Marion Morgan (née Swires; born 14 December 1923) was an American vocalist who sang with big band leader Harry James from 1946 to 1949 before embarking on a solo career that flourished throughout the early 1950s.
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Morgan was billed as Lee Barrie when she sang on the Pacific Coast. She changed her name at the suggestion of bandleader Russ Morgan. She was singing in a Chicago-based outfit run by Caesar Petrillo when James spotted her and hired her in the spring of 1946. She recorded a string of modestly successful sides with the band, starting with "If I'm Lucky" and "Life Can Be Beautiful," before scoring a hit with "Heartaches" in April of 1947.
She and James enjoyed a productive relationship until the singer overheard the bandleader, in a fit of candor that was unfortunate in its timing and unfair to Morgan, expressing his disdain for vocalists to veteran bandleader Ben Pollack at the Hollywood Palladium at the end of 1948. Morgan left the band barely a day later, and went on to a solo career.
While performing with Harry James, Marion Morgan fell in love with Sidney J. Beller (1913–1991), the band's road manager, who decided to leave his job just before Morgan left in 1949. Beller and Morgan were married in Las Vegas on October 7, 1949.
Radio-TV Mirror magazine reported in its May 1952 issue that Morgan "has been concentrating on night-club dates and has been playing the supper club circuit around the country." Morgan spent the rest of her career singing in clubs and eventually settled in Los Angeles, where she married and raised a family, squeezing in some television work when she could, including Stop the Music, Cavalcade of Bands, The Steve Allen Show, The Jackie Gleason Show and a stint as co-host with Harry Babbitt (of Kay Kyser's band) on Bandstand Review.
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| Press cutting from 1964 |
In the 1960s, Morgan was "hostess-singer-interviewer" for the Panorama Pacific program on KNXT in Los Angeles, California. Its at this point her internet trail goes cold until according to IMDb she died October 21, 2013 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA, although I have found no other source to support this.