Henry Morgan

Henry Morgan
(1904 – 1988)

Comedy (1940 - 50)

Henry Morgan, born Henry Lerner Von Ost Jr., started out very young in the radio business, at age 16 to be exact, as a page boy at WMCA, New York. From there, he hopped from Station to Station for 3 years; dubbed "the youngest announcer in radio," while becoming fluent in English, German, French, and Russian during his radio crusade. It was during this time that he made a certain impromptu remark about a certain Tavern, a sponsor of his job at the time, WOR-New York, that wanted to acknowledge its closeness in relation to New York City. Instead of FIRING Morgan for belittling of a station sponsor, his superiors decided to give him is own 15-minute show, known at the time as Meet Mr. Morgan, at the most obscure and bizarre time slot available, in order to vent his frustrations. After a month or so, the executives at WOR decided that the time slot was too bizarre, so they moved the show to three times a week in the early evening, in order to rotate with Superman during the week. This seemed to benefit Henry Morgan because he became an instant cult hero in Manhattan. He became such a hit, that Superman had to be moved from its time slot in order to compensate.Probably, Superman's greatest enemy was not kryptonite, but rather a very witty, but mostly brash, young man. Before Howard Stern, there was Andy Kaufman, and before Kaufman, there was Henry Morgan. His weekly barrage of slanderous comments towards his sponsors, mainly to either spite his executives or to whet his appetite for the outrageous, fascinated the audience's attention and brought them back week after week.

The show, opened to the theme of For He's a Jolly Good Fellow, which was extended from 15-minutes to 30-minutes, aired six times a week when it was in its prime. All of Morgan's shows were ad-libbed, with no rehearsal or studio audience required. Some infamous comments against his sponsor came against the Life Savers Company, where he accused the company of bamboozling the public by boring holes through their candies, while he offered to advocate his own brand of "Morgan's Mint Middles." He usually closed all his shows while referring to himself in the third person, "Morgan'll be on this same corner in front of the cigar stand next week at this same time."