John D. Murchison was born on September 5, 1921, in Tyler, Texas, the elder of two sons of Clinton Williams Murchison, an oilman, and Anne Morris. During the 1920's and 1930's his father accumulated an estate of more than $100 million, largely through the trading of oil leases acquired on credit, and then diversified his investments into banking, insurance, and numerous other areas.
Murchison graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and entered Yale University in 1940 but joined the Army Air Corps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was commissioned a first lieutenant, flew more than fifty combat missions as a fighter pilot in the Mediterranean and South China theaters of war.
He returned to Yale after demobilization in 1945 and graduated with a degree in political science in 1947.
Murchison's first job was with a bank in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had moved to alleviate his asthmatic condition. In 1948 his father persuaded him to return to Dallas and oversee the family business operations.
In 1942 his father had set up a partnership, Murchison Brothers, in the names of John and his younger brother, Clint Murchison, Jr. The privately held firm oversaw investments made by their father in more than one hundred companies. One of the early Murchison Brothers investments involved the purchase of 13 percent of the stock of the New York publishing house Henry Holt, Inc. Both brothers obtained seats on the board of directors and prompted the firm's expansion into the lucrative textbook market during the postwar baby-boom period. John and Clint used the investments placed by Murchison Brothers as the means to take active roles in numerous firms engaged in banking, life insurance, housing, road construction, mining, and other activities. John eventually began to specialize in investments involving insurance and banking, while Clint concentrated on construction and real estate. A business associate recalled that "Clint Jr. loved everything that had to do with construction and John liked everything that did not have to do with construction. "
The Murchison Brothers investments were kept low-key until the early 1960's, when the brothers made a well-publicized takeover attempt of the Alleghany Corporation, a diversified holding company whose assets included the New York Central Railroad. After a bitter proxy battle with Woolworth heir Allan P. Kirby, the brothers won formal control of the company. Their victory turned out to be illusory, however, since Kirby remained a major shareholder and was able to veto all of the Murchisons' financial proposals. The brothers sold their Alleghany holdings a few years later.
During the early 1960's John was also instrumental in developing the small mountain town of Vail, Colorado, into a major ski resort. His investments in the region and regular visits focused attention on the area's magnificent ski trails. By 1964 Vail was listed in the same league as Cortina, St. Moritz, and other world-class ski resorts. John admired modern art. He collected the works of Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, and other contemporary artists during John's frequent business trips to New York. Texas society initially held modern artists in contempt; the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts had refused to exhibit the works of Picasso Because he was a Communist. John was instrumental in organizing the Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art, which became a leading avant-garde art museum in the West, but he also acquired holdings of Renoir, Courbet, Matisse, and other traditional artists. The Dallas Museum of Contemporary Art eventually merged with the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, and John became a member of the latter's board of directors.
Murchison Brothers obtained more publicity after its purchase of a National Football League (NFL) franchise in 1959 and development of the Dallas Cowboys. Within ten years of its creation the Cowboys became a contender for the NFL title when the team reached the 1970 Super Bowl. Although both brothers had equal co-ownership, Clint took the active role in developing the public image of the team, paying particular attention to the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, while John limited his involvement to attending football games. Shortly before his death in 1969, Clint Murchison, Sr. , had obtained tax-free transfers of his large personal fortune into a number of trusts established for his children and grandchildren. Murchison Brothers, however, soon began treating the assets held in trusts as the firm's own property and used them as pledges for loans to finance Murchison Brothers' business ventures during the 1970's.
The estimated wealth of Murchison Brothers grew during the early 1970's as the prices of oil and Texas real estate boomed after the Arab oil embargo and the creation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. By the middle of the decade, the brothers' assets totaled several hundred million dollars, but their debts may have been of equal magnitude. Since Murchison Brothers was a private partnership, financial reports were not available for public inspection. The two brothers gave personal guarantees of money loaned to them, so bankers and other creditors never demanded any outside audit of the firm's finances. John eventually began to have doubts about the wisdom of combining all his business operations with those of Clint. The younger brother was becoming increasingly dependent on drugs and alcohol, making less reliable business deals, and relying more on the advice of sycophants and procurers than the recommendations of the firm's experienced business experts.
During the late 1970's, John began initiating many of his business deals outside the Murchison Brothers' organization, in order not to endanger them with debt from previous bad deals approved by Clint. This divergence of the brothers' operations and the increasingly unsteady condition of Murchison Brothers' finances went largely unnoticed until after the time of John's death from a heart attack on June 14, 1979. John's son, John Dabney Murchison, Jr. , was eventually forced to initiate litigation against Clint (who by then had declared himself to be a born-again Christian) to obtain the trust funds that were being withheld from him by Murchison Brothers. The publicity generated by the lawsuit made bankers aware of the extent to which the Murchison Brothers' operations depended on unsecured credit. The once unthinkable fall in prices of both oil and Texas real estate during the 1980's doomed the Murchison Brothers' overleveraged operations. Clint Murchison, Jr. , and the firm were forced into bankruptcy; the hollow shells of the Murchison Brothers operations were sold, and the firm's skimpy actual assets were distributed to creditors.
John D. Murchison was a member of the board of directors of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.
On March 9, 1947, John D. Murchison married Lucille Hughes Gannon. The couple had four children.
Clinton Williams Murchison, Sr. was an American oil and gas developer and financier.
Clinton Williams Murchison, Jr. was an American businessman and founder of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
