Don Murray Biography
Don Murray (born as Donald Patrick Murray) is an American actor. Murray is best known for his breakout performance in the film Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe, which earned him a nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Don Murray’s role as Beauregard “Beau” Decker in Bus Stop (1956) marked his film debut. He starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, who played Cherie, the object of his desire. His performance as the innocent cowboy who is determined to get Cherie was well received, and he was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Don Murray Age|How Old Is Don Murray?
The American actor was born on 31st July 1929 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.
Don Murray Height
He stands at an estimated height of 6 feet 2 inches taller.
Don Murray Family
Murray was born in 1929 the only child of Dennis Aloisius Murray, a Broadway dance director, and stage manager, and Ethel Murray, a former Ziegfeld performer.
Murray attended East Rockaway High School (class of 1947) in East Rockaway, New York where he played football and was on the track team. He was a member of the student government, glee club, and joined the Alpha Phi Chapter of the Omega Gamma Delta Fraternity. Upon graduation from high school, he went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating, he soon made his Broadway debut in the 1951 play The Rose Tattoo, as Jack Hunter.
Don Murray Wife| Don Murray Divorce
Don Murray was previously married to Hope Lange, a film, stage, and television actress in 1956 and divorced in 1961. He has two sons, actor Christopher Murray, and a photographer, Patricia Murray. He is hitched to Bettie Johnson since 6th August 1962. His son Sean Murray is a composer, who has composed numerous films, televisions, and video games. His daughter Colleen Murray was born on 1st December 1963 and his son Mick Murray was born on 4th March 1972.
Don Murray Net Worth
The actor’s net worth has never been disclosed. It’s still under review and will be updated soon
Don Murray Acting
Don Murray’s role as Beauregard “Beau” Decker in Bus Stop (1956) marked his film debut. He starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, who played Cherie, the object of his desire. His performance as the innocent cowboy who is determined to get Cherie was well received, and he was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1957, he starred as reserved, married bookkeeper Charlie Sampson in The Bachelor Party. The same year he starred in one of his most successful roles, that of Johnny Pope in the drama A Hatful of Rain.
Despite director Fred Zinnemann’s intention to typecast the actor as the comical brother Polo, Murray insisted on playing the lead. Thus he portrayed Johnny Pope, a morphine-addicted Korean War veteran. The film was one of the first to show the effects of drug abuse on the addicted and those around him.
He starred as a blackmailed United States senator in Advise & Consent (1961), a film In 1976, Murray starred in the film Deadly Hero. In addition to acting, Murray directed a film based on the book The Cross and the Switchblade (1970) starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada.
Murray starred with Otis Young in the groundbreaking ABC western television series The Outcasts (1968–69) featuring an interracial bounty hunter team in the post-American Civil War West.
In 1979, he starred as Sid Fairgate on the long-running prime-time soap opera Knots Landing. He also scripted two episodes of the program in 1980. In 1981 Murray decided to leave the series after two seasons to concentrate on other projects, although some sources say he left over a salary dispute.
The character’s death was notable at the time because it was considered rare to kill off a star character. The death came in the second episode of season three, following season two’s cliffhanger in which Sid’s car careened off a cliff.
To make viewers doubt that the character had died, Murray was listed in the credit sequence for season three; in fact, season three revealed that Fairgate had survived the plunge off the cliff (thus temporarily reassuring the viewers), but died shortly afterward in the hospital.
Although he effectively distanced himself from the series after that, Murray later contributed an interview segment for Knots Landing: Together Again, a reunion special made in 2005.
Don Murray Bus Stop
Bus Stop is a 1956 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Joshua Logan for 20th Century Fox, starring Marilyn Monroe, Don Murray, Arthur O’Connell, Betty Field, Eileen Heckart, Robert Bray, and Hope Lange.
Unlike most of Monroe’s films, Bus Stop is neither a full-fledged comedy nor a musical, but rather a dramatic piece; it was the first film she appeared in after studying at the Actors Studio in New York. Monroe does, however, sing one song: “That Old Black Magic” by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
Bus Stop was based on the play of the same title (which in turn was expanded from an earlier, one-act play People in the Wind) by William Inge. The inspiration for the play came from people Inge met in Tonganoxie, Kansas.
