REX MORGAN, 67, TV PERSONALITY DURING THE '60S:- Friday, February 24, 1989

Rex S. Morgan Sr., 67, the robust, red-haired Channel 6 personality who hosted a morning television show during the 1960s with his homespun humor and an indolent basset hound, died Tuesday at the Fairfax (Va.) Nursing Center after complications from Parkinson's syndrome.

In an era with greater emphasis on local programming, Mr. Morgan was the easy-mannered anchor of Morgan in the Morning, an hourlong show that featured everything from celebrity interviews and nightclub acts to brief newscasts and daily exercise routines.

Although set in what was sometimes called "Morganville," the show's focus was indisputably Philadelphia.

Taped at studios at 46th and Market Streets, the program included interviews with hundreds of personalities during the several years it aired. And ever-present while Mr. Morgan interviewed mayors and educators and civic leaders was Horatio, his sleepy-eyed, long-eared hound who dozed off wherever he saw fit.

With a humor likened to comedian Herb Shriner's, Mr. Morgan made fun of the dog, talked to his audience, interviewed people, enjoyed his time in the footlights.

"He was an extrovert of the first order," said Jack Steck, who was his producer. "He was as much Mr. Show Business as he could ever be without ever being in theater. He was ham enough so that if you opened the refrigerator door and the lights went on, he would take a bow.

"If I had to say one thing about him, I'd say that he was a big lovable kid who never grew up," Steck said.

A figure in Philadelphia television from 1961 to 1969 - working for what was then WFIL-TV - Mr. Morgan at one time hosted a children's program called Ranger Rex, taped at a farm in Newtown Square, and often filled in for host Sally Starr on Popeye Theater when she was vacationing.

But Mr. Morgan's was a diverse career, one that had taken him through three hitches in the military, a race for Congress, a job cremating the bodies of Nazi war criminals, acting in movies and a collection of hobbies that ranged

from antique cars to aviation.

As a teenager, Mr. Morgan's athletic abilites enabled him to make all-state in football, wrestling and track at West High School in Denver, Colo. So respected was his talent that he was recruited by George Munger, the head football coach at the University of Pennsylvania then.

Mr. Morgan recalled the conversation to an interviewer for Soldiers magazine in 1975:

"Hello, Rex. This is George Munger."

"Who?"

"George Munger, I'm coach at Penn."

"State Pen?"

"No, University of Pennsylvania."

"Where's that?"

"Philadelphia."

"Where's that?"

Mr. Morgan later boarded a train to Philadelphia and started on Penn's varsity football and wrestling teams and ran track, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. He went to Europe in 1942 with the Army as commander of a graves-registration company.

The assignment led to his spending the post-war years establishing mortuaries in Germany and earning a reputation as "the Army's chief mortician."

It also led to being on duty for the Nuremberg trials. Mr. Morgan was assigned to assist the Army hangman, Master Sergeant John O. Woods, carry out executions of Nazi war criminals, who included Julius Streicher, gauleiter of Franconia and editor of the Nazi paper, Der Sturmer.

Mr. Morgan recalled to an interviewer that Streicher hestitated before his execution, then swiftly saluted and cried "Heil Hitler."

But the experience left him memories of the famous as well as the infamous. Mr. Morgan was given the honor of helping to prepare the remains of General George S. Patton after he was killed in a 1945 car accident.

It was 1947 by the time Mr. Morgan returned to Penn, and played on Penn's undefeated 1947 football team, although he was not able to be a major force on it. And during practices he tried to put to use the talent for hypnosis he had acquired in Europe.

Chuckling while he used his tricks on teammates like Chuck Bednarik and George Savitsky, Mr. Morgan only stopped after Munger had a father-son chat with him.

His popularity on campus and wartime adventures earned Mr. Morgan a following of sorts, too. Indeed, he later became the namesake for the comic strip, Rex Morgan, M.D., created by two Temple University graduates who remembered Mr. Morgan and named the strip after him.

After graduating from college in 1948 - and earning the "spoon award" for ranking at the top of his class - Mr. Morgan began a second Army career. Sent to Korea as a graves-registration officer, he instead found himself as the 45th Division's supply officer, supervising an ice cream plant.

"As the troops wearied of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, I started pouring in everything I had - asparagus, beet, succotash, split pea. Some were very good . . . some aaaggghh!" he told Soldiers magazine.

Mr. Morgan was serving as public-information officer of the Army Air Defense Command when he encountered his first try at television. A guest host of the nightly Tom Duggan show in Los Angeles, he was an instant success. It started a string of television appearances that led Mr. Morgan back to Philadelphia.

"His gift was an extraordinary ability to make people laugh," recalled Ed Rendell, former district attorney, who became a friend of Mr. Morgan's. "He had an incredibly effective self-deprecating sense of humor, and he could always just make you laugh."

A resident of St. Davids and Newtown Square while in the Philadelphia area, Mr. Morgan in 1974 ran a quixotic campaign for Congress in the Fifth Congressional District, but lost to Rep. Richard Schultz.

Over the years, Mr. Morgan also hosted Morgan at the Movies, interviewing a string of stars, including John Wayne, Jack Benny and Jerry Lewis. He had minor roles in several television programs and movies, including What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?

Mr. Morgan moved to Arlington, Va., in 1975, and took on a third hitch in the Army as a speechwriter and information specialist in the office of the Chief of Army Reserve.

After retiring in 1979, he volunteered with the Republican National Committee, helping on the campaigns of President Reagan and President Bush.

"The way he looked at everything in life was to have fun with what you're doing. He just enjoyed the hell out of everything he did," said his son, Rex Jr.

Surviving are his wife of 40 years, Luella Harris Morgan; daughters, Elizabeth Neal and Bronwyn; son, Rex Jr., and two grandchildren.

Services are at 2 p.m. today at the Fort Myers Chapel in Arlington, Va. Interment is at Arlington National Cemetery.∼Rex Morgan was a kid's host for WFIL-TV in Philadelphia around 1960. Worked at WFIL with Sally Starr, Chief Halftown and Gene London. For awhile, Rex Morgan lived in Echo Valley, Pa.