Don Murray

This man will be 92 years old at the end of this month and he's still working!  How impressive.  His first four films are some of his best and he continued to do rather high profile ones through the mid-60s.  And then what happened?  Something did because the quality of the work offered to him diminished.   I think the answer is as old as Hollywood and we'll discuss.

He was never one to particularly toot his own horn.  He eschewed publicity because he was more of a private person who wanted to be respected for his work.  During his five-year marriage to Hope Lange, however, flashbulbs were always popping and their names appeared in all the newspaper columns that cared what movie stars were up to.  I suspect, however, the attention had more to do with her than him.

Don Murray was born in Hollywood in 1929 although he has always considered himself a New Yorker.  Showbiz was in his blood as the only child of a father who was a Hollywood dance director and then a Broadway stage manager and a mother who was a former Ziegfeld girl.  In a musical presentation at age four, he kissed a girl and the audience laughed and applauded and young Murray was on his way.

In high school he was a jock and was also part of the glee club and worked in student government, the latter forming a lifelong interest in government, particularly Democratic politics with a special interest in the disenfranchised.

After high school he turned down some college scholarships to enroll in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.  He made his stage debut in 1951 in Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo as the daughter's suitor.

Soon thereafter he received his draft notice but as a member of the pacifist Brethren Church he registered as a conscientious objector.  As a result he was assigned to help orphans and other war casualties in Europe.  

After returning to New York in 1954, while performing in The Skin of Our Teeth, director Joshua Logan spotted him and gave him the male lead opposite Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop (1956).  Murray's hiring also required that he sign a contract with 20th Century Fox.  Not only was it Murray's first film, it was also the debut of Lange whom Murray married during the production.

With Hope Lange

Murray plays Bo Decker, an innocent, lovesick cowboy stubbornly determined to win the love of an emotional saloon singer while he works the rodeo circuit in Arizona.  The pre-production publicity was astronomical because Monroe went public about how much she wanted the role and I bought into it all.  And yet I was disappointed.

For one thing, MM said she wanted it, in part, because she was looking for an out from the blonde bimbo roles.  I never complained about those roles but as I saw it, this was simply one more.  But my chief complaint at the time was Murray.  His character drove me nuts with the loudness, frenetic energy and general obnoxiousness and while he may have been lovesick, he is a stalker.

Unfortunately I didn't care much for Murray at this point but came to realize it was Bo Decker that was the culprit.  Now, years later, I feel much different about Bus Stop and though I don't consider it a great film, I have enjoyed it more in subsequent showings.  And I did come to enjoy Murray in all of his best films.  

DM & MM

Murray received his only Oscar nomination for this film.  He was clearly the male star and one wonders why his nomination was in the supporting actor category.  It seems to me that supporting actor means either one supports another male listed higher in the cast or one's role is very small.  Neither is the case here.  He also lost to Anthony Quinn for Lust for Life who didn't deserve it.

I have always wanted to know why the Murray-Lange marriage ended.  Despite my penchant for sleuthing I have never heard a solitary word.  I thought they seemed so suited to one another.  Their Hollywood ascent had such similarities and their careers were moving along at roughly the same pace so I ruled out professional jealousy.  Both under contract to Fox, the giant publicity machine kicked into high gear and they enjoyed a period of being Tinseltown's newest darlings.  Their divorce was also quiet and I never heard either one badmouth the other.

During their brief marriage the pair founded a refugee camp in Sardinia, the land purchased with their own funds.  They built a free and safe community that still thrives to this day.  He visited it a few years ago.

Murray was loaned to United Artists in 1957 to work for Burt Lancaster's production company to make The Bachelor Party (1957).  In a searing look at a boys-will-be-boys celebration, Murray is top-billed as a reserved, married bookkeeper who is among those surprised at his own behavior.  It is directed by the brilliant Daniel Mann and written by that dedicated wordsmith Paddy Chayefsky.  The film has slipped out of the public consciousness and that's a damned shame.  It is the movie that caused me to sit up and take a good look at this man's acting prowess.

Murray's stroke of luck working with great directors continued with Fred Zinnemann in another bold piece of cinema... A Hatful of Rain (1957).  He inherited the role played by Ben Gazzara on the stage.  It is a harrowing work about a married man's descent into heroin and the effect it has on his family... Eva Marie Saint as his wife, Tony Franciosa as his brother and Lloyd Nolan as his horrible father.  It is a depressing film but a story that even today deserves to be told and see some great performances at the same time.

The actor then worked in his first western, From Hell to Texas (1958) for veteran hardass director Henry Hathaway.  Murray is a ranch hand who accidentally kills the boss's son.  He panics and runs off with some of the family (particularly an evil Dennis Hopper) hot on his trail.  While sheltering on another ranch, he falls in love with the owner's daughter (Diane Varsi) making his life even more complicated.  Again, it is a forgotten film and again that's too bad.  It is well written and directed and Murray looked good in the saddle.

