actor; comedian; singer
Personal Information
Born February 10, 1937, in New Orleans, LA; wife, Freda;
Education: Dilliard University, BA; attended Julliard School and Manhattan School of Music.
Religion: Raised Southern Baptist.
Career
Actor, comedian, and singer. Soloist with Harry Belafonte Singers, 1958-68; cast member: Saturday Night Live, 1975-80; Martin, 1992-94; The Jamie Foxx Show, 1996; Films include: Where's Poppa?, 1970; Cooley High, 1975; Car Wash, 1976, How to Beat the High Cost of Living, 1980; Children of the Night, 1992; Twin Falls Idaho, 1999; Little Richard, 2000; and Jackpot, 2001. Stage credits include: Porgy and Bess, 1961, 1964; Showboat, 1966. Worked steadily in film and on stage from the early sixties into 2001.
Life's Work
He has been both reviled and revered by African-American audiences and artists alike. He both shined and shamed on the small and big screens. During the sixties he led a black consciousness raising theater group, and in the seventies as an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, he personified black stereotypes. In the eighties he almost lost himself to drugs, and in the nineties he almost lost his life to a bullet. Though his nearly half-century in the limelight has not always been bright, through it all--as an actor, comedian, and singer--Garrett Morris has survived.
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 1, 1937 and raised by his grandfather, a Southern Baptist minister, Morris discovered a passion for music at an early age. Just five, Morris began singing with the church choir. "[My grandfather] heard me singing in the bathroom, and said 'Brothers, sisters, this boy can sing," he told The Kansas City Star, " ... and I haven't really stopped singing since."
As a young adult, Morris gained a degree from New Orleans's Dillard University and pursued formal musical training, including a stint at Julliard, New York City's famed performing arts school. In 1956 he received a scholarship to attend a music workshop at prestigious Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts and received the Tanglewood Conductors Award. Then in 1958 on the way home from a National Association of Negro Musicians' music competition, Morris took a detour to New York City. There, Morris branched out into theater, joining the Harlem YMCA Drama Club, which counted among its members actress Cicely Tyson. Soon after arriving in New York, Morris received his first big career break when he auditioned for the Harry Belafonte Singers and was hired as a soloist. Though he spent the next ten years singing with Belafonte, Morris continued pursuing theater.
Actor, Activist, Struggling Artist
By the late sixties Morris was working as an actor, singer and playwright in New York. He appeared in such famed musicals as Show Boat and Porgy and Bess and dozens of smaller off-screen plays, many with black political themes. Proving his diversity, Morris also penned and produced his own plays. In 1970 he made the leap to screen actor with an appearance in Carl Reiner's Where's Poppa?. Other mostly forgettable parts followed, both in film and television. The one exception was 1975's Cooley High. Cast as a high school principal, Morris and the film were well received by the critics.
As Morris added theater and singing credits to his professional resume, he added the role of activist to his personal accomplishments. With a group of like-minded performers, Morris formed a theater group designed to raise black consciousness and confront racial problems. Though the group endured political threats and police harassment, Morris, recalling the era, told The Kansas City Star, "I was in seventh heaven because this was my idea of what you should and could do with your talent... .There were problems out there in the country, and we had acting and writing talent to write plays that would demonstrate this." Sadly, his professional career would soon not only stifle his activist beliefs, but it would mock them.
By 1975, despite nearly twenty years of performing credits, Morris was still struggling. Like many working actors, he belonged to various professional associations. However, it was his membership in the Writer's Guild that propelled Morris from bit parts in films and off-Broadway plays to national celebrity and a permanent place in television culture. NBC was putting together the comedy show, Saturday Night Live. The show's producer, Lorne Michaels, had appealed to the Writer's Guild for apprentice writers that could be hired at a discounted rate. The Guild sent Morris. Though he had proven skills as a playwright, his comedy writing ability did not impress Michaels. Rather than let Morris go, Michaels decided to make him a member of the cast largely based on Morris's Cooley High appearance. According to Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, it soon became apparent to the other actors and writers that Morris, despite his past acting history, did not have the skills for sketch comedy which requires an actor to quickly switch from one role to another. Still, had it not been for an unfortunate mix of factors, Morris may have overcome this.
Saturday Night Wasn't 'Berry Berry Good' to Morris
At 38 Morris was over a decade older than the most of the other "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" which included Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Dan Aykroyd. Morris was also the only seasoned stage veteran. Finally, Morris was the only black actor on the show. As a result, Morris was often ignored by the other actors and writers. When they weren't ignoring him, they were often criticizing him. The authors wrote in Saturday Night, "Since Garrett was not a strong enough performer or writer to impose his own sensibilities on Saturday Night, Saturday Night imposed its sensibilities on him, and they were at best cruel, at worst racist."