In the 1961–62 season, ABC adapted the play and film into a television series of the same name starring Marilyn Maxwell as the owner of the bus station and diner. In the episode “Cherie”, which most closely follows the plot of the film, Tuesday Weld performed the role of Marilyn Monroe and Gary Lockwood appeared as the Don Murray character.
Don Murray Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American mystery horror drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch that premiered on April 8, 1990, on ABC. The series developed a notably loyal following in 1990, but declining ratings led to its cancellation after its second season in 1991. It nonetheless gained a devoted cult following and has been referenced in a wide variety of media. In subsequent years, Twin Peaks is often listed among the greatest television series of all time and is considered a landmark turning point in television drama.
The series follows an investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and local Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the fictional suburban town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The show’s narrative draws on elements of detective fiction, but its uncanny tone, supernatural elements, and campy, melodramatic portrayal of eccentric characters also draw on American soap opera and horror tropes. Like much of Lynch’s work, it is distinguished by surrealism, offbeat humor, and distinctive cinematography. The acclaimed score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti with Lynch.
The success of the show sparked a media franchise, and the series was followed by a 1992 feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, that serves as a prequel to the series. Additional tie-in books were also released. Following a hiatus of over 25 years, the show returned in 2017 with a third season on Showtime, marketed as Twin Peaks: The Return and Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series. The season was directed by Lynch and written by Lynch and Frost, and starred many original cast members, including MacLachlan.
Don Murray Knots Landing
Knots Landing is an American prime time television soap opera that aired on CBS from December 27, 1979, to May 13, 1993. A spin-off of Dallas, it was set in a fictitious coastal suburb of Los Angeles and initially centered on the lives of four married couples living in a cul-de-sac, Seaview Circle. By the time of its conclusion, storylines had included rape, murder, kidnapping, assassinations, drug smuggling, corporate intrigue, and criminal investigations; and was the longest-running primetime drama on U.S. television after Gunsmoke and Bonanza.
Knots Landing was created by David Jacobs (one-time writer of Family and later producer of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) in conjunction with producer Michael Fierman (who would also later co-produce Falcon Crest). Although a spin-off of Dallas, the concept predates that series and was rebuffed by CBS in 1977, as the network wanted something more “saga-like”. Jacobs then created Dallas, which the network accepted and premiered in 1978. After Dallas became a hit, Jacobs was then able to adapt Knots Landing as a spin-off series by way of incorporating characters introduced in the parent series. The series was largely inspired by a 1957 movie No Down Payment but also by the 1973 Ingmar Bergman television miniseries Scenes from a Marriage.
Though not as popular in the ratings as Dallas, Knots Landing eventually outlasted it and garnered much critical acclaim. The series peaked during the 1983–84 season with a 20.8 rating (finishing in 11th place) and a 20.0 rating for the 1984–85 season (when it finished 9th). This can be attributed, in part, to more dramatic storylines as the series became more soap-opera-like, and the gradual inclusion of newer characters to interact with the original cast. By the 1988–89 season, Knots Landing was ahead of Dallas in the ratings, though audiences for both shows by this time were less than their earlier years. Knots Landing was canceled in 1993.
There were 344 episodes and 14 seasons of Knots Landing from 1979 to 1993. In 1997, much of the cast reunited for a two-part mini-series entitled Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac. In 2005, they reunited again for the non-fiction special Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again in which the cast reminisced about their time on the show. Dallas itself was revived in 2012, with characters from Knots Landing appearing in its second season. During nearly the entire run of the original series, Knots Landing occupied the same timeslot: Thursday nights at 10:00 p.m.
Don Murray Deadly Hero
Deadly Hero is a 1975 thriller film starring Don Murray as Lacy, Diahn Williams, James Earl Jones, Lilia Skala, Treat Williams, and directed by Ivan Nagy from a screenplay by George Wislocki and Don Petersen. Released in limited locales in 1975 with an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, the film was distributed by AVCO Embassy Pictures and is Treat Williams’ film debut. Deadly Hero opened to mixed, mostly negative reviews by critics and was seen as a commercial failure.
