Don Murray was born in Hollywood on July 31, the son of Dennis Murray, then a dance director, and Ethel Cook, a former Ziegfeld Girl. He spent most of his youth in East Rockaway, Long Island, near New York City. A gifted athlete, Murray lettered in track and football in high school and for a while after graduation played semi-pro basketball in New York and Long Island.
Eventually he enrolled in the American Academy in New York, where he was a classmate of John Ericson and Don Rickles. Shortly after graduation from the Academy, he appeared with Jose Ferrer in "Insect Comedy" and New York's Coty Center. After successive Broadway performances in "The Rose Tattoo," "The Hot Corner" and a revival of "The Skin of Out Teeth" with Mary Martin and Helen Heyes--receiving critical acclaim in all--Murray was cast opposite Marilyn Monroe in his first film, "Bus Stop."
His more recent stage credits include "The Norman Conquests," the musical "Smith" and "Same Time, Next Year" on Broadway, the American Shakespeare Theatre production of "The Crucible" and national companies of "Chicago" and "California Suite."
Murray's film credits since "Bus Stop" include "Bachelor Party," "A Hatful of Rain," "From Hell to Texas," "Shake-Hands With the Devil," "The Hoodlum Priest" (which he also wrote and produced), "Advice and Consent," "One Man's Way," "Baby, the Rain Must Fall," "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" and "The Cross and the Switchblade" (which he wrote and directed).
Among his recent television credits are the motion pictures-for-television, "The Boy Who Drank Too Much," "If Things Were Different," "Rainbow," "A girl Named Sonner," "The Sex Symbol" and the mini-series "How the West Was Won." He also starred in earlier television productions of "Billy Budd," "Alas, Babylon," "The Hasty Heart," "Winterset" and "For I Have Loved Strangers," which he wrote.
Murray keeps fit with a regimen of running and tennis. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Beverly Hills. He is 6'1-3/4" tall, weighs 180 pounds and has green eyes and grayed brown hair. |
