Oscar Profile #14: Frank Morgan

Born in 1890, the youngest of 11 children of a wealthy businessman, Frank Morgan followed his older (by seven years) brother, Ralph, into show business. Though Ralph was initially the more famous of the two, and later the first President of the Screen Actors Guild, Frank’s career would soon eclipse his.

A popular character actor on stage, Frank made his film debut in 1916 and by 1917 was already stealing films from bigger name stars such as his friend John Barrymore in Raffles.

By 1933, he was one of the most popular character actors in Hollywood, playing major supporting roles in no less than ten major films that year alone. Most notable among them were Hallelujah I’m a Bum with Al Jolson; Reunion in Vienna with John Barrymore and Diana Wynyard; The Kiss Before the Mirror, a rare lead opposite Nancy Carroll; When Ladies Meet with Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy; and Bombshell with Jean Harlow and Lee Tracy.

The following year he became one of only three actors nominated for that year’s Best Actor Oscar for his support of Fredric March in The Affairs of Cellini. His fellow nominees were Clark Gable in It Happened One Night and William Powell in The Thin Man. Gable, of course, won. His niece, Claudia Morgan, would go onto star as Nora Charles, the wife of Powell’s Thin Man character, in the long-running radio series based on the film.

Other notable roles followed, including those in The Good Fairy with Margaret Sullavan; The Great Ziegfeld with William Powell; Myrna Loy and Luise Rainer; The Wizard of Oz in which he replaced W.C. Fields; two very different 1940 classics, both with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, The Mortal Storm and The Shop Around the Corner; Tortilla Flat with Spencer Tracy, John Garfield and Hedy Lamarr, which brought him a second Oscar nomination; and The Human Comedy with Mickey Rooney.

A choir boy in his youth, he proved he could still carry a tune in 1948’s Summer Holiday, a musical version of Ah, Wilderness! in which he co-starred with Mickey Rooney and Walter Huston.

He was making another musical, the trouble plagued Annie Get Your Gun, when he died of a heart attack at 59. He was replaced by Louis Calhern. His brother Ralph died in 1956 at 72.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

BOMBSHELL (1933), directed by Victor Fleming

Although it was based on a play, the screenplay for Bombshell closely resembles the actual life of its star, Jean Harlow. Lee Tracy co-starred as the press agent who exploits her, along with Franchot Tone as the millionaire who is infatuated with her, Ted Healy as her shiftless brother, Una Merkel as her lazy sister and, best of all, Frank Morgan as her dyspeptic father. “Leeches” is what she calls them, and leeches is what they are in this uproarious comedy. Morgan, at his comedic best, could wring a laugh with just the raising of an eyebrow and here he is called on to do just that, and much more. Had they given Oscars for supporting performances in 1933, Morgan would surely have been among the nominees.

THE AFFAIRS OF CELLINI (1934), directed by Gregory La Cava

Supporting awards were still two years away, but that didn’t stop his fellow actors from nominating Morgan in the Best Actor category, the only category available to actors at the time, for his featured role as the cuckolded Duke of Florence in the screen adaptation of The Firebrand.

Constance Bennett as the Duchess of Florence and Fredric March as the artist and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini were the film’s stars, with Morgan and Fay Wray as the Duke’s mistress, the film’s principal supporting players. Morgan had played the same role on Broadway ten years earlier in support of Nana Bryant and Joseph Schildkraut.

A black comedy which ends in murder by poison, the philandering Cellini and the Duchess do everything in their power to circumvent the powerful Duke, but the Duke is just as determined to outwit them. Morgan’s rapturous glee is contagious. In support instead of lead, he would have won hands down. As it is, the fact that he was only one of three nominees, along with superstars Clark Gable and William Powell, tells you all you need to know about the esteem in which he was held in Hollywood.

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), directed by Victor Fleming

When W.C. Fields’ salary demands proved too onerous for MGM, they replaced him with Morgan who was only too happy to play the title role under his new lifetime contract with the studio.

Morgan doesn’t have very many scenes in the film, but like Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch, his few scenes are unforgettable. Hamilton said she always cried when she watched the ending of the film when Morgan opens his bag of tricks and pulls out presents for the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, because it was so like the real life Frank Morgan who was a very generous man.

Morgan was the only one of the film’s principals who did not live to see the film become the beloved classic it since has.

THE MORTAL STORM (1940), directed by Frank Borzage

One of the first and best of the Hollywood films dealing with the rise of Nazi Germany, its release caused Hitler to ban all MGM films from showing anywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Morgan is the beloved professor who is removed from his position and imprisoned for being a “non-Aryan”, a euphemism for Jew. Margaret Sullavan is his courageous daughter and James Stewart is the student activist who loves her. They receive outstanding support from Robert Young, playing against type, as an evil Nazi, Robert Stack and William T. Orr as Sullavan’s Aryan step-brothers, Irene Rich as Morgan’s wife, Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart’s mother and Bonita Granville as his non-Aryan adopted sister. Powerful from start to finish, Morgan, who has never been better, absolutely owns the film.

Sullavan, Stewart and Morgan were also seen that year under happier circumstances in The Shop Around the Corner, which also featured Morgan’s long ago Broadway co-star, Joseph Schildkraut.

THE HUMAN COMEDY (1943), directed by Clarence Brown

After receiving an unexpected second Oscar nomination for his supporting work in 1942’s Tortilla Flat, Morgan had what was probably his last great role as the old-time telegrapher in William Saroyan’s bittersweet World War II drama, The Human Comedy. The film, a microcosm of small-town life during the war, is especially remembered for providing Mickey Rooney with his best screen role, and for making a star out of Jackie “Butch” Jenkins as his little brother, but the scenes with Morgan as the last of his breed give the film an added poignancy. James Craig, Marsha Hunt, Fay Bainter, Ray Collins, Van Johnson, Donna Reed, John Craven and an unbilled Robert Mitchum are also memorable in support.