7. Richard Cable Morenus

  Serial Writer, Serial Groom

Richard Morenus on a speaking tour, 1956. Source

Full disclosure: I do not like Richard C. Morenus. My dislike for him stems from my frustration with, and actual resentment of, him for omitting his wife Nan Dorland from his best-selling book, Crazy White Man (1952). (More on this later.) After a fair bit of research into Richard's background, I cannot help but conclude that he was not the nicest guy in the world, although he was definitely a charmer. 

In 21st-century speak, I think it is possible that Richard Morenus was a narcissistic control freak. His marital history below reveals an unsteadiness of character that is impossible to overlook. Richard was an only child who was sent to boarding school at a young age, so it is possible that, in addition to becoming a creative, independent individual, he developed negative personality traits such as impatience, a lack of empathy and self-absorption.

Richard's Early Life

Richard Cable Morenus was born in Walton, New York on September 5, 1894, the only child of Howard B. Morenus and Martha (Cable) Morenus. Richard's father was vice president and secretary of the Hobart M. Cable Company of La Porte, Indiana, a piano-making company that he joined in 1898.

Richard as an infant with his parents, c1895. Photo courtesy of Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield.*

Howard Morenus became the southern manager for the Cable Piano Company in Atlanta, Georgia. The grand opening of the business was held in December 1898, shortly after Richard was born. The Morenus family lived in Atlanta for about five years. The US Census for 1900 shows them living at 294 Gordon Street, with an African-American cook named Rosa Dison (actually Dyson) in their home.

 

5-year-old Richard with 9-year-old Emma Dyson, daughter of the Morenus' cook, in the back yard of the family's home, Atlanta, Georgia, c. 1900. Photo album courtesy Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield.*

Woodworking at Tome School, nd. Source

When he reached school age, Morenus attended the Tome School for Boys, a private, non-sectarian boarding school in Maryland founded in 1901 that went from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The 1910 US Census shows 15-year-old Richard living at home with his parents in Chicago, at least in April when the census taker came by. He went on to study at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he was affiliated with the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. 

 

 

 

Army Days

Richard Morenus in the US Army, 1917 or 1918. Photo courtesy Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield*.

 

On November 27, 1917, Morenus enlisted in the US Army at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, with the rank of Private, Heavy Artillery. He was assigned to the 327th Field Artillery, and later transferred to Fort Sill School of Fire, a field artillery school in Oklahoma. He and his first wife Louise lived on the base. He was commissioned as 1st Lieutenant on November 27, 1917, and after becoming an instructor, was promoted to Captain on September 18, 1918. Morenus never fought overseas and was discharged at Camp Jackson, South Carolina on December 6, 1918.

Richard's Multiple Marriages

Richard Morenus married six times. He wedded his first wife, Katherine Louise Sagar, in his hometown of La Porte on September 4, 1917. They had a son, Richard C. Morenus Jr., born in 1919, and they divorced in 1921 on the grounds of cruelty. "He was charged with inflicting severe injuries by physical attacks on his wife." (South Bend Tribune, December 20, 1921.) Louise took Richard to court in January of 1928 for failure to pay child support. (South Bend Tribune, January 20, 1928.) 

Morenus' 3rd wife, Leona Glick.

Richard's subsequent marriages were as follows:

• January 3, 1923 to January 26, 1927: Lisette Helen Stiel (elopement), at Joliet, Illinois
  
• October 14, 1927 to ????: Leona Glick (elopement), at Crown Point, Indiana
  
• April 11, 1934 to November 26, 1935: Catherine Mary Cecilia Smythe
• October 15, 1936 to June 27, 1947: Annette Evangeline Danke (aka Nan Dorland)
• October 1, 1948 to February 10, 1968: Nora T. Smith, at International Falls, Minnesota.
  

