Ken Murray

Ken Murray, born Kenneth Abner Doncourt on July 14, 1903, in New York City, was an American comedian, actor, composer, author, and radio and television personality whose career spanned from the 1920s through the 1960s. He died on October 12, 1988, at Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, at the age of 85. Murray's birth name has been incorrectly reported in numerous sources as Don Court. He was born into a family of vaudeville performers and raised believing that an older figure named Joseph was his brother; Murray later discovered, as a teenager, that Joseph was in fact his father, and that the couple he had known as his parents were his grandparents. Joseph, himself a vaudevillian, had divorced Murray's mother and arranged for his parents to raise the child, not wishing the public to know he had a young son. Murray recounted both this discovery and his subsequent search for his mother in his 1960 autobiography, Life on a Pogo Stick: Autobiography of a Comedian.

Murray entered show business in the 1920s as a stand-up comedian, working the vaudeville circuit and performing in burlesque. After an early attempt to establish himself in Hollywood in the late 1920s, he returned to the New York stage and appeared on Broadway in Earl Carroll's Sketch Book in 1935. His Broadway career extended from 1935 to 1965 and also included Blackouts of 1949 and Ken Murray's Hollywood. In the 1940s, Murray developed the Blackouts, a variety show staged at the El Capitan Theatre on Vine Street in Hollywood that featured Marie Wilson among its performers. The production ran for 3,844 performances to standing-room-only audiences before closing in 1949. That same year, the show transferred to Broadway with Marie Windsor replacing Wilson, but it closed after six weeks following strongly negative reviews. Murray revived the Blackouts in Las Vegas in 1956, where it ran successfully for three years.

Murray's film career began with a role in the 1929 romantic drama Half Marriage, followed by an appearance in Leathernecking in 1930. In 1947, he produced Bill and Coo, a feature film in which trained birds and other animals served as the performers. The film received a special Academy Award recognizing its novel and entertaining use of the motion picture medium and the artistry and patience involved in its creation. Murray co-starred in the 1953 western The Marshal's Daughter, in which he played a character called Smiling Billy Murray, and he produced the film as well. In 1962, he portrayed Doc Willoughby, a top-hat-wearing, cigar-chewing, drunken doctor, in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which starred John Wayne and James Stewart. In that film, Murray's character was paired frequently with Edmond O'Brien, who played an alcoholic newspaper editor. Murray also appeared in the 1966 Walt Disney film Follow Me, Boys!, starring Fred MacMurray, Vera Miles, and Kurt Russell, in the role of Melody Murphy. His final film role came in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood in 1976.

Throughout his career, Murray filmed Hollywood celebrities using a 16mm home movie camera, footage he originally shot to send to his grandparents in place of written correspondence. His grandmother preserved the material, which captured stars including Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and Jean Harlow. Murray later compiled this footage into works such as Hollywood Without Make-Up in 1963 and Ken Murray's Shooting Stars, which he directed in 1979. Additional footage appeared in the television special Hollywood: My Home Town in 1965.

On radio, Murray hosted The Ken Murray Show on NBC from 1932 to 1933 and on CBS from 1936 to 1937. He served as the original host of Queen for a Day on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1945 to 1957, a program that was simulcast on KTSL, now KCBS-TV, Channel 2 in Los Angeles. On television, Murray hosted The Ken Murray Show on CBS from 1950 to 1953, a weekly music and comedy program that became the first show to win a Freedom Foundation Award. He also guest starred on series including The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford and The Bing Crosby Show. In 1965, he appeared in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as a THRUSH financier and owner of a Caribbean casino. During World War II, Murray volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen.

As an author, Murray produced several books in addition to his autobiography. He wrote The Golden Days of San Simeon in 1971, a history of William Randolph Hearst's estate that incorporated many of his own photographs of celebrities who visited there. His footage shot at the estate was also included in a short film shown during tours of the property. In 1976, Murray published The Body Merchant: The Story of Earl Carroll, the only complete biography of the Broadway impresario in print. Murray married three times and had four children. His first marriage was to vaudeville and burlesque performer Carlotta La Rose in 1923; the two performed together in vaudeville before divorcing. On July 4, 1941, he married model Cleatus Caldwell at the home of actor Lew Ayres, with Edgar Bergen serving as best man; the couple had two sons before divorcing in September 1945. Murray married his third wife, Betty Lou Walters, in December 1948, and the two had two daughters and remained married until his death. Murray holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1724 Vine Street, awarded for his contributions to radio.