Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

The Dice Are Rollin Continued about it. Suddenly he was cast in the picture and given that song to sing. Here was his chance to show the studio and the world at large that Nelson Eddy and Allan Jones hadn't the only voices in pictures. Here was his chance to really get going. When the picture was released, only longshots of him were shown — and the voice that issued from the microphone was Allan Jones' ! "I still don't know what happened," he says. "I made a good recording of the number and they never used it — never told me why." (And let me say here, there is no one more critical of his own voice than Dennis — no one quicker to admit when he's not in good voice.) "Dick," he finished earnestly, "let's not talk about it. That's the one period of my life I want to forget. No one can imagine what a nightmare I lived through." I said he had been signed because of his voice. He'd been singing around Chicago in churches and on the radio when Mary Garden heard him and signed him to appear with her in "Carmen." He knows little French but learned the score and text in three weeks — learned it sufficiently well that La Garden, who lived for years in France and speaks French like a native, complimented him on his French accent. For some reason she never gave the opera but when M-G-M later engaged her as a talent scout she got Dennis a contract. To date, with the exception of two songs in the relatively unimportant "State Cop," he has never sung on the screen. But I have heard him sing in private and the reports of his voice are no press agent's idle dream. Every time I see him or think of him I'm reminded of that old story of the man who couldn't decide between the beautiful girl and the opera singer. He finally married the singer. The next morning he awakened, glanced at his bride, saw the ugly face and stringy hair and, thinking of the beauty he might have had, woke her and yelled, "For God's sake, SING!" And that's how I feel about Dennis. So much has been written of his voice I want to hear him really cut loose. Dennis seems singularly unconcerned about singing on the screen. "I don't care much for opera," he admitted. "I like to listen to the music but the plots and the acting are so blamed passe. Once in a while I like to sing one and really ham it up. The part I'd like most to do — and have never done — is 'La Boheme.' The studio talks constantly of reviving 'The Desert Song' and casting me in it but even that seems a little dated. The operetta I'd really like to do is 'The Student Prince.' I don't believe a more beautiful light opera score has ever been written." A cursory glance at him would lead you to believe he was a good-looking, selfcentered kid. Actually, he thinks less of his looks than almost any man I know and, inside him, he is as sentimental as a debutante over her first corsage. That's another paradox ! — his ancestors were Scandinavian, Scotch and Dutch — and whoever heard of any of those races being cursed with an overdose of sentiment? Born in Prentice, Wisconsin, on Dec. 20, 1910, the son of Frank and Grace Morner (the former a lumberman and banker), his childhood was fairly uneventful. It was not until he entered Carroll College and started playing football that he really began to live. Summers, to keep in condition, he worked in his father's lumber camps, felling trees, working on the booms where the logs are unloaded and go skittering down a ramp into the water, driving mule teams, etc. "Oh, a mule-skinner, eh?" I jeered. 72 g for Dennis Morgan rom page 34 Dennis Morgan and Ginger Rogers in a tender love scene from "Kitty Foyle," film version of Christopher Morley's novel. "Well, we used horses," he temporized, "but I guess it's the same difference." During his college career he was soloist on the glee club. "In order to get my degree," he explains proudly, "I .gave the entire 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' reading all parts. I had done some dramatics but I got no degree in that." _ As soon as he finished college he married Lillian Vedder with whom he had gone to high school. It was just after this, when he was wondering what to do next, that his singing teacher, Alexus Baas, gave him a letter of introduction to the casting agent of the Chautauqua Circuit. Dennis was engaged and went out in a tabloid version of "Faust." "I think," he volunteered, "my company was probably the last that ever toured that circuit. There were five principals, a pianist and no chorus in the troupe. Each principal sang two or three parts. I had to lead, but that wasn't all. We couldn't afford to take regular scenery — 'flats,' etc. — so we used drop curtains. It was also my job to hang them, as the local talent in the houses we played never seemed to catch on to the art of hanging drops — particularly not for the first performance." When