Torchbearer's End

To Percy Hammond, she was "a raffish nightingale"; to Texas Guinan, "just a dumb kid." But when she climbed on top of a grand piano and sang her sultry, brokenhearted ballads, she was torchbearer for an era. When she died in Chicago last week, many a U.S. citizen heaved a nostalgic sigh for the footloose, bibulous speak-easy '20s.

In her 41 years, Helen Morgan ran a dizzy gamut: from a Chicago ribbon counter (Marshall Field & Co.) to a Broadway triumph (Show Boat). The songs she sang as the half-caste Julie in that show never grew stale though she sang them often. Even in the murkiest nightery, no audience was too tough for her to soften with Jerome Kern's Bill and Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man.

Helen Morgan's path from ribbon counter to Broadway included detours into a biscuit factory, nursing, posing for step-in ads. While modeling in Montreal, she was chosen Miss Mount Royal, whisked to New York City by an enterprising press agent, where she was greeted by burbling Mayor Hylan as a "Canadian beauty." Promptly signed up by Billy Rose as singer for a small hotspot, she couldn't make herself heard or seen until the late, great Ring Lardner boosted her to the top of a piano. After that, she always sat on one to sing her husky blues, wistfully twisting her handkerchief, managing to look waifishly beautiful.

Enormously popular after Show Boat, Helen Morgan often got as much as $2,500 for one singing of Bill. During Prohibition she was in constant difficulty with Government snoopers; several nightclubs that she owned were smashed up. After each raid, the names of the Morgan clubs were changed. What started simply as The Helen Morgan Club became the Chez Helen Morgan, Helen Morgan's Summer Home, and finally, with Repeal, The

House of Morgan. It went into bankruptcy in 1935, after Helen Morgan went to Hollywood, where she repeated her Show Boat role for Universal.

Carefree and generous, Helen Morgan made and lost a couple of million dollars. She was twice married: first-to Maurice Maschke Jr., son of Cleveland's Republican boss, then to a Los Angeles auto salesman named Lloyd Johnson. As she lay dying in a Chicago hospital last week, Lloyd Johnson said he had paid as much of the bill as he could, then had to appeal to the Theatre Authority, clearinghouse for all actors' charities. Sobbed Chicago's Journal of Commerce's Claudia Cassidy:

"She had in her voice the note of heartbreak--authentic heartbreak, worth its weight in theater gold."

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