Morenus left at least one woman standing at the altar. He was engaged to marry Dorothy Knowlton Hardy in the early autumn of 1927, but instead he eloped with model Leona Glick on October 14 of that year. (Newton Graphic, August 1927)

Leona Glick in 1927. Source

In January of 1927, 21-year-old Leona Glick had been selected out of thousands of girls to star in a motion picture titled "A Chicago Boy." According to the Munster Indiana Times, when Richard eloped with Leona Glick he was an advertising man in LaPorte, Indiana. "Located last night at their honeymoon flat, 20 E. Delaware Place, the couple said the Crown Point trip had been taken on the spur of the moment" the newspaper reported.  "'Plans?' said the husband. 'We have no plans, except to be gloriously happy together'." 

I have not yet been able to find out when his marriage to Leona Glick ended. I did, however, find Richard in the 1930 US Census. He was living in a boarding house in Fort Wayne, Indiana still listed as married. Leona kept the surname Morenus after she became a real estate agent in Corpus Christi, Texas. [Source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Sept. 23, 1951.] She remarried to Harold Guy Dunbar in 1953.

Radio Career

Richard Morenus in 1927 around the time of his third marriage. Photo courtesy Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield.*

After graduating from Dartmouth College, Richard began working in radio advertising in 1924 with the station WOWO-WGL at Fort Wayne, Indiana. After several years of struggling, he began to write scripts for daytime radio serials in Chicago. This is probably where he first met Nan Dorland, whom he married in 1936 (Click here for story). Richard moved to New York around 1930 and set up his own advertising agency for radio. In 1935, he joined the script department of NBC where he wrote, directed and produced network shows. (Ironwood Daily Globe, January 19, 1949; Canadian Radio Year Book, 1946.)

Richard Morenus around the time he met Nan, c1935. Source: Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield.* Photo animation by Deep Nostalgia.

"Writers were selected for their competence and then more or less left alone," recalls radio actress Mary Jane Higby. "They were left alone, that is, unless the rating began to drop. Then all hell would break loose. A swift rating change could start ulcers churning the full length of Madison Avenue."  (Mary Jane Higby, Tune in Tomorrow. New York: Cowles Education Corp., 1966.)

The radio serial system required "writers who could handle three, four, even five serials a week, or a total of 25 episodes, comprising 50,000 words," the Baltimore Sun reported on November 12, 1944. "Writers may rotate on a story or may be shifted about from one story to another. For the most part they are anonymous." The daily serials were 15-minutes long, and by 1939 there was a total of 71 serials over all the networks (NBC Red, NBC Blue, CBS, and MBS), accounting for 89 hours of broadcast time Monday to Friday. [Source: Nebraska State Journal, Feb. 26, 1939.] Writers were paid a minimum of $25 for a 15-minute script.

Marriage to Nora Smith

Richard's sixth and final wife was Nora A. Smith, a stenographer at Compton's Picture Encyclopedia in Chicago at the time of their marriage. The couple lived in La Porte, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Escanaba, Michigan where Richard taught writing in the University of Michigan's Extension Division; Sioux Falls, South Dakota where Richard worked as managing editor of Sampson Publishing Co.; and Fennville, Michigan.

Richard and his "wife" Nora began staying at a cottage in Michigan in April of 1947. His marriage to Nora did not take place until October 1, 1947. Source: Escanaba Daily Press, August 26, 1947.

Richard and Nora Morenus, 1960. Photo courtesy Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield.*

Nora was a Christian Science practitioner, and Richard soon became one as well.

A Morenus family member who asked not to be identified recalled that when Richard showed up at his family's home, his father would roll his eyes. Perhaps Richard owed the father money, but whatever the case, the man viewed what he called Richard's peacock-like, show-biz personality with distaste. The distant relative went on to say that Nora had a "deer-in-the-headlights" look about her. "She was one of the most nervous people I've ever been around," he told me during a telephone call.

*Kim Clark and Richard Mansfield are the owners of Winoga Lodge Island near Sioux Lookout, Ontario - the island that Nan and Richard Morenus lived on for six years in the 1940s. These photos were in a box sent to them by Randolph Trumbull, whose mother was Morenus' first cousin. The Trumbull family came into possession of this box of photos after Nora Morenus, Richard's sixth wife, passed away in 1981. The collection was heavily culled - likely by Richard or perhaps Nora - to remove photos of Nan and any of Richard's other five wives. These photos are now in my possession. I would eventually like to donate them to an archival facility with an interest in Richard Morenus.

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