Ralph Morgan

Biography

A Bronx boy who learned to command the boards before the world knew his name, Ralph W. Morgan arrived on 6 July 1883 and spent the next seven decades turning silents into talkies and Broadway into film stock. Between 1932 and 1933 alone he slipped from the mad mystic’s court in Rasputin and the Empress to the tortured souls of Strange Interlude and The Power and the Glory, proving that a furrowed brow and a velvet voice could steal scenes from Barrymore himself. Off-screen he shared a Manhattan address—and a lifetime—with actress Grace Arnold. The city that first heard his cries welcomed his final curtain on 11 June 1956.