What the Hell Happened to Cindy Morgan?

https://lebeauleblog.com/2020/01/21/what-the-hell-happened-to-cindy-morgan/

You may not know Cindy Morgan by name, but odds are you are familiar with at least one of her movies. In the early eighties, Morgan delivered an impressive one-two punch by appearing in Caddyshack and Tron. Those two movies more or less comprise her filmography. Morgan continued to work in television but her movie career stalled almost immediately.

What the hell happened?

Morgan’s first movie was a little-seen 1979 sex comedy alternately titled Up Yours or Up Your Ladder. Her real movie debut was one year later in the golf comedy, Caddyshack. Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Ted Knight starred as members of an uptight country club and Bill Murray played a goofy groundskeeper.

The script, as written, focused on the young caddies played by Michael O’Keefe, Sarah Holcomb and Scott Colomby, but first-time director Harold Ramis encouraged his cast to improvise. When he realized that his two biggest stars, Chase and Murray, didn’t share a scene, they wrote one on the fly.

Caddyshack was shot over 11 weeks at the Rolling Hills golf club in Florida. By all accounts, it was an unconventional shoot. According to Chase “It was pretty f—— nuts on that set. At night, we would race golf carts down the fairways, people whacked out having a good time. The crew possessed whatever you needed.”

Executive producer Jon Peters wanted Bo Derek for the part of Lacey Underall. But co-writer Brian Doyle-Murray wanted an unkown for the part. Producer and co-writer Doug Kenney read lines with a lot of hopeful actresses including Morgan.

“I was nervous when I went in to read for Lacey Underall, but I told myself, I just need to focus on one thing—whoever I’m reading with, I have to make him sweat. I read with Doug Kenney, and when I saw a little trickle of sweat come down the side of his face, I knew I got the job.”

As a novice actress, Morgan initially had trouble finding her character. For inspiration, Kenney had her watch To Have and Have Not starring Humphery Bogart and Lauren Bacall. “At one point she (Bacall) turns to Bogart and says, ‘If you need me whistle. You know how to whistle don’t you – you put your lips together and blow.’ And then I understood what Doug wanted.”

Coming from a background in broadcast, Morgan had difficulty adapting to the loosey goosey approach on Caddyshack. The lead to a fight between Morgan and Chase when she felt her costar was improvising too much. “I was not in a lovey-dovey mood, and he sure challenged me. I was mad at him. He spilled all that oil on my back, and that wasn’t supposed to happen. He was trying to make me mad. Chevy was challenging me while the camera was running.”

“The piano scene wasn’t even discussed. Harold Ramis told me to come sit down next to Chevy at the piano. When I looked up I saw the camera was on and I thought ‘oh my god they’re shooting this’. So I took a shot of tequila that was atop the piano.”

During filming, Peters pressured Morgan into doing a topless love scene. Morgan resisted. Ramis said he didn’t want to force the issue, but “Jon Peters said, ‘Put her on the phone, let me talk to her for a sec.’ When she got off, she said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I asked, ‘What did he say?’ And she said, “‘He told me if I didn’t do it, I’d never work again.’

Peters confirmed his role in the story. “She was definitely pressured to do the nude scene by me. The producer side of me was like, How can we not have a nude scene?”

But it didn’t stop there. Peters decided he could get more publicity for the movie of Morgan posed nude for Playboy. “All of a sudden they tell me they are sending a Playboy photographer down to do a shoot of the scene. I was absolutely furious so I called my agent. He said ‘Honey, you’re not a doe-eyed girl from the Midwest, handle it.’ I had to stop the filming. They actually sent the photographer, but no shoot was done.”

Peters was furious. He took petty revenge. Morgan had been promised a special credit “Introducing Cindy Morgan” on Caddyshack. That was gone. And then Peters lost her invitation to the movie’s premiere. Kenney rectified that situation by sending Morgan a couple of first class tickets to New York for the screening.”

“I saw Jon Peters at the popcorn stand and walked up and said ‘Jon, what are you doing here?’ and popcorn went flying everywhere – that alone was worth the trip.”

As satisfying as it must have been to thwart Peters’ petty plot, the producer ultimately got his way. Morgan said she didn’t work for a long time after her experiences on Caddyshack. “I had more lunches with agents at William Morris than I had auditions.”