Pamela Morgan: Some Like It Really Hot
By Linda Lee–
There is a wealth of talent in the Hamptons. A next-door neighbor might be a lawyer, an architect, a Wall Street bro, a Broadway pro or a gardener with a TV show. It’s sometimes easy to guess that gorgeous women at cocktail parties are arm candy for billionaires, or on a reality TV show. But you could be wrong.
That classy blonde in New York, Palm Beach and Hamptons? Pamela Morgan built a lifestyle brand called Flirting with Flavors, after founding and selling her Manhattan catering company in 2001. She went on to publish her cookbook “Flirting with Flavors” with Viking and today shares recipes, tips on entertaining and inspiration about style across social media. And she cooks, both in the kitchen and on stage.
Pamela Morgan with her Bernadoodle, Remi. (Photo credit: David Hochberg)
How can one person do so many things so well?
The answer is the same as how you get to Carnegie Hall: Lessons, practice and lots of hard work.
Think of the shows you have missed so far this summer. Get yourself in gear, friend!
Pamela Morgan is doing a new and revised cabaret act on August 23 to the “Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea Cabaret Series” at LTV studios. You know, that program with the jazz singer who is always on tour Ann Hampton Callaway, and the Broadway star Donna McKechnie.
How can one person do so many things so well?
The answer is the same as how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Lots of work.
It All Started in Texas
The Wichita Falls Times covered Pamela Morgan, 17, on the local and state level.
Pamela Morgan was a straight A student in Wichita Falls, Texas, where she was born. Her father, Robert T. Morgan, was in the oil business, and her mother, Betty, a teacher. Pamela was first runner up in the state-wide Junior Miss contest. Besides singing songs in three languages: English, French (“Dominique-nique-nique” of course) and Spanish, she wowed the judges with her Plan-a-party scheme. She proposed a Hootenanny where guests would wear costumes, bring pots, pans and spoons (to bang along with the folk music), husk corn and eat chili and burgers.
You can see the dual threads of Pamela Morgan’s life right there, at age 17: party planning and singing. But first she went to the University in Austin, TX, where she majored in psychology, minored in dance, and flirted with being a hippie. “We went swimming in the lakes in the hill country all the time,” she told me. “In the nude.” The 70s, right?
In a “Flirting With Flavors” short, Morgan demonstated a better wedge salad using a leafy iceberg lettece, as grown in her home garden.
The minor in dance called her to New York. The stage. She found an apartment right away. (In the 1970s that was easy; no one wanted to live in New York.) But she also had to find work.
“When I came to New York, I wanted to do voice overs. But they told me I couldn’t have an accent.” First a voice coach so she could get rid of her Texas twang. Then she worked with actng coaches to learn how to interpret characters, and access genuine emotion. She took dance classes to learn how to move and express her feelings through movement. And she learned to be comfortble in front of a camera — “Today everyone is on camera all the time” she says, referring to cell phones — and on stage.
A right of passage: getting a head shot.
Think of that time in theater in New York. It was no longer all “Long Days’ Journey Into Night” and “The Cherry Orchard.”
It was “Hair” – where the actors wrote the show. “Chicago,” Fosse’s jazz dance on stage. She wanted to be Up There and she was.
She Was in “A Chorus Line” — On the Road
She started her theatrical career as “Kristine, the girl who can’t sing,” in “A Chorus Line.” The road company.
She went to auditions, she worked in commercials and ads. She booked industrial shows, usually with a song and dance. She did Pepsi in Vegas. It was singing, it was dancing, but it wasn’t Broadway. She did things for Dr. Pepper, home pregnancy tests, Life Savers, blue jeans. The legitimate stage seemed further and further away. So at night she cooked, at first for her friends and then for others.
“I knew young bachelors who wanted to entertain, so I started making precooked meals that they could heat up for, let’s say, a romantic dinner at home.”
“My mother was an incredible southern Lady,” she says. “She loved to set a beautiful table. Her home had beautiful china and glassware. She had teas and wonderful dinners.”
