The Story Begins
The Cock ‘n Bull story began when Percy Tredegar Morgan immigrated to the United States from Britain in the late 19th century. He was born in London in 1862 and attended school there before briefly studying at Oxford. He quit at age 14 and started his business career at a prominent accounting firm in London. At 19, he was hired by the British-owned Victorine Gold Mining Company to work in the company’s offices in Nevada. After a year there, he was promoted to superintendent of the operation. He went on to work for several mining concerns in the West, including a stint in Montana, after which he moved to San Francisco.
Percy made a fortune in the American West in those post-Gold Rush years, first in mining and then investments. He used his riches to build an ideal life. In 1894, he married Fanny Babbit Ainsworth, known as “Daisy,” from an affluent family in Oakland. Their son Percy Tredegar Morgan Jr. was born in 1897. His brother John “Jack” Ainsworth Morgan was born in 1899.
Percy Sr. retired in at age 49, and in 1911 he took the family on a tour of Europe, with stays in Austria, France and Switzerland and, finally, a visit with his family in Britain. Upon their return to California, the Morgans bought a 132-acre property in Los Altos in today’s Silicon Valley and built a sprawling Tudor-style mansion inspired by Speke Hall, an Elizabethan mansion now owned by the British National Trust. Percy named the estate Lantarnam Hall, a reference to Llantarnam, Wales.
At the height of his success, Percy Morgan founded the California Wine Association and was named as trustee for Union Trust Bank, Wells Fargo and Stanford University. His fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse in 1920 when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. After surgery failed at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Percy fell into a depression. He died on April 16 from a self-inflicted shotgun blast. He was 58 years old.
Percy Jr. and Jack
Percy Jr. attended the elite Potter School in San Francisco and schools in Switzerland. He briefly enrolled at Harvard and eventually attended Princeton, only to drop out after a brief stay. During World War I, he joined the U.S. military’s fledgling Air Service corps.
Percy returned to Los Angeles after the war. He worked in the oil business and later co-wrote a play with screenwriter Phillip Hum titled “The Evil Hour.” Morgan and Hum submitted it to Sam Harris, a top Broadway producer whose successes included original stage versions of screen hits like the Marx Brothers’ “Animal Crackers” and “the Cocoanuts,” “The Jazz Singer,” “Rain,” “You Can’t Take It with You” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Harris passed on “The Evil Hour,” but soon afterward opened a play called “The Spider,” a supernatural mystery with a surprising twist. A moderate hit, it was revived on Broadway in 1928 and was the basis of a movie released in 1931. Citing similarities between their story and “The Spider,” Morgan and Hum sued Sam Harris for plagiarism, asking $250,000 (about $4 million today)in damages. The case was appealed several times, eventually landing before the U.S. Supreme Court, which decided in Sam Harris’ favor.
Jack Morgan graduated from Princeton in 1921. He also earned both a B.A. and an M.A. at Oxford University. After school, he settled in Los Angeles and became a writer. Under the name Ainsworth Morgan, he published short stories, several novels and screen plays and poetry. In 1927, he married Phyllis Cleveland, the granddaughter of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th U.S. president. Jack and Phyllis had two children, John Jr. and Joan.
Mayo Methot
Percy’s first marriage was to Mayo Methot, a stage and screen actress who later became the third Mrs. Humphrey Bogart. Born in Chicago in 1904 but raised in Portland, she was the daughter of a ship captain. (She also had a presidential ancestor. She was a direct descendant of the 12th president, Zachary Taylor.)
She began acting as a child in Portland and was selected at age eight to be the “Portland Rosebud,” the star of a nationwide promotional campaign that culminated in Washington, D.C., where she presented Pres. Woodrow Wilson with a message from the governor of Oregon and bouquet of roses.
After the tour, Mayo appeared on stage starring in “The Littlest Rebel,” which would later be filmed in Hollywood as a vehicle for powerhouse child star Shirley Temple. She also attended the Caitlin-Gabel school, where she became a protégé of Daisy Morgan’s sister, Maud Ainsworth. After graduation, Mayo appeared in a series of silent shorts filmed in Oregon. The New York Times review of “And the Women Weep,” released in 1922, praised the company’s acting, especially the performance by “the unnamed young woman who plays the part of the desolate wife.” Another reviewer named her: Mayo Methot.
During the filming of “And the Women Weep,” an on-set romance developed between Mayo and cameraman Jack LaMond turned serious. The couple married in September 1921 and moved to New York. Jack La Mond found work at William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Productions, while Mayo appeared in series of Broadway shows, during which she met Humphrey Bogart, who was then a struggling stage actor.
When Mayo’s marriage ended after six years, she moved to Hollywood and parlayed her success on Broadway into a busy film career. The first feature she appeared in was “Corsair,” a talkie released in 1931 that starred Chester Morris and a top comedy star, Thelma Todd, trying to go straight by playing the dramatic role under the name Alison Lloyd.
Percy Morgan and Mayo met that year, likely through an introduction by his aunt and her high-school mentor, Maud Ainsworth. On November 27th, the day before “Corsair” was released, the couple was married at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California. Younger brother Jack Morgan was Percy’s best man. Witnesses included actors Robert Montgomery, Chester Morris, Mayo’s co-star in “Corsair,” and their wives.
In 1933, Jack Morgan wrote a novel titled Man of Two Worlds, a fish out of water story complicated by a star-crossed romance. A British explorer in the Arctic is so impressed by his Eskimo guide that he takes him back to London, where the aboriginal man falls in love with the explorer’s daughter. Jack later co-wrote the script for the RKO adaptation of “Man of Two Worlds.” Released in 1934, it was a disappointment at the box office.
Mayo appeared in more than a dozen films over the next few years, usually cast in supporting roles as a tough-talking, streetwise dame. That’s the sort of role she played in 1937, in “Marked Woman,” starring Bette Davis and her old acquaintance, Humphrey Bogart. Their reunion came at a time when both were in marriages that were faltering. Later in 1937 – around the time the Cock ‘n Bull opened – Percy and Mayo were divorced, and she married Bogart the following year. Their marriage ended in 1945, when Bogart left Mayo for Lauren Bacall, Mayo returned to Oregon, where she died in 1951. Percy Morgan re-married twice, to Edna May Bulasky and then to Margaret Smith Morgan.