Unfortunately his string of good luck would not last... in more ways than one.  He was still in the saddle.  The film is 1959's These Thousand Hills (love that title!) which I see as a soap opera western.  I've never thought it deserved the unkind things said about it but it doesn't warrant much applause either.  Murray plays a decent young cowpoke who comes into some money and indecently parlays it into becoming a wealthy man and he and Richard Egan wrestle over who's the baddest bad guy in the story.

Leading lady Lee Remick said it was the worst film she ever made.  Stuart Whitman didn't like being the third-billed male actor.  Egan was displeased because his part was a cookie-cutter bad guy and not the lead.  His fortunes would change later in the year, however, when he was top-billed in some little romantic opus called A Summer Place.

Murray, too, was not pleased with These Thousand Hills.  He and Fox were not having an easy time of it. He'd done such good work in quality films and likely joined the others thinking this was not a film they were proud of.  He must have been nervous about the company losing faith in him.  He began acting out.  One of the chief reasons why people stop working or stop doing important movies is because they are difficult.  Difficult usually means uncooperative and often temperamental.  He had his reasons. 

He began working in some of the top anthology television series and doing his usual good work.  He was glad that Fox agreed to loan him out to Marlon Brando's production company at United Artists to star opposite James Cagney in Shake Hands with the Devil (1959).

In 1921 Dublin as an Irish-American medical student, Murray gets drawn into the IRA battles with the Brits through his former professor (Cagney) who has questionable intentions.  Murray has long claimed to have loved working with the beloved older actor.  The film didn't interest me when it first came out but I finally got around to it and found it to be a very good historical action drama although Murray, Dana Wynter and Glynis Johns didn't have much of a chance sharing the screen with ye olde master.

Back at Fox relations got to the boiling point when he was given the second male lead in an Alan Ladd western, One Foot in Hell (1960).  I liked Ladd's colorful B westerns but this one wasn't one of his best.  Any actor like Murray who cared about doing good work in quality projects would have felt he had both feet in hell to be in such a film.  He was also completely aware that he was offered better projects away from the studio.  Their relationship was coming to an end but the studio took a dislike to Murray as much as he did with them.  I'm guessing they put the word out.  In a short time the course of his career was forever altered. 

The Hoodlum Priest (1961) is one of Murray's favorite movies.  He also produced it and had a hand in the screenplay.  It is a fictional story about a real-life priest who thought he would serve best by working with cons and ex-cons.  I have never cared for fictional stories about real-life people.  Seems a little mixed-up to me.  I thought it had its moments but by and large I didn't share Murray's enthusiasm for this rather hammy treatment.  I dunno... maybe I'd missed breakfast that day.

Murray greatly enjoyed working with Laughton

He joined an illustrious, all-star cast for the film I think was his best, Advise and Consent (1962).  Otto Preminger corralled Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Walter Pidgeon, Franchot Tone, Lew Ayres, Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Grizzard, Gene Tierney and even Betty White to tell one of the best films on U.S. politics.  With all these heavyweights, Murray has a key role as a new Secretary of State whose brief gay past may derail him and the president.  It was a good role for the actor and a damned good flick.

Another good role came in Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965) although it was not the male lead.  Directed by Robert Mulligan with a screenplay by Horton Foote, the same team responsible for To Kill a Mockingbird, the focus here is a young Texas couple (Lee Remick and Steve McQueen) trying to adjust to life and one another as the husband is released from prison. Murray plays a small town sheriff who tries to help them.  He is McQueen's boyhood pal and is in love with Remick.  Glenn Yarbrough's title song helps everyone get in the mood.

He has worked pretty steadily for the past 50+ years but in what?  He was the ape-hating governor in 1972's Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.  They apparently asked him back for another installment of the franchise and he said no.  He had a small role as a grandfather in 1986's Peggy Sue Got Married.  By and large, however, his films during this long time period are undistinguished, certainly below the standards that he once set for himself.

Obviously he would wind up on television.  He was a regular in several television series but we'll mention only three... The Outcasts (a good adult western in 1968 that only lasted one season), Knots Landing (which he quit after two seasons over a salary dispute) and Twin Peaks, 2017.  He was a guest star in scores of series and did some TV movies.

Murray has five children from two marriages.  A month after divorcing Lange, he wed Betty Murray whom he met while making Advise and Consent.  They are still married.

In researching this piece, I listened to some wonderful interviews he gave that are available on YouTube.  He seems like a nice guy.  I certainly enjoyed his early work.

One interviewer recently asked him how it felt to be 91.  The only thing, he said, is that now I don't run as fast as I did when I was 70.

Next posting:

A 1952 western that

masquerades as a film noir