She was not beautiful nor very bright and her sad little voice belonged in a speakeasy providing synthetic tears for the synthetic gin. All she had was the faculty of
communicating a vague, enormous melancholy, but it was enough…for the peculiar temper of her time.168
Figure 3—9: Helen Morgan 1926/7 (Used with permission of Culvert Pictures).
Biography
Epitomising the 1920s torch song singer, Helen Morgan was a vocalist, actress, movie star, radio performer and nightclub owner. She became an icon of urban America during the Prohibition period, and was one of the most popular torch singers of the 1920s and 1930s (Kreuger 2003). She had a shimmering, light soprano voice, and sang as though her heart was breaking. Perched on the piano, her intimate vocal style invited her audience to share her troubles or indulge in their own romantic sorrows (Cullen, Hackman and McNeilly 2006, 795).
The details of Morgan’s early life are scant. Biographer Gilbert Maxwell appears to have adjusted her origins to include the story of a father who ran off when he found his new wife was pregnant (leaving a brave, long-suffering single mother169) the return of
168 Wolcott Gibbs, Life, 8 July 1946, p 84. 169
Helen’s father in 1910, and the family’s reunion. Whether this was an attempt to describe the actual circumstances of her early life or to apply a patina of respectability to an otherwise morally questionable life story is open to question. However, the remainder of the biography significantly increases the likelihood of the latter scenario. That said, more recent research indicates that Helen Morgan was the second and only surviving child of Frank and Lulu Riggins, born around 1902 and initially named Helen Emma Riggins. The surname Morgan was adopted when Lulu married her third
husband, Thomas Morgan.170
Morgan began her singing career at the age of ten in a small Montreal club called the French Trocadero. She was so successful, and the club so tightly packed at the end of her first week, that only those closest to the bar could see or hear her sing. An
enterprising listener lifted her on top of the battered upright piano, creating the signature style that was to follow her to New York and Broadway (Maxwell 1974, 10). In 1923, after winning a Canadian beauty contest and being crowned Miss Mount Royal, she visited New York as the guest of Miss America, Katherine Campbell. There she made a screen test with Richard Barthelmess (co-founder of Inspiration Pictures) and appeared as a featured extra in a number of silent features shot in the city.171
In September 1923, Morgan won a part in the chorus line of Ziegfeld’s touring production of Sally, starring Marilyn Millar. She then went to Chicago to perform cabaret at the Café Montmartre, and continued to build her reputation as a torch singer. In November 1924, Morgan returned to New York as the headline artist at the opening of Billy Rose’s first nightclub, the Backstage Club. Engagements in two hit revues, George White’s Scandals (1925) and Americana (1926), followed. Morgan opened her own nightclub, Chez Morgan, where she performed each evening after her theatre shows had finished. Gaining as much notoriety in her role as a glamorous co-owner and host of a speakeasy as she did singing “Nobody Wants Me” in Americana, Morgan appeared at the Palace Theatre in early 1927. During her engagement at this venue— considered the pinnacle of success on vaudeville from 1914 to 1934—Morgan was
genealogy enthusiast and distant relative Herb Depke, of her being married seven times in total (personal communication, 11 September 2012).
170 The 1900 census lists Morgan’s parents with no children. The 1910 (April) census lists her as Helen
Morgan and 7 years old. This suggests that, since there was as yet no reason to lie about her age, she was in fact born in 1902. Her death certificate states 1903, ships passenger lists in 1930 and 1933 state 1904, a 1937 passenger list states 1905 and, on the 1940 census, her age was declared at 34 (1906).
171 I am grateful to Christopher Connelly for sharing this information, collected during the research for a
noticed by Jerome Kern who subsequently cast her in Show Boat (Cullen, Hackman, & McNeilly, 2006, p. 859).
Morgan’s stage and cabaret successes lead to her starring as burlesque artist Kitty Darling in the ground-breaking film Applause, directed by Rouben Mamoulian. She later appeared in seven feature films, including Show Boat in 1936. Due to her alcoholism and deteriorating health, Morgan worked less throughout the late 1930s, giving only a few performances in England during 1938 and on the Vaudeville circuit in 1939. In July 1941, Morgan was performing regularly on radio, married for the second time, and the following month started rehearsals in a new George White’s Scandals production. Morgan collapsed on stage shortly after the show opened in Chicago, dying a few weeks later of cirrhosis of the liver. She was thirty-nine years old.
Recordings
I’ve never been a speech maker, just a piano sitter and a song singer.172
Morgan made around thirty-four recordings throughout her twenty-year career, including a series of songs for Brunswick records in London during production delays in Show Boat. These Brunswick sessions represent most of the entertainment types in which she appeared – movies, newsreels, cast albums, radio and genre recordings.173 Morgan’s early genre recordings of the 1920s show a close connection with the theatrical and operetta vocal style of Edith Day – a light voice with bright timbre, fast vibrato, clear, clipped diction, and the cultured New England accent predominant in contemporary cinema.174
There were three songs Morgan recorded multiple times: “Bill”, “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”175 and “What I Wouldn’t Do for That Man”.176 All three songs were strongly associated with Morgan, and have since become performance standards with a distinguished place in the jazz and musical theatre canons. Since these songs were recorded as studio genre and studio cast recordings, radio broadcasts and on film, they form a representative sample offering a more complete understanding of changing vocal styles and the difficulties faced by performers in adjusting to a new aesthetic during the
172 Helen Morgan in a 1933 news reel celebrating her first marriage. 173
Genre recordings refer to recordings made by an artist in their primary performance genre. In Morgan’s case this was torch songs.
174 Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant are the two most recognisable actors who used this accent. 175 Both songs are from Jerome Kern’s Show Boat.
176
1930s.
In Show Boat, Morgan played the bittersweet role of the tragic mulatto Julie. As these songs were the least “operetta-ish” (Traubner 2003, 395), both Morgan and Julie provide a transition point between traditional operetta and newer Broadway styles. Morgan appeared in three different versions of Show Boat and recorded “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat’ Man” and “Bill” from each of these productions: the original 1928 show conducted by Victor Baravalle and using the stage orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett (Banfield 2006, 320 n73); a studio cast album directed by Victor Young and recorded at the time of the 1932 revival; and the 1936 film musical.177 In the latter, several original cast members were retained and many musical numbers used their original orchestration and scoring – a rare example of a relatively authentic
transformation from the Broadway stage to the Hollywood screen. Bennett, who thought that Morgan’s voice “sounded good high or low or in between” (Bennett 1999, 102), later noted the performances of Robeson, Winninger and Morgan178 “were very close to what they were on the stage” (Bennett 1999, 151).