Ray Morgan Jr. Dies at 88; 50-Year King of ‘Queen for a Day’ TV Show

Raymond Morgan Jr.—whose father created the legendary Queen for a Day show in the 1940s and inspired today’s reality TV—died Wednesday in Del Mar of natural causes, according to an obituary in U-T San Diego.

Morgan was 88.

His father, a Los Angeles advertising man, launched the show on the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network in May 1945 and died in 1958 after it had become the most popular daytime TV show in America.

Ray Jr. was president of the corporation that owned the show, which featured women crowned after the most tearful tellings of family misery, pain and loss.

As the obituary tells it, Ray Jr. heard about the program when his father visited him at the Marines’ Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

“What we'll do,” Ray Jr. heard his father say, “is take a lady who has never had anything special happen and grant her fondest wish. We’ll give her some prizes, too, and a new outfit. Then over to a swanky beauty salon to get her all fixed up and off for a night on the town.”

The show ran continuously on network radio and TV for the next 20 years, the obituary said.

“In its two decades on the air, emcee Jack Bailey crowned over 5,000 women as Queen and gave away more than $17 million in prizes—a staggering total even by today’s standards,” said the 952-word obituary published Sunday.

“Over 2 million people attended the ‘live’ broadcasts of the program, which originated from a Hollywood theatre-restaurant before a daily audience of 2,000.”

After his father’s death, Ray Morgan Jr. took over the show, which continued six more years on ABC-TV. Its last broadcast was in 1964.

Morgan then joined longtime friend and Los Angeles agency executive Robert F. Anderson as a Republican Party marketer.

An early supporter of the presidential candidacy of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, “Morgan was asked to produce a television documentary that would mark the difference between traditional American values and the ‘anything goes’ generation of the 1960s,” the obituary said.

“The result was Choice, a symbolic 30-minute blitzkrieg of sound bites, news file, still pictures and narrative over a hard-rock sound track. The tough and topical technique Choice used to define the good guys and hammer the bad would be considered mainstream today,” said the obituary. “In 1964 it was too far ahead of its time.”

According to the obituary, test screenings created such a furor that President Lyndon Johnson “hinted darkly there could be consequences for any TV station” that ran the film. “Goldwater himself declared Choice too controversial and canceled prime time showings already scheduled on every major network,” the obituary said.

In 1978, it said, “Ray Morgan declared Los Angeles ‘uninhabitable,’ sold his advertising agency, acquired a fledgling orange grove in North San Diego County and was a hands on grower for Sunkist for the next 20 years.”

He retired to Del Mar in 1998 but still kept the Queen for a Day concept alive, leading to a one-hour special on Lifetime Television in May 2005.

In October 2007, Morgan sold the rights to the title and concept Queen For A Day to former Univision President Michael Wortsman, the obituary said.

A multinational version of the show is planned for world release.

Ray Morgan Jr. is survived by his wife of 35 years, Mickie; and stepsons Steve Eck of Roseville and Jeff Eck of Yorba Linda. Interment will be at Forest Lawn in Glendale. A private funeral is planned but a memorial service is pending, the obituary said.