On New Year’s Eve, a day after his untimely death at the theater, a sold-out crowd stood and sang Happy Birthday one last time to Ted Morris, owner of the Crown Uptown Dinner Theatre in Wichita for the past 32 years. He would have been 71 years old Jan. 1.
Morris’s ties reach back to El Dorado. He lived here from 1970 to 1976, serving as the president of the Chamber of Commerce and as a member of the Lions Club and First United Methodist Church. He also purchased Kirby Funeral Home, along with his brother Dick Morris, in 1970.
While he lived in El Dorado, he formed a group called the Crown Players, which met in a basement of a Wichita church. They performed at various locations, including doing melodramas at Cowtown.
“That was his hobby almost eight years,” Dick said.
Then in 1976, he partnered with Dick and some other people in the community who helped him buy the old theater, where he opened the Crown Uptown.
He got his love of the theater from his mother.
“When Ted was 5 years old, mother was a good piano player, and Ted would dress up like a little soldier and sing ‘Remember Pearl Harbor,’” Dick recalled. They performed throughout Butler County and some surrounding counties.
His mother also was one of the first performers to take the stage at the theater that was there before Crown Uptown.
Over the years he touched numerous lives. When one of the original Crown Players put together a list of people who Ted had helped in the theater it totaled 9,000, many of whom went on to Broadway.
“He just loved it,” Dick said.
Ted also had written a number of children’s shows that play all over the United States.
“He’s received a lot of awards,” Dick said.
Butler Community College Theater Instructor Bob Peterson didn’t know Ted personally, but he knew of his impact in theater.
“He made a major impression on the theater scene,” Peterson said, “not only in Wichita, but Southeast Kansas. I think the Crown Uptown was a major tourist attraction in Wichita.”
Ted’s love of the theater also impacted the rest of his family.
“Ted and his theatrical abilities kind of brought it out in everyone else,” said Linda Harmon, Ted’s sister. “I was kind of a shy person when I was younger and the fun of theater brought it out in all of us.”
