Francis Phillip Wuppermann


Francis Phillip Wuppermann, known as Frank Morgan (June 1, 1890 – September 18, 1949)

He was best known as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player, and as the title character in The Wizard of Oz (1939). His first film was The Suspect in 1916. In 1917, he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, an independent film produced in and about New York City. By the mid-1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had been so impressed by Morgan that they signed him to a lifetime contract. Morgan's best remembered film performance, playing five roles, is in The Wizard of Oz (1939), where he played the carnival huckster "Professor Marvel", the Gatekeeper at the Emerald City, the coachman of the carriage drawn by "The Horse of a Different Color", the Guard who initially refuses to let Dorothy and her friends in to see the Wizard, and the Wizard himself. Morgan was cast in the role on September 22, 1938. W. C. Fields was originally chosen for the role of the Wizard, but the studio ran out of patience after protracted haggling over his fee. An actor with a wide range, he was equally effective playing comical, befuddled men such as Jesse Kiffmeyer in Saratoga (1937) and Mr. Ferris in Casanova Brown (1944), as he was with more serious, troubled characters like Hugo Matuschek in The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Professor Roth in The Mortal Storm (1940). MGM's 1946 film The Great Morgan was written with the story centering around Frank Morgan. His last film Key to the City (1950) was released posthumously. In it Morgan played Fire Chief Duggan. He was the third lead, after Clark Gable and Loretta Young.

He was nominated twice for an Academy Award: for Best Actor for his role as the cuckolded Duke of Florence in The Affairs of Cellini (1934), and for Best Supporting Actor for Tortilla Flat (1942), in which he played a simple Hispanic man who takes care of dogs. Morgan died of a heart attack on September 18, 1949, while filming Annie Get Your Gun (he was replaced by Louis Calhern). Frank Morgan is buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY. 

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