Mary Murphy (actress)

American actress (1931–2011)

Mary Murphy (January 26, 1931 – May 4, 2011) was an American film and television actress of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Murphy was born in Washington, D. C., and was the second of three children. She spent part of her early childhood in Rocky River, Ohio, a westside Cleveland, Ohio suburb. Her father, James Victor Murphy, died in 1940. Shortly afterwards, she and her mother moved to Southern California. She attended University High School in West Los Angeles.

She first gained attention in 1953, when she played a good hearted girl who is intrigued by Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The following year, she appeared opposite Tony Curtis in Beachhead, and with Dale Robertson in Sitting Bull, and the year after that as Fredric March's daughter in the thriller The Desperate Hours, which also starred Humphrey Bogart. She co starred with actor director Ray Milland in his Western A Man Alone. That was one of her best roles; another was in the film she made the following year for Joseph Losey, The Intimate Stranger (1956).

Murphy co starred with James Franciscus and James Philbrook in the 1961 CBS crime adventure drama series The Investigators. Among her other television appearances, she was featured in the title role of defendant Eleanor Corbin in the 1962 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Glamorous Ghost". She also appeared in dozens of other television series including The Lloyd Bridges Show, The Tab Hunter Show, Wagon Train, I Spy, The Outer Limits , The Fugitive, and Ironside. She was absent from the big screen for seven years before resuming her film career in 1972 with Steve McQueen in Junior Bonner.

On June 3, 1956, Murphy married actor Dale Robertson in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was annulled after six months. