Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan Signed Autograph Page - 1937
Extremely scarce autograph sentiment in pencil on album page, signed while Morgan was shooting Port of Seven Seas in 1937. From the collection of another actor of the same period.
Port of Seven Seas is a 1938 dramatic film starring Wallace Beery and featuring Frank Morgan and Maureen O’Sullivan. The movie was written by Preston Sturges based on the plays of Marcel Pagnol and the films based on them, and was directed by James Whale (director of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man). The cinematography is by Karl Freund, who filmed Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and I Love Lucy.
FRANK MORGAN (1890-1949) was an American actor best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.
His first film was The Suspect in 1916. His career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good-hearted middle-aged man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1934’s The Affairs of Cellini, where he played the cuckolded Duke of Florence and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942’s Tortilla Flat, where he played a simple Hispanic man.
Morgan’s most famous performance was in The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which he played the carnival huckster “Professor Marvel”, the gatekeeper of the Emerald City, the driver of the carriage drawn by “The Horse of a Different Color”, the armed guard leading to the wizard’s hall, and the Wizard himself. Like Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West, his characters only appear on-screen for a few minutes in total, but they are show-stoppers. He was so popular that MGM gave him a lifetime contract. Other movies of note include The Shop Around the Corner, The Human Comedy, The Mortal Storm, The White Cliffs of Dover and his last movie, Key to the City, which was released after his death, in Beverly Hills, California.
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