Ted Morgan, 91, writer who straddled two cultures

Ted Morgan, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and prolific author of acclaimed nonfiction books who renounced his noble French title in favor of a conventional all-American name, died Wednesday in a nursing home in New York City. He was 91.

The cause was complications of dementia, his daughter, Amber de Gramont, said.

As he straddled two cultures, Mr. Morgan experienced enough adventures for two lifetimes, including a half-dozen wars, near death from thirst while crossing the Sahara, and waterfront saloon brawls. Many of these ordeals found their way into his journalism and a score of books, as did more intellectually exciting episodes.

Whether writing under his aristocratic French name, Sanche de Gramont, or his adopted American one — “Ted Morgan” is an anagram of “de Gramont” — Mr. Morgan covered topics as varied as opera; advertising; the police; Nazi war criminals; laid-back California living; the legal aspects of pornography; and politics, both in the United States and abroad.

As he demonstrated in biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, Mr. Morgan did not hesitate to tackle subjects that had already been plumbed by authors with more scholarly credentials. But few writers could assemble dry facts and telling details with more gusto and brio.

Recounting the oft-told story of young Churchill’s bold flight from a prison camp during the Boer War for his book “Churchill: Young Man in a Hurry 1874-1915,” published in 1982, Mr. Morgan pointed out that the escape plan was devised by two of Churchill’s fellow prisoners, whom he left behind.

“One is tempted to say that it would have been hard to mess up one of the more dramatic careers of the 20th century,” Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in a New York Times review. “But a life so full could easily have meandered into tedium, and this almost never happens in Morgan’s treatment.”

In his 1978 autobiography, “On Becoming American,” Mr. Morgan wrote about his New World conversion and flaunted his own foibles and biases. “Much more than my name has changed,” he wrote. By taking up American citizenship, he claimed to have shed his European elitism for egalitarian principles. Mr. Morgan preferred McDonald’s hamburgers and California wines to de Gramont’s coq au vin and French vintages.

Ted Morgan was born Sanche Charles Armand Gabriel de Gramont in Geneva on March 30, 1932. He was the descendant of hereditary French dukes and counts going back three centuries. His father, Count Gabriel Antoine Armand de Gramont, had moved temporarily from Paris and sold luxurious Bugatti automobiles in Geneva while preparing for his entrance exams for the French diplomatic service. His mother, Mariette Negroponte, was born in Greece. He had two younger brothers, George and Patrick.

In 1937, the family moved to Washington, where his father was an official at the French Embassy. Two years later, on the eve of World War II, they returned to Paris. When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, the count sent his family back to the United States by way of Spain and Portugal, while he escaped to Britain and joined the Royal Air Force. After a number of bombing missions over Germany, he was killed during a training flight in 1943.

Sanche de Gramont, who inherited his father’s title, grew up between American and French identities. He dropped out of the Sorbonne in Paris and finished his studies at Yale in the 1950s. Drafted by the French army in 1955, the young count spent most of his two-year stint in the Algerian war for independence as a lieutenant in a combat regiment. In “My Battle of Algiers” (2006), he recounted atrocities — some of which he witnessed — committed by both sides.

Returning to the United States, he was a reporter for The Worcester Telegram and worked for the Associated Press before joining The New York Herald Tribune. His breakthrough moment came on the night of March 4, 1960. A call from an editor alerted him that Leonard Warren, a celebrated baritone, had just died during a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” at the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Morgan, who at the time was still writing as de Gramont, rushed to the opera house and quickly pieced together a detailed account of the death. His coverage earned de Gramont the Pulitzer Prize.

In the ensuing years, he pursued a wide range of interests, both as a journalist and as the author of books about France and Africa.

Even before becoming a US citizen in 1977, Mr. Morgan twice wed American women. His first marriage, to Margaret Kinnicutt, ended in divorce in 1968. He and his second wife, poet Nancy Ryan, had a son, Gabriel, and a daughter, Amber, before divorcing in 1980. Six years later, he married Eileen Bresnahan. In addition to his daughter and son, Mr. Morgan is survived by his wife and four grandchildren.