In a “Flirting with Flavors” video she gives lessons on cooking a perfect steak, including how to know if it is rare, medium or well done. (It has nothing to do with your cheek, forehead or tip of your nose.)
In fact, her mother was on the hospitality committee for the Wichita Falls symphony orchestra. Her parents had a sophisticated candle-lit wedding in El Paso, with a dinner table set with silver, then spent three weeks in Sun Valley.
Just because it was Texas doesn’t mean it was all Yee-ha and cowboy hats. Her mother’s family had come from Hungary. Pamela Morgan says, “My father fell in love with her instantly, and he instantly moved her to Wichita Falls.”
There were three children. The relatives in El Paso were not forgotten. “The three of us kids, we would get in the car during Christmas break and then be driven eight hours to El Paso,” she says.
“My mother made simple food, fried chicken. Soups. Oh, her lettuce and grapefruit salad with poppyseed dressing — I have that in my cookbook. Her cakes and cookies were fantastic. Pecan sandies. Angel food cakes with a whipped cream frosting that had coffee and maple syrup in it.”
Her Catering Business Was a Success
She expanded her catering business. For a while she worked at the Silver Palate, where she met the co-author of her book. Her catering business went on until 2001, until she sold it. She still has her lifestyle company. And through it all, she never forgot about singing and dancing.
Two numbers on the 23rd of August, which you will hear if you hurry up and buy tickets – the price includes an open bar and passed hors d’oeuvres after the show with her and her guests – are such songs as “I Can Cook Too,” from “On the Town,” and Harry Connick Jr.’s “Recipe for Love.”
Pam with the chef and friend David Burke discussing crab cakes on “Flirting With Flavors,” which can be found on YouTube.
Some People Are Born To Be On Stage
Since 2018, Pamela Morgan has focused on her cabaret act, which she has never performed in the Hamptons. In 2018, she did “One Singular Sensation” in New York with the wonderful Mark Nadler about her journey from Texas to New York City. (By the way, Mark Nadler will be on stage at LTV the night before her; you should buy tickets for his show as well!)
Pam’s “One Singular Sensation” sold out six solid performances at the Laurie Beechman Theater on 42nd Street in Manhattan.
Last summer she was back at the Beechman with “Girl Talk,” similarly successful. The show on the 23rd will be different. It’s called “What’s Cooking?” and again Mark Nadler will be directing. It will talk about, of course, Pamela’s lifelong passion for food and the joy of entertaining friends.
“Girl Talk,” the sold out caberet series Pam did on 42nd Street last year.
And now, let’s do real Girl talk. Her makeup. She came to New York in the 1970s; we can count. But in all these pictures, no matter who the photographer is, she never looks bad. In fact, she seems to keep looking better. Her secret?
“I’ve been doing the same makeup for years. Clinique Even Better. I just love it. I use their base and their blush, but I’m a real minimalist. Blush with a light hand. I do my own makeup.”
What’s special? Lash extensions. “I do love my lash extensions.” In the Hamptons, it’s by Jessie at Blue Ocean Spa.
You will notice she has stunning fingernails. She will only reveal that she goes to the Vietnamese woman at Kay Nail salon in Palm Beach. OK, enough girl talk.
She enjoys her life right now. Hamptons in the summer. She sees her son, his wife and her grandchildren in Aspen. There is Palm Beach in the winter. She loves New York City. She has friends in all those places. She has her cabaret performances, social media and television appearances, and she cooks. She’s got her Bernadoodle. She is in good health. She takes dance classes and works out.
Perforrming in Maanhattan earlier this year at a kickoff for Hamptons Summer Songbook by the Sea.
When you see her on the stage, singing about love, you see a happy, vital, feminine woman, a sexy woman.
“When we sing love songs,” she says, speaking of cabaret artists, “we still think about ourselves as girls. It’s coming from inside. You can always reach back and find those feelings.”
That’s not acting, folks. It’s not something they teach you. It brings you to tears. And cheers.
Linda Lee was a writer and editor at “The New York Tines”
