Mae Murray

Background

Mae Murray was born on May 10, 1889, in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States. Her parents were immigrants, her mother from Belgium and her father from Austria. (Later she stated that her father had been Irish and her mother Italian. ) Her father was an artist, who died when Murray was four years old. After his death her mother returned to Europe, and she was sent to New York City, where she lived with her grandmother.

Education

At the age of nine Murray was placed in a boarding school near Chicago and at thirteen she ran away from this school.

Career

Murray went to Chicago, where she was hired as a dancer by a touring show company. In 1906 she appeared for the first time as Mae Murray, in a Gus Edwards revue. Her first stage appearance that gained her some renown occurred two years later, in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908. During this period of dance crazes, Murray danced in cafes and ballrooms in New York City, and even went to Paris to learn new dances such as the tango.

After she performed in the cabaret show at the Sans Souci nightclub (1913 - 1914), she became something of a celebrity in New York. It was at the Sans Souci that Irving Berlin saw her dance and asked her to substitute for Irene Castle in his first hit, Watch Your Step (1914). Murray led the hectic life of a professional dancer. Her frequent partner was an aspiring actor named Rudolph Valentino.

When she was featured in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1915, Adolph Zukor signed Murray to a film contract with Lasky Feature Play Company. Her film debut was in To Have and to Hold (1916). Although her costar was Wallace Reid, a popular leading man of the day, her performance was not highly regarded.

After she had made three more films, Zukor put director Robert Z. Leonard in charge of her films. Under his guidance Murray developed the techniques necessary for successful silent-screen acting. They made five films for Paramount that proved successful, both critically and financially. Leonard established Murray as the epitome of the "glamorous" female film star and, in a few years, raised her weekly salary from $1, 200 to $10, 000.

In 1917, Murray and Leonard organized their own production company, Bluebird, at Universal Studios. They made ten features for Universal, including two in which she appeared with Rudolph Valentino. In 1918, Murray and Leonard moved to New York City, and in the ensuing years she made six films for Pathé and Paramount. This period represented the peak of Murray's development as a dramatic actress. The Leonards then formed a new production company, Tiffany, in association with Metro. During the next two years Murray starred in eight films made under this agreement. These movies heightened her popularity so greatly that Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro production, acknowledged that she was the company's top star.

In 1925 she appeared in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's (MGM) The Merry Widow under the direction of Erich von Stroheim. The flighty and capricious Murray clashed constantly with the egotistical von Stroheim during the filming. Mayer and Irving Thalberg mediated almost daily between them in order to complete the film. Eventually the studio had to edit von Stroheim's ninety reels of film to ten. The finished product was an enormous success, and probably Murray's best screen performance. When she began to work on her next film, The Masked Bride, she was an egotistical prima donna, demanding and receiving unheard-of privileges, including the replacement of director Josef von Sternberg by William Cabanne halfway through production.

In 1927, she walked out on her MGM contract in order to live in Europe. Mayer thereupon blacklisted her in the Hollywood film industry. The princely life-style of her fourth husband depleted Murray's fortune in two years. By 1930 she was bankrupt.

She attempted a remake of one of her earlier successes, Peacock Alley (1922), but the film was a financial disaster. She made two more films - Bachelor Apartment and High Stakes (both 1931) - then faded from public awareness. Murray's sense of her own importance, though, remained enormous, and she became a caricature of the once glamorous personality Mae Murray.

During the 1930's Murray worked in radio, vaudeville, and road-show dance revues. In 1941 she appeared in the stage production Billy Rose's Cavalcade of the Silent Screen, but her demands and tantrums led to her dismissal. She lived thereafter in Hollywood, in greatly reduced circumstances, and the Motion Picture Relief Fund assumed management of her financial affairs.

In 1964 she was found, ill and destitute, in a St. Louis Salvation Army shelter, believing herself to be in New York City. She died on March 23, 1965, in Woodland Hills, California.

