Dennis Morgan & Jack Carson

Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson in Two Guys From Texas

At the outset of the 1940s, good friends and actors Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson found their individual careers were on the rise. Each had begun acting in movies during the 1930s (early on, Dennis Morgan appeared in the credits, when he received credit for his minor roles, with some variation on the name he was born with: Earl Stanley Morner), and each would continue in separate screen appearances well into the 1950s and beyond. But it was in the 1940s and only in the 1940s, that their off-screen friendship merged with their on-screen characters when they appeared together as a team in 11 feature-length films. Three of these films cast the duo as themselves (Thank Your Lucky Stars, Hollywood Canteen, and It’s a Great Feeling), and, in another film (Always Together), their contributions come not very much as a team, but in separate tongue-in-cheek cameos. Still, the remaining seven films from their collaborative efforts do feature them side by side, fully playing off one another’s complementary personas: Mr. Morgan playing the suave, debonair ladies’ man; Mr. Carson the slightly buffoonish, sometimes tragic, often-times comedic relief.

Here is a list of their collaborations:

Wings for the Eagle (1942)
The Hard Way (1943)
Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
Shine on Harvest Moon (1944)
Hollywood Canteen (1944)
Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946)
One More Tomorrow (1946)
The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946)
Always Together (1947)
Two Guys from Texas (1948)
It’s a Great Feeling (1949)

Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan in Two Guys From Milwaukee

The wonderfully cute and ingratiating character actor S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall can be credited as a third member of this team by virtue of his appearances in five of the movies listed above: Thank Your Lucky Stars, Hollywood Canteen, Shine on Harvest Moon, The Time, the Place, and the Girl, and Two Guys From Milwaukee.

S.Z. Sakall, Dennis Morgan, and Jack Carson in Two Guys From Milwaukee (also pictured are Rosemary DeCamp and Patti Brady)