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• George Murphy

From:

• Performing Arts Encyclopedia
• Tap Dance America

Dates: 1902-1992
Birth Date: Jul 4, 1902
Death Date: May 3, 1992

Place of Birth: New Haven, Connecticut
Place of Death: Palm Beach, Florida

George Murphy, American dancer, actor, and politician, was born George Lloyd Murphy into an Irish Catholic family. He attended Yale University but dropped out, wanting to be a dancer. He learned to tap dance by frequenting New Haven's rehearsal halls and theaters that were part of the tryout circuit for Broadway shows. Then, he and dancer Juliet Johnson formed the team of Johnson and Murphy. In the 1920s they performed at such nightclubs in New York as the Monmartre and Central Park Casino, doing a straight tap number to Irving Berlin's waltz tune, "Always." He continued to frequent the dance rehearsal halls, such as Michael's, where for the price of a dollar (a locker, a towel, and a shower included), a dancer could stay as long as needed. "Anybody that wanted to be a dancer would go up there," said Murphy about the studio in which the vaudeville dancer (and later actor) James Cagney, acting as a kind of instructor, would show a step and offer a little advice. Murphy also frequented Harlem's Cotton Club to see the floor shows staged by Dan Healy, an Irish-American tap dancer from Boston. He spent time at the Lambs Club, a show-biz fraternal organization, where three Irish-American dancers-- Jack Donahue, Johnny Boyle and Harland Dixon-- put together entertainments for club members.

By the early 1930s, Murphy had performed on Broadway in Shoot the Works (1931), the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Of Thee I Sing (1931), and in Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach's Roberta (1933), as well as in the road show of Anything Goes. He then turned to making movies. When not playing urban–Irish type characters-- the boxer Jerry O'Rourke in Jealousy (1934); the escaped convict Jerry Davis in After the Dance (1935); the gangster Red Foster in The Public Menace (1935)-- he established himself as a pleasant actor in light comedy and an elegant hoofer, when given the chance. As the romantic lead in the screen comedy Kid Millions (1934), Murphy, as the Interlocutor in the "Minstrel Night" scene, was the most skilled tap dancer of a quartet, which included Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman, and Ann Southern. In Little Miss Broadway (1938), a film about an orphan (Shirley Temple) adopted by a hotel manager who rents rooms to down-on-their-luck entertainers, Murphy performed a pleasant strolling soft-shoe (with the nine-year-old Temple) in the "We Should Be Together" number, which was distinguished by his nimble, floor-hugging hoofing style. Playing ex-vaudevillian Sonny Ledford in Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), he raised the funds needed to produce a Broadway show, and he danced "I'm Feeling Like a Million" with Eleanor Powell. In the backstage musical film Broadway Melody of 1940, Murphy played the down and out hoofer King Shaw, half of the vaudeville team-- the other being Fred Astaire playing Johnny Brett-- of Brett and Shaw. Both were vying for Eleanor Powell, playing a Broadway dance star in need of a dance partner.

From 1944 to 1946, Murphy was the president of the Screen Actor's Guild, and then became vice-president of Desilu Studios and the Technicolor Corporation. He then segued from a career in motion pictures to politics, and in 1964 was elected to the United States Senate, where he served until 1971. After which he retired to Palm Beach, Florida.

[Source: Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America, A Cultural History (2010)]