Jane Morgan, “Fascination” Singer and ‘Ed Sullivan Show’ Staple, Dies at 101

Jane Morgan, the elegant American singer who dazzled audiences in Paris nightclubs, on just about every TV variety show of her era and at the Oscars and had a hit record with the lovely standard “Fascination,” has died. She was 101.

Morgan was in hospice care and died Monday in her sleep of natural causes in Naples, Florida, her family announced.

A classy performer known for her silky smooth phrasing, Morgan moved from New York to France in the late 1940s to build her career before returning the U.S. and becoming a very popular singer through the mid-1960s.

She recorded about 40 albums around the world and sang in five languages, making her a true international star.

Morgan appeared dozens of times on The Ed Sullivan Show and was a welcomed recurring guest on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall and The Hollywood Palace and on programs hosted by Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny, Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas.

Watch her perform “I Wanna Be With You” on the Sullivan show in 1967.

The next year, she starred on Broadway in Mame, following Angela Lansbury and Janis Paige as the star of the original production.

In taking her career to new heights, Morgan teamed with The Troubadors to record a version of the 1905 French song “Fascination,” which was featured in Billy Wilder’s 1957 film Love in the Afternoon, starring Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper and Maurice Chevalier. Her take went on to sell millions of records.

At the Academy Awards in 1961, she sang “The Second Time Around” (from High Time), then returned in 1966 with Michel Legrand to perform “I Will Wait for You (Je ne Pourrai Jamais Vivre sans Toi)” from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

In 1973, Morgan retired to take care of the family she shared with her husband and onetime manager, famed concert promoter and Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub.

The youngest of five children, Morgan was born Florence Catherine Currier on May 3, 1924, in Newton, Massachusetts. Her parents, Bertram and Olga, operated a music school and composed music.

When she was 11, she acted as a child at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine. She graduated from Seabreeze High School in Daytona Beach, Florida, and studied opera at Juilliard in New York, where she performed in nightclubs to help pay for her tuition.

While at Juilliard, she was hired by Roseland Ballroom orchestra leader Art Mooney, who came up with her stage name. However, she would leave school when French impresario and violinist Bernard Hilda asked her to accompany him to Paris.

She became proficient in French and soon was a sensation in Paris, singing classics by the likes of Cole Porter and George Gershwin at Hilda’s Club Des Champs Elysees while donning gowns and hats made by some of the world’s finest designers (think Oleg Cassini and Donald Brooks). She and Hilda even also had their own TV program.

After about four years in Europe, Morgan starred on her own radio show in Canada; performed for about a year in New York at the Latin Quarter, one of the clubs in the chain owned by Lou Walters, father of Barbara Walters; and appeared live in 1951 on Martin and Jerry Lewis’ Colgate Comedy Hour at NBC.

She signed with Dave Kapp’s Kapp Records and in 1956 released her first two stateside albums, The American Girl From Paris and Two Different Worlds. She was paired with “Autumn Leaves” pianist Roger Williams on the latter.

In 1957, Kapp connected her with The Troubadors for “Fascination,” and the song peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard pop chart and got her a spot on American Bandstand. She added a second Top 40 hit the following year with “The Day the Rains Came,” recorded in both English and French.

Morgan hosted two network TV specials in 1959 and one in 1968 and acted on episodes of Peter Gunn in 1961 and It Takes a Thief in 1970.

In addition to Mame — “Being on Broadway was one of the most exciting things in my life because I had always dreamed of it,” she said — Morgan starred onstage in productions of Can Can, Kiss Me Kate, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The King and I, Bells Are Ringing, Anniversary Waltz, Affairs of State and Ziegfeld Follies.

In 1970, she recorded “A Girl Named Johnny Cash,” a parody of Cash’s classic “A Boy Named Sue” that was written by Martin Mull. It would spend five weeks on Billboard’s Country chart.

Morgan also performed for President Charles de Gaulle of France and for U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, for whom she was a member of the Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Morgan was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in May 2011, and during the ceremony, she performed “Fascination” and demonstrated that, as Johnny Mathis put it, she had the “voice of a goddess.”

In 2022, a collection of more than 30 of her sequined, beaded couture gowns were put on display in New York.

Weintraub, who worked with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, John Denver, Led Zeppelin and scores of other acts, became her manager in the early 1960s and her second husband in 1965.

Survivors include her stepson, Michael; adopted daughters Jamie and Jody; six grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren. She was pre-deceased by another adopted daughter, Julie. She and Weintraub separated but never divorced.

Donations in her memory can be made to the Weintraub Center for Reconstructive Biotechnology at UCLA.