Officer Lacy is an 18-year veteran of the New York City Police Department who finds himself demoted from detective back to patrol duty for his violent tendencies and trigger-happy behavior. Responding to a call on Manhattan’s West Side, he finds a young musician named Sally has been abducted by a mugger named Rabbit. Rabbit has Sally at knifepoint in a hostage standoff but is persuaded to release her and surrender by Officer Lacy, who kills the unarmed Rabbit anyway. A grateful Sally is convinced by Lacy to lie to detectives to make Lacy seem like a hero. She later changes her mind and tells the truth about the shooting. This drives Lacy to try to silence Sally with escalating threats and violence before his career is ruined and he is tried for Rabbit’s murder.
Don Murray One Foot In Hell
One Foot in Hell is a 1960 Western DeLuxe Color and CinemaScope film starring Alan Ladd, Don Murray, and Dan O’Herlihy, directed by James B. Clark and co-written by Sydney Boehm and Aaron Spelling from a story by Spelling.
Mitch Barrett (Alan Ladd) is a former Confederate soldier emigrating to the West whose wife Ellie (Rachel Stephens) dies in childbirth in a small cattle town in Arizona because of what Mitch sees as the heartlessness of three local men – George Caldwell the hotel keeper (Henry Norell), Sam Giller the general store owner (John Alexander) and Ole Olsen the sheriff (Karl Swenson). Unhinged by Ellie’s death, he plots to get his revenge by robbing the local bank of $100,000 deposited by a rich cattleman, thus ruining the town.
He accepts the job of a deputy sheriff, then murders the sheriff so that he can take his place. To help him carry out the elaborately-planned robbery, he recruits four people: Dan Keats (Don Murray), an alcoholic ex-Confederate soldier who scrapes a living drawing portraits of the customers in saloons; Sir Harry Ivers ‘of the Lancaster Ivers’ (Dan O’Herlihy), an upper-class-sounding English pickpocket; Julie Reynolds (Dolores Michaels), a prostitute who hopes for enough money to go East and make a respectable life for herself; and Stu Christian (Barry Coe), a ruthless gunman. During the robbery, on Mitch’s instructions, Ivers and Christian kill the store owner and the hotel keeper.
Afterward, Mitch sets out to eliminate the other members of the gang to conceal his part in the plot. He succeeds in killing Ivers and Christian but when he corners Dan and Julie, who have fallen in love, Julie manages to kill him. Dan and Julie then return the money, prepared to stand trial and spend some years in jail with the prospect of long-term happiness awaiting them after their release.
Don Murray Movies
» Justice (1955)
» Bus Stop (1956) as Beauregard ‘Bo’ Decker
» The Bachelor Party (1957) as Charlie Samson
» A Hatful of Rain (1957) as Johnny Pope
» From Hell to Texas (1958) as Tod Lohman
» These Thousand Hills (1959) as Albert Gallatin “Lat” Evans
» Shake Hands with the Devil (1959) as Kerry O’Shea
» One Foot in Hell (1960) as Dan Keats
The Hoodlum Priest (1961) as Father Charles Dismas Clark
» Advice» & Consent (1962) as Senator Brigham Anderson
» Escape from East Berlin (1962) as Kurt Schröder
» One Man’s Way (1964) as Norman Vincent Peale
» Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) as Slim
» Kid Rodelo (1966) as Kid Rodelo
» The Plainsman (1966) as Wild Bill Hickok
» Sweet Love, Bitter (1967) as David Hillary
» The Borgia Stick (TV movie) (1967) as Tom Harrison
» The Viking Queen (1967) as Justinian
» The Outcasts (TV series) (1968) as Earl Corey
» Childish Things (1969) as Tom Harris
» Daughter of the Mind (TV movie) (1969) as Dr. Alex Lauder
» The Intruders (TV movie) (1970) as Sam Garrison
»Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) as Herb Shuttle
» Call Me by My Rightful Name (1972) as Doug
» Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1972) as Justin Morgan