Helen Morgan

Singer/actress Helen Morgan was an iconic figure of the 1920s, a nightclub performer known for her heart-rending interpretations of torch songs describing romantic devotion to wayward men, which she sang from her perch on top of a piano. Morgan's natural environment was the nightclub, in particular, the '20s speakeasy, but she also made records and appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, in movies, and on radio. Her most memorable portrayal was that of the doomed mulatto Julie in stage and film productions of the landmark musical Show Boat. In addition, she appeared in four other Broadway shows and nine other Hollywood movies, and her recordings for Brunswick and Victor produced a series of singles that resulted in six American hits. The facts about Morgan's early life are disputed. According to most biographical sources, she was born Helen Riggins in Danville, IL, on August 2, 1900, to parents who were of French-Canadian origin. Her father died when she was a child, and her mother remarried a man named Morgan; his stepdaughter took his name, becoming Helen Morgan. But in his 1974 biography Helen Morgan: Her Life and Legend, Gilbert Maxwell tells an entirely different story. By his account, Morgan was born in October 1900 in Toronto, Canada, where her mother, Lulu Morgan, was working as a waitress in a railroad yard after being abandoned by her husband, Thomas Morgan, a fireman for the Canadian National Railroad, who was in fact Morgan's biological father. Thomas Morgan, says Maxwell, was an Irishman, and his wife an American of Irish descent who had grown up on a farm in upstate New York. When Morgan was four years old, her parents were reconciled, and the family moved to Danville, IL, but her father deserted again later in her childhood. Morgan first came to public...