the tour was ended he walked into one of the broadcasting stations in Milwaukee, introduced himself and sang several numbers. He remained with that station on a "sustaining program" (a program that fills in time but which has no sponsor, the pay being necessarily small on account of it) for a year and a half. "I not only sang," he elaborates, "but I also ran one of those horrible .programs where the man not only accompanies himself on the piano or organ, but recites poetry as well. You know, Let me live in a house by the side of the road Finally he got a job singing at the old Palmer_ House in Chicago. The Palmer House is a sedate old hotel with a "name" and class patronage. Their Empire Room had never been open later than 9:30 (for the dinner trade) but one New Year's Eve they turned it into a night club and put on a floor show that Dennis opines must have cost four or five thousand a week, with himself as featured soloist. "One act after another came on and died on the vine," he chuckles. "Everyone was hilarious and no one was paying any attention to the entertainment. Finally" it was my turn. I came out and wondered what . the deuce I should do. No one even noticed me so I got sore and thought, 'I'm not going to wreck my lungs and vocal chords singing to this bunch, so I just mouthed the words of my song, gesturing as I went A couple in front of me stopped dancing to watch. They saw my lips moving but they couldn't hear anything. At the end of the song I hit a high note, hit it true and held it. By that time a lot of other couples had stopped and were looking, too. I guess it _ was finally hearing something and realizing they weren't as far gone as they believed that did the trick, but they cut loose with applause such as I have seldom heard. I sang seven numbers before I finally got off the stage and you could have heard a pin drop during any one of them. The manager told me it was the greatest piece of showmanship he had ever seen — and all I had in mind was that I was sore and wouldn't ruin my voice trying to drown out the noise! I stayed there over a year and it was during that time I met Mary Garden. _ "Another funny thing happened to me since I came to Hollywood. Every year, you know, there is a charity baseball game between the comedians of the screen on one team and the leading men on the other. Last year after we played in Los Angeles we went to San Francisco. It's always been one of my secret ambitions to plav big time baseball. Well, the first time I was at bat Bob Hope was pitching. Bob's pitched balls are not as fast as his wise-cracks and by the time the ball got to the plate it was going so slow I could have caught it barehanded. I caught it right on the nose and lammed it into the center field bleachers for a homer. Next time I was at bat some ex-pro from San Diego was pitching. He struck me out one, two, three but it was a gag game, anyhow, so I yelled, 'Come on, give^ me another.' He did and darned if I didn't knock it right into the same place! Babe Ruth was never more leisurely than I, trotting around those bases. Of course, playing ball on a professional diamond was a kick but some sports writer who had discovered DiMaggio wrote it up and addressed an open letter to the managers of the big leagues : 'I gave you DiMaggio, now I recommend Morgan!'" Dennis _ used to read omnivorously — novels,, biographies, poetry, anything. But he says these late novels that run from five hundred to a thousand pages when they could be advantageously condensed to half their length, get him down and_ he hasn't read a book in two or three months. He shoots golf in the seventies, plays a swell game of tennis, swims, rides, "fishes and hunts. Unfortunately, there never seems room for but one enthusiasm in his life at a time. He used to prefer tennis to golf but shot a good round of golf once and gave up tennis entirely. A couple of months ago someone inveigled him into a tennis game and now he's given up golf. He likes to dance and goes to the Cocoanut Grove frequently, passing up the more fashionable Ciro's and Victor Hugo's because, he says, people who go to the Grove go there because they want to dance, whereas those who go to the other places go because they want to be seen. One of his closest friends is Big Boy Williams and he waxes vehement on the subject because he thinks "Big" is a swell actor who's never been given a decent chance and because he thinks Big is not only a sophisticate but "a fine fellow who isn't appreciated." At the moment of our interview he was all hot and bothered because he was "up" for the lead opposite Ginger Rogers in "Kitty Foyle." "Wouldn't that be a swell break!" he exulted, and then sobered up: "I hope I get it but whether I do or don't isn't important. The fact that I'm even being considered for it is what counts. It shows the dice are rolling for me." P. S.— He got the job.