[1] He grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan, attended the High School of Commerce for two years, then went to the Harrisburg Academy in Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1931.

[2] In 1940, Morgan was offered a daily 15-minute comedy series on Mutual Broadcasting System's flagship station WOR.

He mixed in barbed ad-libs, satirizing daily life's foibles, with novelty records, including those of Spike Jones.

[2] Morgan appeared in the December 1944 CBS Radio original broadcast of Norman Corwin's play The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, taking several minor roles including that of the narrator, Ivan the Terrible and Simon Legree.

Nachman wrote of Morgan that he was radio's "first true rebel because—like many comics who go for the jugular, from Lenny Bruce to Roseanne Barr—he didn't know when to quit.

"[6] Another supporter was character actor Arnold Stang, who worked as one of Morgan's second bananas on the ABC shows and was known later as the voice of Hanna-Barbera's Top Cat.

The cousin cooperated closely with investigators "when he learned that his agent, a Party member, had refused to accept assignments for him; his doctor, another Red, knowing of (his) bad heart, had recommended that he play tennis.

[2] Morgan made one film as a lead actor, producer Stanley Kramer's sophisticated comedy So This Is New York (1948), which featured Arnold Stang and loosely was based on Ring Lardner's 1920 novel The Big Town.

The show started out as a take-off on The Original Amateur Hour, and featured Kaye Ballard (in her TV debut), Art Carney, Pert Kelton and Arnold Stang as Gerard.

[citation needed] Morgan appeared as Brooklyn assistant district attorney Burton Turkus in the film Murder, Inc. (1960) with Stuart Whitman, May Britt and Peter Falk.

Morgan's longest-lasting television image began in June 1952 when he was invited to join I've Got a Secret, produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman.

Also in the 1960s, he made numerous appearances in the early years of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and became a regular cast member of the short-lived but respected James Thurber-based comedy series My World and Welcome to It in 1969.

[6] He was also a contestant on a 1963 edition of To Tell the Truth, in which he successfully fooled the panelists[10] into thinking he was former Polish spy-turned-author Pawel Monat.

His radio career gained a revival in his native New York City in the early 1980s because of his two-and-a-half-minute The Henry Morgan Show commentaries, broadcast twice daily on WNEW-AM (now WBBR) starting in January 1981.

On October 13, 1972, Morgan appeared as a last-minute fill-in on The Merv Griffin Show, and frustrated with fellow guest Charo's interruptions and deliberately contrived poor grasp of English, told Griffin "you dragged me out of bed because you said you were stuck for a guest, and I have to sit and listen to this nonsensical babble", and he walked off the set.

He also edited, with writer and editor Babette Rosmond, Shut Up, He Explained, an anthology of Ring Lardner's shorter works (Scribner, 1962).