Juy 10 was the birthday of filmmaker Dudley Murphy (1897-1968); 2024 marks the centennial of one of his best known works Ballet mécanique (1924), an avant-garde film co-directed with Fernand Léger , with suggestions by Man Ray and Ezra Pound, and intended to accompany the eponymous piece of music by Gerald Antheil.
I had seen some of Murphy’s films but didn’t properly learn about him until I investigated a distant relative of mine. Chase Herendeen had been his wife and danced in some of his earlier art films. I also learned that I even more distantly related to Murphy himself. Hailing from Winchester, Massachusetts, Murphy was bred for the arts as the son of two painters; his father Herman Dudley Murphy ran the art department at Harvard.
Unique among figures in American cinema, Murphy made both avant-garde films AND movies for Hollywood studios. From early experimental efforts like The Soul of the Cypress (1921) and Danse Macabre (1922) he made his way to the coast by the end of the decade. His most notable films were made with black stars: Black and Tan (1929) with Duke Ellington, St. Louis Blues (1929) with Bessie Smith, and the 1933 adaptation of O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, with Paul Robeson.
In 1928 Murphy made a couple of comedies with Skeets Gallagher, Alex the Great, and Stocks and Blondes. Other features included: Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931) with Sylvia Sidney, The Sport Parade (1932) with Joel McCrea, The Night is Young (1935) with Ramon Novarro, Don’t Gamble with Love (1936) with Ann Sothern, One Third of a Nation (1939) with Sylvia Sidney, and Main Street Lawyer (1939) with Anita Louise.
Murphy’s shorts include: He Was Her Man (1931) with Gilda Gray, A Lesson in Golf (1932) with Pete Smith and Cliff Edwards, and several Soundies made in 1941: Abercrombie Had a Zombie with Liz Tipton and Bob Crosby, Yes Indeed with the Dandridge Sisters, Lazybones with Hoagy Carmichael and Dorothy Dandridge, Merry-Go-Roundup with Bob Crosby and Gale Storm, Alabama Bound with an Eddie Cantor impersonator named Jacky Green and the Four Spirits of Rhythm, Easy Street with Dorothy Dandridge, and I Don’t Want to Set the World On Fire with Johnny Downs. His last couple of films were made in Mexico in 1943 and 1944.
From the late ’40s until near the end of his life, Murphy and his wife ran a posh Malibu Hotel called Holiday House designed by architect Richard Neutra.
For more on early film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube