‘Bus Stop’ Actor Was 94 Years Old – The Hollywood Reporter

Don Murray, the stunt actor who received an Oscar nomination for playing a rodeo cowboy in love with Marilyn Monroe in bus stop, who then rejected Hollywood’s attempts to shape him, died. He was 94 years old.

Murray’s son Christopher announced his father’s death New York times Without providing details.

The actor was also known for the interesting roles he followed in serious films like A bunch of rain (1957), Priest Hoodlum (1961) and Providing advice and consent (1962).

He recently starred in the 1955 Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s play The skin of our teethdirector Joshua Logan sought Murray to portray Bo Decker, a naive Montana man who falls in love with a singer. Shery (Monroe), V bus stop (1956). This was his first film, and he was 26 years old at the time.

“No one could be less prepared for this job,” he once said. “I was a New Yorker who had never ridden a real horse and I dealt with football players but had never been able to ride a 500-pound horse.”

(Also in the film and in her first film appearance was Hope Lange, his soon-to-be wife. Murray once said that Monroe wanted to dye Lange’s hair light brown, not wanting to share the screen with another blonde.)

Fox executives insisted that Murray sign a long-term contract before giving him the role, but he resisted and had the studio agree to a clause giving him time off if he wanted to return to Broadway.

The troubled Murray ended up getting out of his contract early to do so Priest Hoodlum – which he wrote, produced and starred in. In the film, he played a Jesuit priest who dedicated his life to helping delinquents in St. Louis. He got Haskell Wexler To shoot him and Irvin Kirchner To guide him.

In unique Zinman a spiteful From the rainbased on the Broadway sentimental play by Michael F. GazoMurray portrayed Johnny Pope, a Korean War veteran who returns home to his pregnant wife (Eva Marie Saint) with a secret morphine addiction. (son Butchery He had a role on stage.)

Later, Murray took on a more sensitive role—that of a secretive Utah legislator blackmailed by a fellow senator—in Otto Preminger Tense political drama Providing advice and consent.

in From Hell to Texas (1958), directed by Henry Hathaway, Murray played a Bible-reading cowboy who goes on the run after accidentally killing the son of a powerful rancher. Religion was a key element in many of his films.

It was Murray’s choice to step away from the path to typical stardom. “I came to Hollywood, and they said I needed to create a character that the audience could relate to, who would be something reliable for them to get behind,” he once said. “I did the exact opposite.”

Television viewers will best remember Murray in the role of Sid Fairgatehusband of Michelle Lee’s character, on the CBS primetime soap Landing knot. His character was launched off the side of a cliff in the (literal) cliffhanger that ended season two in March 1981.

Former son Ziegfeld A Broadway girl and dance director, Murray was born on July 31, 1929, and grew up in the New York City suburbs, where she graduated from East University. Rockaway High school.

When he was 19, he worked as an usher at CBS for $17 a week and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He then arrived in the cast of the original 1951 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Tony Award-winning play. Rose tattoos.

Universal offered him a $150-a-week contract, but he declined the offer. “They can put you in any picture they want,” he said. He wanted none of that, and chose to work in live television.

Murray was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, but spent nearly three years working in German and Italian refugee camps in the Brotherhood Volunteer Service, the predecessor of the Peace Corps. He returned to the United States in 1955.

Later, Murray went toe-to-toe with James Cagney in Shaking hands with the devil (1959) and played positive-minded Norman Vincent Bill in One man’s path (1964).

He has also emerged as an alcoholic college professor in Sweet, bitter love (1967) opposite Dick Gregory; As a criminal turned prison chaplain Confessions of Tom Harris (1969); As a vacuum cleaner seller in Happy birthday, Wanda June (1971); As an evil ruler Break in Invasion of the Planet of the Apes (1972).

Murray starred as a Civil War-era bounty hunter in the 1968-1969 ABC series The outcasts He co-wrote and directed it Cross and Switchblade (1970), a realistic drama about a crusader minister from New York (Pat Boone) that also featured Eric Estrada in his first screen appearance.

Murray was married to Lange from 1956 until their divorce in 1961.

He lived on a farm in Goleta, California.

Murray is married to a former model my house Johnson in 1962, and they had five children: Christopher (actor); Sean (composer); Patricia. Mick. And Colleen, who married artist and musician Chris Otasecson Rick Ocasek Of cars.