Frank Morgan’s Grave

Green-Wood Cemetery is the final resting place of luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein and Jean Michel Basquiat, but there’s at least one that might be incognito to most passersby due to the individual being buried under his birth name – Wuppermann – instead of his stage name Frank Morgan, an actor best known for portraying the Wizard of Oz in the eponymous 1939 film.

Francis Phillip Wuppermann was born in New York City in 1890 to a wealthy family that made its fortune distributing Angostura bitters, which enabled young Frank to attend Cornell University. He would follow his older brother Ralph into acting, starting in theater with plays like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes but eventually making his way to the screen in 1916’s The Suspect. He had a fairly successful career in film, earning an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Affairs of Cellini.

His most famous role would come in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, where he played not just the wizard, but also a variety of smaller roles including Professor Marvel and the Gatekeeper that initially refuses Dorothy and friends entrance to the Emerald City. There’s a famous story that the ratty coat Morgan wore to portray Professor Marvel, purchased from a secondhand shop in Los Angeles, once belonged to Oz author L. Frank Baum, but no hard evidence has ever been presented of this. 

Morgan would go on to star in many more movies and even had a career in radio before his death in 1949. His body would be returned to New York to be buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in the Wupperman family plot with both his birth and stage names represented on his headstone. The simple headstone has become a pilgrimage spot for Oz aficionados, with visitors leaving small stones and trinkets atop the marker. The horticulture staff has even gotten in on the action – in spring they plant yellow crocuses on the hill, leading to Morgan’s grave in a homage to the Yellow Brick Road.