After Frank Morgan '12 dropped out of Cornell, he was a cowpuncher, a coal stoker, a pool hustler, a traveling salesman--and the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Years before the landmark 1939 film went into production, Hollywood was rife with speculation about who would play the title character. W. C. Fields said no (not enough money); so did the comedian Ed Wynn (not enough lines). The role eventually went to Morgan, a New York native who hung around with Jimmy Cagney and Spencer Tracy and helped form the Screen Actors Guild, but still struggled to get the parts he wanted.

The future wizard was born Francis Philip Wupperman in 1890, the youngest of eleven children in the family that ran the Angostura Bitters Company. He spent 1908 and 1909 on the Hill, but, as a Cornell Alumni News blurb later explained, "no one thought much of his histrionic ability while he was a student." He made his Broadway debut in 1914, under the stage name Frank Morgan, and his first film, The Suspect, was released in 1916. Sixty-seven more would follow.

Although he got a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the 1934 comedy The Affairs of Cellini, he still had to fight for good roles, and the Wizard was no exception. "He begged for (the part)," recalled screenwriter Noel Langley. "He said, 'Let me go onto a stage and do an ad-lib test' . . . It was marvelous, as funny as Buster Keaton." Morgan was hired in September 1938, earning $2,500 a week, the same salary as the Cowardly Lion and less only than the Scarecrow and the Tin Man (and far more than Dorothy, who got just $500).

The making of The Wizard of Oz was frantic. Five different directors and nearly a dozen screenwriters were involved in the film, which took six months to shoot. Morgan's role was expanded late into production, giving him a total of five parts: traveling showman Professor Marvel, the guard at the gates of the Emerald City ("Who rang that bell?"), the cabby who drove the Horse of a Different Color, the sentry at the Wizard's palace, and the Wizard himself. "He was a very, very professional player. He always knew his lines, and he was always ready," Wicked Witch Margaret Hamilton recalled decades later. "But he did like his drink."

Indeed, Morgan, the bitters salesman, was an alcoholic. Every morning, he would stroll onto the set carrying a small black briefcase containing a miniature bar. He never missed his lines, but he never missed his martini breaks either. Still, his co-stars remembered him fondly. Scarecrow Ray Bolger described him as "a divine man." Hamilton said he was "very lovable, very sweet, very considerate, one of the nicest people I ever knew."

Morgan died just ten years after the movie was released, the first of the film's principal players to pass away. Most obituaries mentioned The Wizard of Oz. Some didn't. Despite its success at the box office, the movie had lost money for MGM due to the high costs of production and publicity. Although the American Film Institute would eventually rate Oz the sixth-best American movie of all time, at the 1939 Oscars it was overshadowed by a slate of remarkable pictures like Gone With the Wind and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. (Nominated for five Oscars, Oz won for Best Song and Best Original Score.) It wasn't until it was leased to television in 1956 that it began to emerge as an American classic--and transformed its title character into a movie icon.

-- Brad Herzog '90

Published in Cornell Alumni Magazine. Used by permission.