Dudley Bowles Murphy (July 10, 1897 – February 22, 1968) was an American film director.

Early life

Murphy was born on July 10, 1897, in

Winchester, Massachusetts Winchester is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located 8.2 miles (13.2 km) north of downtown Boston as part of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. It is also one of the List of Massachusetts locations by per capit ...

, to the artists Caroline Hutchinson (Bowles) Murphy (1868–1923) and Hermann Dudley Murphy (1867–1945), both accomplished

Modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

landscape painters. After first finding work as a journalist, Dudley Murphy began making films in the early 1920s.''The Film Encyclopedia'', First Edition, Thomas Y. Crowell, Pub., 1979

Career

In his first

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

, '' Soul of the Cypress'' (1921), a variation on the

Orpheus In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in se ...

myth, the film's protagonist falls in love with a dryad (a wood nymph whose soul dwells in an ancient tree) and throws himself into the sea to become immortal and spend eternity with her. Murphy's then-wife Chase Harringdine played the dryad. Murphy followed this with ''

Danse Macabre The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning represen ...

'' (1922) featuring Adolph Bolm, Olin Howland, and Ruth Page. Both of these early films are in the DVD collection '' Unseen Cinema'' issued in October 2005. Murphy's eighth film, '' Ballet mécanique'', which he co-directed with the French artist

Fernand Léger Joseph Fernand Henri Léger (; February 4, 1881 – August 17, 1955) was a French painting, painter, sculpture, sculptor, and film director, filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of cubism (known as "tubism") which he gradually ...

, premiered on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna. Considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking, ''Ballet mécanique'' also included creative input from

Man Ray Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky; August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American naturalized French visual artist who spent most of his career in Paris. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealism, Surrealist movements, ...

and

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

, and was presented at the exposition by Frederick Kiesler. The film was scheduled to be screened with

George Antheil George Johann Carl Antheil ( ; July 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of the ear ...

's masterpiece of the same name. However, the music ran close to 30 minutes while the film was 17 minutes long. In 2000, Paul Lehrman produced a married print of the film.Paul Lehrman's website devoted to the film and music ''Ballet Mecanique
/ref> In her book ''Dudley Murphy: Hollywood Wild Card'', film historian Susan Delson argues persuasively that Murphy was the film's driving force but that Léger was more successful at promoting the film as his own creation. ''Ballet mécanique'', with the

music originally written for the film, was included in the DVD collection ''Unseen Cinema'' released in October 2005. In addition to ''Ballet mécanique'', Murphy is best remembered for '' St. Louis Blues'' (1929) with

Bessie Smith Bessie Smith (April 15, 1892 – September 26, 1937) was an African-American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Empress of the Blues" and formerly Queen of the Blues, she was t ...

and Jimmy Mordecai, '' Black and Tan'' (1929) with

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D ...

and His Orchestra, ''Confessions of a Co-Ed'' (1931), '' The Sport Parade'' (1932) with Joel McCrea, and '' The Emperor Jones'' (1933), starring

Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional American football, football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for h ...

. In 1932, Murphy helped introduce the Mexican artist

David Alfaro Siqueiros David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...

to prominent people in the Los Angeles community. To show his gratitude, Siqueiros painted a mural on a wall in Murphy's Pacific Palisades home. The only intact mural by Siqueiros in the United States, '' Portrait of Mexico Today'' was donated anonymously to the

Santa Barbara Museum of Art The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) is an art museum located in downtown Santa Barbara, California. Founded in 1941, it is home to both permanent and special collections, the former of which includes Asian art, Asian, Visual arts of the United ...

in 1999. From the late 1940s through the 1960s Murphy and his fourth wife, Virginia, owned and operated Holiday House, an exclusive Malibu hotel designed by

Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( ; 8 April 1892 – 16 April 1970) was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for most of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. His most ...

and favored by the Hollywood elite.

Selected filmography

Features * '' High Speed Lee'' (1923) * '' Alex the Great'' (1928) * '' Stocks and Blondes'' (1928) * '' What a Widow!'' (1930) (uncredited) * '' Confessions of a Co-Ed'' (1931) (co-directed with David Burton) * '' The Sport Parade'' (1932) * '' The Emperor Jones'' (1933) * '' The Night Is Young'' (1935) * '' Don't Gamble with Love'' (1936) * '' ...One Third of a Nation...'' (1939) * '' Main Street Lawyer'' (1939) * ''Toast of Love'' (1943) * '' Alma de bronce'' (1944) Shorts * '' The Soul of the Cypress'' (1921) * ''

'' (1922) * ''Ballet mécanique'' (1924) (uncredited) * '' The Burglar'' (1929) * '' St. Louis Blues'' (1929) * ''Black and Tan Fantasy'' (1929) * ''He Was Her Man'' (1931) * ''Lesson in Golf'' (1932) * ''Abercrombie Had a Zombie'' (1941) * ''Alabamy Bound'' (1941) * ''Yes, Indeed!'' (1941) * ''Merry-Go-Roundup'' (1941) * ''Lazybones'' (1941) * ''I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire'' (1941) * ''Easy Street'' (1941) (uncredited)

References

Bibliography

* James Donald, "Jazz Modernism and Film Art: Dudley Murphy and ''Ballet mécanique'' in Modernism/modernity 16:1
January 2009
, pages 25–49 *

External links

*
''Unseen Cinema'' official website Dudley Murphy
kneeling down behind Peggy Wood {{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Dudley 1897 births 1968 deaths Film directors from Massachusetts Articles containing video clips