J. Harold Murray

J. Harold Murray, born Harry Rulten on February 17, 1891, in South Berwick, Maine, was an American baritone singer and actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1920 to 1934. He died on December 11, 1940, at the age of 49.

Murray's early training began in Boston, where he studied voice as a boy and sang in theaters and churches. He later relocated to New York City, where he spent two years working for a music publishing company before entering performance professionally. During World War I he served in the Merchant Marine. He began performing in vaudeville in 1918, continuing for two years before transitioning to the musical theater stage. His first stage appearances under the name J. Harold Murray came in 1920 in out-of-town productions of Arthur Hammerstein's Always You and Frank Tinney's Sometime.

His Broadway debut came at age 30 in J.J. Shubert's The Passing Show of 1921. That same year he appeared in The Midnight Rounders of 1921 and The Whirl of New York, the latter production featuring his introduction of the song "Mandalay," with music by Gustave Kerker and text by Hugh Morton and Edgar Smith. Over the remainder of the 1920s Murray starred in ten musicals and co-starred with notable performers including Eddie Cantor in Make It Snappy (1922), Fred Allen in Vogues of 1924, and Joe E. Brown in Captain Jinks (1925). Additional credits from the decade include Springtime of Youth (1922), Caroline (1923), China Rose (1925) with Olga Steck, and Castles in the Air (1926) with Vivienne Segal.

In February 1927, Murray starred in Rio Rita, a Flo Ziegfeld production that opened the newly built Ziegfeld Theatre. The musical proved so successful that Show Boat, originally scheduled to open in April of that year, was delayed until the end of 1927. In Rio Rita, Murray introduced the songs "Rio Rita," "The Kinkajou," and "The Rangers Song," all with music by Harry Tierney and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy.

From 1929 to 1930, Murray worked in Hollywood during the pre-Code era, appearing in a series of musicals produced by William Fox Studio. These included Cameo Kirby and Married in Hollywood, both opposite Norma Terris, as well as Happy Days, Women Everywhere (1930) with Fifi D'Orsay, and Under Suspicion.

Returning to New York, Murray appeared in several additional Broadway productions. He starred in the Moss Hart and Irving Berlin musical Facing the Music in 1932, in which he introduced "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee" and "Soft Lights and Sweet Music." He also appeared in Oscar Hammerstein II's East Wind and in the revue Thumbs Up! (1934), where he introduced "Autumn in New York," with words and music by Vernon Duke. A further production, Venus in Silk, a Laurence Schwab operetta, closed out of town in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., before reaching Broadway.

Beyond his stage and film work, Murray appeared in several musical film shorts for Universal Pictures, RKO, and Vitaphone between 1934 and 1939, including Nite in a Night Club (1934), Who Was That Girl (1934), The Flame Song (1934), Phony Boy (1937), The Singing Bandit (1937), Under a Gypsy Moon (1938), Somewhere in Paris (1938), and Wild and Bully (1939). He also performed weekly on a radio show based in Hartford, Connecticut, for three years, and participated in summer stock productions including The Only Girl in 1938 and Knickerbocker Holiday in 1939 at The Player's Theatre in Clinton, Connecticut.

After leaving show business, Murray became a part owner of New England Brewery in Hartford, Connecticut, commuting daily from his 200-acre farm to the brewery. In 1938 he ran for a seat in the Connecticut State Senate but was defeated. That same year he appeared in summer stock. Murray was married to the former Dolly Hackett and had one son, William Joseph Rulten Murray, from a previous marriage. He developed nephritis in the spring of 1940 and died of the disease on December 11 of that year.