Don Murray, star of films that dealt with social issues, dies at the age of 94

Don Murray, the boy-next-door actor who made his film debut as the cowboy infatuated with Marilyn Monroe in the 1956 film “The Bus Stop” and has played a priest, a drug addict, a gay senator and countless other roles in movies, on television and on stage. More than six decades ago, he died on Friday. He was 94 years old.

His son Christopher confirmed the death but did not say where he died.

In the postwar era of the 1950s, when sensitivity, responsibility and a “nice guy” were important traits in a young man, Mr. Murray was a church-going pacifist and then became a conscientious objector during the Korean War. He fulfilled his service obligation by working for two and a half years in German and Italian refugee camps for $10 a month, helping orphans, the wounded, and the displaced.

After returning from Europe in 1954, he settled on an acting career focusing on themes of social responsibility. He appeared in a television drama about lawyers serving poor clients, and had a role in the 1955 Broadway production of “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Thornton Wilder’s comedy about faith in humanity’s narrow ability to survive, which starred Helen Hayes and Mary. Martin.

Director Joshua Logan saw that production and cast Mr. Murray in “Bus Stop,” an adaptation of William Inge’s play about a singer pursued by cowboys from a Phoenix shop to a snow-covered Arizona bus station, where a spark of dignity shines through. The personal flame of love is poignant and humble. The film established Marilyn Monroe as a legitimate actress and Mr. Murray as a rising star.

Bosley Crowther wrote in a review: “With a wonderful new actor named Don Murray playing the stupid, stubborn prick and with the chaos of broncos, blondes and destroyers beautifully intertwined, Mr. Logan has a thriving comedy before it reaches the romance.” For the New York Times. “And the fact that she intermittently but firmly musters the will and strength to humiliate him — to make him say please, which is the point of the whole thing — attests to her newfound acting skill.”

Mr. Murray’s performance in “Bus Stop” earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He has received numerous other accolades for a body of work that includes more than 35 Hollywood films, approximately 25 television films and dozens of other credits for acting in television and theatrical productions, as well as writing, directing and producing for films and television. But he was not nominated again for an Oscar.

Also famous among his early films are A Hatful of Rain (1957), the story of a tortured drug addict who hides his secret from his wife, played by Eva Marie Saint; “Shake Hands with the Devil” (1959), the story of the Irish Rebellion of 1921, which also starred James Cagney; and “The Hoodlum Priest” (1961), in which Mr. Murray, who co-wrote the screenplay, played a Jesuit counseling ex-convicts.

“Don became known for what might be called social significance and ‘speak to the mind’ film dramas,” Cue magazine noted in 1961. “He would not play in a drama that glorified evil or glorified violence. “I’m not interested in that,” he says. “My photos don’t have to have a message — but they do Do I have to say something.”

Mr. Murray played a memorable role in “Advise and Consent” (1962), director Otto Preminger’s hugely successful adaptation of Allen Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel set in the halls of the Capitol. It starred Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, and Walter Pidgeon. Mr. Murray portrayed a married U.S. senator who had a gay encounter in his past, and who is blackmailed for his vote in the Senate confirmation battle of a nominee for secretary of state.

Mr. Murray’s roles in Hollywood waned in the late 1960s, and he increasingly turned to television. His most notable role was in The Outcasts, an ABC series in which he and Otis Young starred as a team of post-Civil War bounty hunters — with Mr. Young playing a former slave and Union soldier, and Mr. Murray an ex-soldier. Slave owner and Confederate officer.

“The Untouchables” was one of the first television shows to feature both black and white stars, and ran for 26 weeks in the 1968-1969 season. It aired after the murders of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, and was widely criticized at the time for its depiction of racial tensions and violence. But in later years, it was seen in reruns and on home videos, and was hailed as a forgotten classic.

Mr. Murray co-wrote and directed The Cross and the Switchblade (1970), a film that starred Pat Boone as a street minister who brought two city street gangs to Christ — a character inspired by the work of a real New York preacher. “Is he convincing?” asked Howard Thompson in a review for The Times. “And how hard is the blow? Answers: Convincing and difficult enough. I liked it.”

From 1979 to 1981, Mr. Murray played Sid Fairgate, a husband and father, on the long-running CBS prime-time series “Knots Landing.” He then returned to the big screen to appear with Brooke Shields in Endless Love (1981), Denzel Washington in License to Kill (1984), and Barbara Eden in The Stepford Children (1987).

Mr. Murray and Ms. Eden also co-starred in “Brand New Life” (1989-1990), an NBC television series about a wealthy widowed lawyer and a divorced waitress, each father of three teenagers, who marry and lead new lives. Together in Bel Air, the affluent area of ​​Los Angeles, the combination of two families from contrasting social backgrounds leads to conflicts and comedy.

Murray was slim and youthful almost his entire life, and was still appearing in films into his 70s, including “Internet Love” (2000) and “Elvis Is Alive” (2001). After a 16-year hiatus, he reappeared in 2017 in eight episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return, Showtime’s continuation of the David Lynch-directed 1990-1991 ABC series. His character, Bushnell Mullins, was a Las Vegas insurance man who was endlessly at odds with clients and the authorities.

Donald Patrick Murray was born in Hollywood on July 31, 1929, one of three children of Dennis and Ethel (Cook) Murray. His father, a singer and dancer, and his mother, a former Ziegfeld Girl, had moved from New York to work in talking pictures but returned to Broadway as the Great Depression settled.

Don and his siblings William and Ethelene grew up in the village of East Rockaway on Long Island. He was a football and track star at East Rockaway High School, from which he graduated in 1946. After graduating in 1948 from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, he worked as a waiter and house painter, worked in summer stock and had little money. Parts on TV.

His first Broadway break was as a sailor in “The Rose Tattoo” (1951), a Tennessee Williams play about a widow (Maureen Stapleton) who returns to life and love.

Mr. Murray was drafted by the Marine Corps in 1952, but declined enlistment as a conscientious objector, citing his affiliation first with the Congregational Christian Church and later with the Church of Peaceful Brethren. He was allowed to fulfill his service obligation by helping European refugees.

While filming Bus Stop in 1956, he married actress Hope Lange, one of his fellow cast members. They had two children, Christopher and Patricia, and divorced in 1961. In 1962, he married actress Elizabeth Johnson, Known as Betty. They had three children, Colleen, Sean and Michael.

Complete information about the survivors, in addition to his son Christopher, was not immediately available. Mr. Murray lived in Goleta, California, in Santa Barbara County.

In an interview for this obituary in 2017, Mr. Murray said that, inspired by his work with postwar refugees in barbed wire camps in Italy, he and Ms. Lange founded the European Lands for Displaced Persons Program and bought 150 acres on the island of Sardinia. In 1956. He said that, with financial help from international agencies and Protestant charities, they brought more than 100 refugees from the Italian camps – people from the communist countries of Europe and Franco’s Spain – to Sardinia, to settle in what became a permanent self-employment camp. Community support.

“They planted crops and built houses,” he added. “The city still exists, with the children and grandchildren of the original refugees.”

Early in his career, Mr. Murray refused to sign an open contract with 20th Century Fox. “They can put you in any picture they want,” he said at a UCLA film gala celebrating his work in 2014. He agreed to produce two films a year if he got time off to work on Broadway, and bought out his contract to produce “Priest Hoodlum” independently.

“He didn’t play the game in the studio era,” author and film industry executive Foster Hirsch told attendees. “It never got into print and was very versatile.”