Frank Morgan's grave in Brooklyn: behind the Wizard of Oz actor lies an Angostura inheritance
Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, in the Sunset Park district, is an 1838 historic necropolis covering 478 acres and holding more than 600,000 graves. In the southwest corner of the cemetery is a grave where tourists and film historians have been stopping for years: the monument of Frank Morgan, who died in 1949. The headstone is plain; it carries the actor's birth surname "Wuppermann" alongside his stage name.
Frank Morgan was born Francis Phillip Wuppermann in New York City in 1890. He was of German descent on his mother's side and Irish on his father's side. The family occupies a noteworthy place in 19th-century American commercial history: his father William Wuppermann became the American distributor in the 1840s for Angostura Bitters, which had been developed by Dr. Johann Gottlieb Benjamin Siegert and his wife, who in 1830 had emigrated from Germany to Trinidad and Tobago. The Wuppermann family in New York grew Angostura's North American market presence and, by the 1870s, the company had made the family millions.
Angostura Bitters was developed in 1824 by Dr Siegert as a herbal tincture mixed to treat stomach complaints in soldiers. After the company moved to Trinidad, Angostura settled in as a fundamental flavour ingredient in the world cocktail bar. More than half of classic cocktail recipes such as the Old Fashioned, the Manhattan and the Pisco Sour use a few drops of Angostura. The Wuppermann family sold the American distribution rights to Trinidad in 1932, receiving income of around US$4.2 million — more than US$90 million in 2024 dollars.
Frank was the youngest of the family's five sons. Two of his elder brothers, Ralph and Carlos, also went into acting, but Frank had the most enduring career. He studied at Cornell University, started acting on Broadway in 1912, and took a role in his first silent film in 1914. He changed his stage name to "Morgan" in 1918 at the suggestion of producers who wanted the name to look less German; there was widespread anti-German prejudice in post-World War I America.
Morgan's true Hollywood star moment came in 1939 in The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming. Morgan played five different roles in the film: Professor Marvel, the Wizard of Oz, the doorman, the carriage driver and the guard. Producer Mervyn LeRoy said that Morgan playing the five roles was an economic decision made while MGM was testing its new Technicolor process, to keep actors visible in supporting roles. Morgan appeared in a total of 119 films during his life; aside from The Wizard of Oz, his best-known role was as the Duke of Tuscany in the 1934 film The Affairs of Cellini.
Frank Morgan's life on a film set was different from that of his contemporary character actors. The guarantee of family wealth protected him from the financial pressure most Hollywood actors faced early in their careers. According to biographical summaries published by Atlas Obscura, Morgan would happily appear between takes wearing the Cornell blue tie of his school years, and ran a small bar from which he poured Angostura for everyone on set. The mini-bar reportedly became a tradition in the actor's social circle, frequented by names like Joe DiMaggio and Spencer Tracy.
Morgan died in September 1949 at the age of 59 from a heart attack. Unlike most of the warm and witty characters he played, Morgan's private life was quiet; in a letter to his daughter Lillian, he wrote: "I would not trade any moment on stage for a Sunday afternoon at home." His 33-year marriage to his wife Alma was one of the rare long-lasting marriages of Hollywood at the time.
Green-Wood Cemetery holds important figures of American history: New York Tribune founder Horace Greeley, inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, composer Leonard Bernstein. Frank Morgan's grave is not among the most frequently visited, but it holds a particular place among Wizard of Oz fans and students of film history. The annual visitor count is about 3,500. Flowers are often left on the grave, particularly near Halloween, when costumed Wizard of Oz fans visit.
The Wuppermann family's legacy in American commercial history is still recorded today in Trinidad as one of Angostura's founding families. The company was acquired in 2007 by Trinidad's CL Financial; since the 1932 Wuppermann sale, it has had three different owners. The Angostura Museum in Trinidad opened a permanent exhibition dedicated to the Wuppermann family's American era in 2019; the centrepiece of the exhibition is photography from Frank Morgan's last family visit to Trinidad in 1932.
The plain stone at Frank Morgan's grave symbolises a rare crossing between the Golden Age of American entertainment and 19th-century commercial history. The inscription "Francis Phillip Wuppermann — Frank Morgan" on the grave is a small example of both the family legacy and the stage name being honoured with respect. This quiet corner of Sunset Park in Brooklyn opens a door for travellers not to Hollywood's Golden Age but to a less-told story — the trade career a German immigrant family left across America.