With the exception of a few notable roles, especially that of ex-baseball player Chico Escuela, whose tag line "Bazboll's bin berry, berry good to me" became Morris's most famous line from the show, Morris had few roles in the sketches and many of those were as stereotypical black characters. By the third season, after an electrifying appearance as Tina Turner, Morris became the resident drag queen. In high heels and skirts, Morris finally got regular airtime on the show. However, some close to the show saw these roles as demeaning to Morris. "It was, said one observer, as if the show actually enjoyed making Garrett 'participate in his own degradation'," wrote the authors of Saturday Night. Never was this more obvious than in a show hosted by Cicely Tyson.
Morris, dressed as Tyson, had begun the opening monologue, when the real Tyson appeared on stage demanding to know what was happening. "I was hired by this show under terms of the Token Minority Window Dressing Act of 1968," Morris replied. Tyson went on to scold him, "Garrett, what is happening to you?" Referring to their work together in the sixties, she went on to say, "I expected something really big from you." She continued, "Where's your integrity?" Morris's response was a blithe, "Well, it doesn't look bad on my resume ... and I get to keep the dresses." SNL writers had written the entire exchange, yet it illustrated what black audiences and performers had already been complaining about Morris.
Whether it was due to the isolation and racism that Morris suffered on the show, the criticism he received from black audiences and performers, or even the complications arising from national celebrity, by his third season with the show Morris had turned to cocaine. Saturday Night reported that his drug problem soon became a problem for the show: Morris began to miss rehearsals, spent hours locked in his dressing room, and avoided the rest of the crew. The book also detailed Morris's growing paranoia and his belief that a "hypnotist robot" was watching him. Of that time, Morris says little, though he did admit to People Weekly, "I was smoking a lot of cocaine." In 1980, after five seasons with the groundbreaking show, Morris left Saturday Night Live. Morris still doesn't discuss why he left. However, he did confess to The Kansas City Star, "By the time I left, I didn't have a lot of friends at NBC."
Built a Healthy Body, Mind, and Career
While his fellow SNL alums went on to major films, comedy tours, and fame, Morris received bit parts in short-lived television shows and regrettable films. He did, however, get his life in order. He quit drugs soon after leaving the show; "I ceased around 1981, 1982, just stopped," he told People Weekly. He also quit smoking and, in a move back to his activist nature, became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. Morris replaced his smoking habit with a jogging habit and in his fifties kept up a regimen of three mile runs every day. As his body and spirit improved, so did his career. He had memorable recurring roles on the popular television shows, Hunter and Roc, appeared in dozens of films, and wrote and produced another play. Finally, in 1992 he landed a part on the wildly popular Martin. Playing a womanizing radio manager given to polyester suits and hilarious antics, Morris was redeemed. Martin, aimed at black audiences, gave Morris a new chance with the black community, and they embraced him.
On February 24, 1994, Morris's renewed career--and his life--almost came to an end. Leaving a friend's shop in South Central Los Angeles, he was shot by two men in a botched robbery attempt. The bullet penetrated his arm, ripped through his abdomen, and lodged near his spine. He told People Weekly, "[I thought] 'I'm going to die.' I was only mad because someone else had chosen the time." Though the wound was serious and he would remain in the hospital for over a month, Morris amazed his doctors with an astounding recovery. He was moving about with a walker within a week of the shooting. He even filmed an episode of Martin from his hospital bed.
With the help of his wife, Freda, Morris undertook a rigorous exercise regimen to regain his strength, and with the help of comedy he has regained his early passion--using his art to help others. Barely four months after the shooting, he did a stand-up comedy routine for Los Angeles-based charity Kids Against Guns. "One thing the shooting has taught me is that humor is what it's really all about," Morris told People Weekly, "From the second night on, Freda and I were laughing about this thing. It's like something else inside me was causing me to see the bright side in everything." With a co-starring role in the 2001 film Jackpot, a new series in the works, and Freda by his side, the limelight is finally shining bright for Morris.
Awards
Tanglewood Conductors Award, 1956.
Further Reading
Book
- Hill, Doug and Jeff Weingard, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live, Beech Tree Books, New York, 1986.
- Entertainment Weekly, March 26, 1993.
- The Kansas City Star, May 7, 1997.
- People Weekly, July 11, 1994.
- USA Today, November 16, 2000.
— Candace LaBalle
