The Wuppermann Boy

The secret was out last week : one of the six most popular U.S. comedians was ready to join radio's Hopes and Bennys. Fluttery Frank Morgan, of the silvered haif, clipped grey mustache and eupeptic bounce, is to have his own air show next September for General Foods.

He has earned it. For five years, on the Maxwell House program (NBC, Thurs., 8-8:30 p.m., E.W.T.) Frank Morgan, 53, has played a romantic, sciolistic old rogue. But he has been only half of the show. The other half is Baby Snooks (Fanny Brice). Time and familiarity have some what dulled Snooks, but Morgan, pinching the girls with the tone of his voice, has grown with his own infectiously timed brand of not-too-naughty humor. Says he, confiding his nautical experiences: "I al ways like to have some port in every sweetheart."

Frothy Fuddle. The frothy fuddle with which he drops this kind of offbeat remark is the essence of Morgan's radio character. He is never at a loss for a sly ad lib. or a vocal innuendo. As a comedian, Morgan can shoot through the yolk of a new-laid egg "without making the hen get up." For this arch archery he gets $3,500 a week--$1,500 less than Comedienne Brice. He also manages to make several pictures a year for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But when his own show is airborne, he will cost the sponsor $5,000 to $7,000 weekly.

Not For the Y.W. Frank Morgan was born Francis Philip Wuppermann, one of eleven children of George and Josephine Hancox Wuppermann, of New York City. His Yankee mother, who had relatives on the Mayflower, was president of the Harlem Y.W.C.A. His father was president of Angostura-Wuppermann. sole agents for Angostura bitters in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Cuba.

His parents were a long time forgiving Francis and his older brother, Ralph, now a Hollywood heavy, for becoming actors. Mrs. Wuppermann thought the profession somewhat loose. Her husband was inclined to blame one of his ancestors, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, for the misstep.

Ralph misstepped first: he moved directly from Columbia Law School to the stage. Frank, then a boy soprano at Manhattan's fashionable St. Thomas Church, later had one year of business administration at Cornell, a spell working for his father. He tried cowpunching in New Mexico, stoking coal on a tramp steamer, shooting professional pool. On March 11, 1914, he eloped from Manhattan to Hoboken with Alma Muller and "she's never left."

That Silly Morgan celebrated his marriage by making his stage debut in a vaudeville skit written for him by a friend. His brother, finding that Wuppermann lacked marquee appeal, had taken the name of Morgan. Frank adopted it, too, and in 15 years built it into a Broadway asset (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Rosalie, The Band Wagon, etc.). In the early '30s he went to Hollywood for keeps.

He developed his comedy style while playing The Duke in Edwin Justus Mayer's The Firebrand. The idea occurred to him during a long pause in a speakeasy conversation with the playwright. Morgan shattered it with the exclamation: "That silly --" "Who?" asked Mayer.

"The Duke," said Morgan. Then Morgan announced that he was through playing The Duke straight, would henceforth play him for what he was: a fatuous, absurd 16th-Century Italian. He met The Duke again in 1934 in an almost unrecognizable cinemadaptation called The Affairs of Cellini. It was his first big Hollywood success.

Fearless Frank. Frank Morgan is one of the most versatile U.S. actors. He is also a yachtsman, quail-shooter, cattle-raiser and bon vivant. Friends call him Pancho or Fearless Frank. A gusty, expansive, whimsical extrovert, he loves big parties, boars, bulls and outsize vegetables (see cut, p. 73). His studio has sometimes had a hard time finding him when it wanted him. It has used a deputy sheriff and the Coast Guard to bring him back alive from frequent fishing trips. Morgan has his own method of retaliation--such as buying a lion (the M.G.M. insignia) for delivery to an M.G.M. executive.

Frank Morgan's favorite title for himself is "Vice President in charge of Western Operations" of Angostura-Wuppermann Corp. He took the title to please his mother shortly before her death seven years ago. He is no longer entitled to use it: the company accepted his resignation last spring. A non-relative now runs the firm. Perhaps it is just as well. Of the bitters' secret formula (known only to its makers, the Siegert family of Trinidad. B.W.I.), Frank Morgan once observed: "Somehow I don't believe it will ever come down to me. The people who made these arrangements must have known that if I got hold of it everybody would be on to the gag in about 20 minutes."

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