Don Murray made his film debut in 1956 as a Marilyn Monroe-obsessed cowboy in Bus Stop, and went on to play numerous roles in film, television, and stage, including a priest, a drug addict, and a homosexual senator. He’s an actor next door. More than 60 years later, he passed away at the age of 94.
Her son Christopher confirmed the death but did not provide any other details.
In the post-war 1950s, when being sensitive, responsible and a “nice person” were important qualities for young people, Mr. Murray was a church-going pacifist who became a conscientious objector during the Korean War. became. He fulfilled his duty of service by working in refugee camps in Germany and Italy for $10 a month for two and a half years, helping orphans, wounded, and displaced people.
Returning from Europe in 1954, he settled into an acting career that focused on socially responsible themes. He appeared in a television drama about a lawyer serving indigent clients, and in the 1955 Broadway production of The Skin of Our Teeth, starring Helen Hayes and Mary. Martin.
Director Joshua Logan saw the film and cast Mr. Murray in “Bus Stop,” an adaptation of William Inge’s play about a singer chased by a cowpoke from a Phoenix clip joint to a snowbound Arizona bus stop. Casting was done. And the character’s flame kindles into a touching and humbling love. The film established Marilyn Monroe as a legitimate actress and Mr. Murray as an up-and-coming star.
“A great new actor in Don Murray plays the stupid, stubborn Poke, and the Broncos, the Blondes, and the Bastards intertwine beautifully, and Mr. Logan develops some booming comedy before building up to the romance,” said Bosley Crowther. I wrote it in a review. For the New York Times. “And the fact that she aptly but firmly summons the will and strength to humble him and make him say ‘please’, which is the whole point of her new performance. It’s proving your skills.”
Murray was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in “Bus Stop.” He has earned many other honors for his body of work, including more than 35 Hollywood films, approximately 25 television films, starring in television and stage productions, writing, directing, and producing films and television. earned numerous credits. However, he was never nominated for an Academy Award again.
His most famous early films also included “A Hatful of Rain” (1957), the story of a suffering drug addict who hides a secret from his wife, played by Eva Marie Saint. I am. Shake Hand with the Devil (1959), the story of the 1921 Irish Rebellion, also starring James Cagney. and “Delinquent Priest” (1961), about a Jesuit priest who counsels ex-convicts, for which Murray co-wrote the screenplay.
In 1961, Kew magazine noted that “Don came to be identified with social significance and what was called ‘reasonable’ film drama.” “He wouldn’t star in a drama that glorifies evil or glorifies violence.” “I’m not into that,” he says, “My pictures convey a message.” Although it is not necessary, do something has to be said. ”
Mr. Murray is remembered for Advice and Consent (1962), director Otto Preminger’s highly successful film adaptation of Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel set in the halls of the Capitol. played a role. Starring Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, and Walter Pidgeon. Murray played the role of a married U.S. senator who had a history of same-sex relationships and is threatened for voting in a Senate confirmation contest for Secretary of State.
Mr. Murray’s roles in Hollywood diminished in the late 1960s as his interest in television increased. His most notable role was in the ABC series “The Outcasts,” in which he and Otis Young starred as a team of post-Civil War bounty hunters. Mr. Young played the role of a former slave and Union soldier, and Mr. Murray played the role of a former slave. Slave owner and Confederate officer.
One of the first television shows to co-star blacks and whites, “The Outcasts” aired for 26 weeks in the 1968-1969 season. The show, which aired after the murders of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, was widely criticized at the time for its depiction of racial tension and violence. However, in later years it began to be seen in reruns and on home video, and was hailed as a forgotten masterpiece.
Mr. Murray co-wrote and directed the film “The Cross and the Switchblade” (1970), starring Pat Boone as a street preacher who leads two inner-city street gangsters to Christ. The role is based on the work of a real-life New York preacher. . “Is it convincing?” asked Howard Thompson in a review for the Times. “And how hard does it hit? Answer: Convincing and hard enough. I like it.”
From 1979 to 1981, Mr. Murray played husband and father Sid Fairgate on the long-running CBS primetime soap opera “Knots Landing.” He then returned to the screen, playing Brooke Shields in Endless Love (1981), Denzel Washington in License to Kill (1984) and Barbara in The Stepford Children (1987). -Co-starred with Eden and others.
Mr. Murray and Mr. Eden are the parents of three teenagers, a wealthy widowed lawyer and a divorced waitress, who marry and start a new life on the NBC series “Brand New Life” (1989). – 1990), they also co-starred. Living together in Bel Air, a wealthy enclave of Los Angeles, two families from contrasting social backgrounds intermingle, sparking conflict and comedy.
Mr. Murray, who looked lean and youthful for most of his life, continued to appear in films such as “Internet Love” (2000) and “Elvis Is Alive” (2001) into his 70s. After a 16-year hiatus, he returned in 2017 for eight episodes in Twin Peaks: The Return, the Showtime sequel to David Lynch’s 1990-91 ABC series. His character, Bushnell Mullins, was a Las Vegas insurance man who was constantly at odds with his clients and the authorities.
Donald Patrick Murray was born in Hollywood on July 31, 1929, one of three children of Dennis Murray and Ethel (Cook) Murray. His father was a singer and dancer, and his mother, a former Ziegfeld girl, had emigrated from New York to work in the talkie pictures, but returned to Broadway when the Great Depression subsided.
Don and his brothers, William and Etheline, grew up in the village of East Rockaway, Long Island. He was a star football and track athlete at East Rockaway High School, graduating in 1946. After graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan in 1948, he worked as a waiter and a house painter, and during the summer he worked as a stock actor, taking small roles. Part of the TV.
His first Broadway break was as a sailor in Tennessee Williams’ play The Rose Tattoo (1951), about a widow (Maureen Stapleton) finding her way back to life and love.
Mr. Murray was drafted into the Marine Corps in 1952, but refused to enlist as a conscientious objector, first because of his affiliation with the Congregational Christian Church and then with the pacifist Church of the Brethren. He was allowed to fulfill his duty of service by assisting European refugees.
In 1956, while filming Bus Stop, he married fellow cast member Hope Lang. They had two children, Christopher and Patricia, but divorced in 1961. He married actress Elizabeth Johnson in 1962. Known as Betty. They had three children: Colleen, Sean, and Michael.
Complete information about survivors other than son Christopher was not immediately available. Mr. Murray lived in Goleta, Santa Barbara County, California.
In a 2017 interview for this obituary, Mr. Murray said that, inspired by his work with post-war refugees in barbed wire camps in Italy, he and Mr. Lange founded the Homeless Europe Land Program and invested 150 acres of land in Sardinia. He said he bought it. With funding from international organizations and Protestant charities, they brought more than 100 refugees from camps in Italy – people from communist countries in Europe and Spain under Franco’s regime – to Sardinia and resettled them. He said he settled in a place that became a land. Support community.
“They planted crops and built houses,” he said. “The town is still there and there are children and grandchildren of the original refugees.”
Early in his career, Murray refused to sign a permanent contract with 20th Century Fox. “They let me be in any production they wanted,” he said at the UCLA Film Soiree celebrating his own work in 2014. Told. He bought out a producing contract, agreeing to make two films a year if he was given time off to act on Broadway. “Thug Priest” became independent.
“He didn’t play games in the studio days,” writer and film guru Foster Hirsch told the gathering. “He was never conventional and had great versatility.”