Singer and Broadway star Jane Morgan was quick to answer — at the age of 100 — what she thought was the secret to her long life.

“Wearing 30-pound dresses and 4-inch heels, I’d say that’s what’s kept me alive,” Morgan told the Press Herald in June 2024. “I had to walk around on stage all night wearing those heavy gowns. But I just kept working and working and working, because I really enjoyed it.”

Morgan, who spent summers at her Kennebunkport home for decades, died Monday in Naples, Florida. She was 101. Her family said Morgan “passed away peacefully in her sleep,” according to an obituary released by Michelle Bega, a family representative.

During a long career dating to the 1940s, she sang in nightclubs in both the U.S. and France, performed in Broadway shows, recorded hit records, sang in front of six presidents and was a guest on TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show” dozens of times. Her most popular recording, “Fascination,” was released in 1957 and reached the top 10 on several pop music charts of the day.

Last year, Morgan talked about her long career during an interview with a Press Herald reporter at her home in Kennebunkport. A few days later, she did the same onstage at the Ogunquit Playhouse, as part of an event to celebrate her 100th birthday where she was interviewed by Brad Kenney, the theater’s executive artistic director. Some of her life-extending gowns were on display as well.

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Morgan’s start in show business included working at the Kennebunkport Playhouse, which her brother Robert Currier opened in the early 1930s. At first, she washed dishes and helped actresses get dressed. She eventually started singing and acting in productions at the Kennebunkport Playhouse and came back from time to time once she had launched her own successful singing career, before it closed in 1971.

Morgan recorded 42 albums and songs of all genres, including “A Girl Named Johnny Cash” in 1970, an answer song to country star Cash’s song “A Boy Named Sue” that she also performed on Cash’s TV show the next year. She also had lead roles in many stage and Broadway musicals,  including “Can-Can,” “Kiss Me Kate,” “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “Mame.” She was on the “Ed Sullivan Show” 50 times and in 2011 was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In the mid-60s, she married film and TV producer Jerry Weintraub. Living in California, she cut back substantially on her performances by the early 1970s, largely to care for the couple’s children.

Kenney on Wednesday lauded Morgan’s generosity, calling her one of the Ogunquit Playhouse’s “biggest philanthropists.” He said as a performer, the variety of things she accomplished was amazing.

“My parents would know her from Ed Sullivan and we all know ‘Fascination,’  but she was also an icon of the Paris cabaret scene and she was fiercely proud of her work on Broadway,” said Kenney. “Maine has lost a treasure. She was firmly ours even though she gave herself to the world.”

Kenney said he was impressed at how quick and sharp Morgan was at 100, around the time of her birthday event. He said he asked Morgan if she’d like to know the questions he planned to ask her on stage, and she replied, “No, just throw them at me.”

Morgan had spent summers in Maine since childhood and had been in the same Kennebunkport house since 1957. Although she had lived all over the world, she told the Press Herald last year she considered Maine home.

“I fell in love with Maine as a little girl, and it just became home,” Morgan said. “My husband, my kids, all loved coming here and had a wonderful time here. I love to fish, casting flies. But I can fish with worms, too.”