Achievements

• Mae Murray was an outstanding actress, who was a hugely popular film star of the silent era. Her most acclaimed film was The Merry Widow (1925). For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Mae Murray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6318 Hollywood Blvd.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Merry Widow

    (The Merry Widow with no singing? A silent version of an o...)

  • Mae Murray Double Feature: Mademoiselle Midnight (1924)(Silent) / A Mormon Maid (1917)(Silent)

    (Mae Murray (1885-1965) was one of the most popular screen...)

  • DVD "The ABC of Love" (1919) starring Mae Murray, Classic Silent Drama

    ("The ABC of Love" is a drama starring Mae Murray, Holmes ...)

  • Peacock Alley

    (Beautiful cabaret singer Claire Tree has been conducting ...)

  • A MORMON MAID (1917) With original piano score by Stuart Oderman.

    (A MORMON MAID (1917) Starring Mae Murray, Frank Borzage,...)

  • DVD The Twin Pawns (1919) starring Mae Murray, Classic Silent Crime Drama

    ("The Twin Pawns" is a crime drama starring Mae Murray, Wa...)

Views

Quotations: "You don't have to keep making movies to remain a star. Once you become a star, you are always a star. "

"I have never really liked Broadway nightlife, for my dreams and ambitions were centered upon something above that. The greatest difficulty I had was to readjust myself to the working hours; you see, now I arise at about the same hour at which I formerly went to bed! We have to be in the studio, ready and made up, at nine o’clock. But I don’t mind that, either, because I got used to the new order of things in the wonderful California air. Oh, California, how I love it, and how glad I shall be to return there again! You see, the picture-player’s colony at Los Angeles is really much like a touch of Paris in its freedom and gaiety and good fellowship. Oh, and the parties they give there! I had such an attractive bungalow out there that I hated to give it up. "

Personality

Mae Murray was a romantic who sought to create an air of mystery around herself. In 1959, after her biography, The Self-Enchanted, had been published, she invaded libraries and bookstores throughout Los Angeles to blot out in individual books the record of her true name. She was completely preoccupied with her extravagant sense of stardom, which continued to increase even as her popularity waned.

Connections

In 1908 Mae Murray married William M. Schwenker, Jr. , son of a millionaire broker. The marriage was dissolved within a year. In 1916 she married socialite Jay O'Brien under bizarre and controversial circumstances. According to Jane Ardmore, O'Brien had Murray kidnapped from the set of the Primrose Ring and taken to Pasadena, where she was forced, at gunpoint, to marry him. Murray claimed she later escaped from the wedding banquet at the Alexandria Hotel and went into hiding with the assistance of Robert Leonard and Cecil B. DeMille. The local newspapers, however, carried stories saying that Murray wed O'Brien between scenes of The Mormon Maid at the Lasky studio. The marriage was dissolved after a short time.

On August 18, 1918, Murray wed movie director Robert Z. Leonard. Murray and Leonard were divorced in 1925. In 1926, Murray married David Mdivani, who was known as a Georgian prince. They had one son. In 1933 she was divorced from Mdivani. She lost custody of her son, Koran, who later refused to acknowledge her as his mother.

Father:

Joseph Koenig

Mother:

Mary Miller

colleague:

Robert Zigler Leonard

film director, actor, producer, screenwriter

colleague:

John Gilbert

actor, screenwriter, director

colleague:

Rudolph Valentino

actor

colleague:

Clifton Webb

actor, dancer, singer

Son:

Koran David Mdivani

Brother:

William Robert Koenig

Brother:

Howard Joseph Koenig

husband:

Robert Zigler Leonard

film director, actor, producer, screenwriter

husband:

David Mdivani

husband:

William M. Schwenker, Jr.

husband:

Jay James O'Brien

American bobsledder

References

• Films in Review December 1975 Jesse Matthews Mae Murray
• Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips (Screen Classics)
• Pantomime Movie Magazine (1922) Norma Talmadge - Harold Lloyd - Mae Murray - Silent Films - Hollywood
• The self-enchanted: Mae Murray,: Image of an era
• Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels: The Lives, Careers, and Misfortunes of 14 Hard-Luck Girls of the Silent Screen