grand Central Art Galleries in March 1930.

Yes, initially, the Gallery was located on the sixth floor of Grand Central Terminal in New York.

A year later, the painting took pride of place in Brackman’s one-man show at the Macbeth Galleries.

Joining Helen was Brackman’s celebrated study of Rabbi Stephen Wise.

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,”