Morgan White (July 25, 1924 – September 2, 2010) was an American

radio disc jockey The history of radio disc jockeys covers the time when gramophone records were first transmitted by experimental radio broadcasters to present day radio personalities who host shows featuring a variety of recorded music. For a number of decades ...

and

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

Early life

White was born in

Monroe, Utah Monroe is a city in Sevier County, Utah, United States. The population was 2,256 at the 2010 United States Census. Geography Monroe is located in rural central Utah. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 3.5 ...

, attended and graduated from

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public land-grant research university in Logan, Utah. It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. With nearly 20,000 students living on or near campus, USU is Utah's ...

, was member of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian Christian church that considers itself to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The c ...

Career and film information

From 1955 to 1965, White, using the stage name Pogo Poge, was a popular radio DJ at KIMN AM 950 in Denver, hosting the "Coca-Cola Hi-Fi Club" popular with teens and has been described in a 1984 Denver Post column as "Denver’s favorite disc jockey ever". There are conflicting reports about the stage name - whether he hopped a pogo stick from Denver to Boulder or in Utah, but he also embarked on various other more outrageous promotional stunts: sitting atop a flagpole at a used car lot for days, record for sitting on a Ferris Wheel, broadcasting from a snake pit in a Zale's Jewelers store window for two weeks. KIMN was admitted to the

Colorado Music Hall of Fame The Colorado Music Hall of Fame is a museum located in the Trading Post at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. The Colorado Music Hall of Fame inducted its first honorees in 2011, with songwriter John Denver and the Red Rocks Amphitheatre as its first honoree ...

in September 2012. White left Denver for Hawaii and continued working as a DJ at radio station

KGMB KGMB (channel 5) is a television station in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States, serving the Hawaiian Islands as an affiliate of CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside NBC affiliate KHNL (channel 13) and Kailua-Kona–licensed Telemundo affi ...

, also under the stage name Pogo Poge, becoming the #1 mid-day DJ. White is best known to a generation of

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

viewers as Pogo in the locally produced ''Checkers & Pogo'' show, which ran from 1967 to 1982 and was produced by

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

. Jim Hawthorne played the first Checkers. ''Checkers & Pogo'' is considered the longest-running, most successful children's show in Hawaii. In addition to performing, White also wrote and produced several episodes of the daily show. He was the only original member of the series, outlasting the three actors who played Checkers during its run. In addition to the ''Checkers & Pogo'' show, White had a minor role as the attorney general in six ''

Hawaii Five-O Hawaii Five-O or Hawaii Five-0 may refer to: * ''Hawaii Five-0'' (2010 TV series), an American action police procedural television series * ''Hawaii Five-O'' (1968 TV series), an American police procedural drama series produced by CBS Productio ...

'' episodes.

Personal life and death

After the show ended, White retired to farm in

Sevier Sevier ( ) is an unincorporated community in southwestern Sevier County, Utah, United States. It lies in the valley of the Sevier River along U.S. Route 89 southwest of the city of Richfield, the county seat of Sevier County. Its elevation is ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. He died in Utah at the age of 86 on September 2, 2010.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Morgan 1924 births 2010 deaths American male television actors American radio personalities Latter Day Saints from Utah Male actors from Hawaii People from Honolulu County, Hawaii Male actors from Utah People from Monroe, Utah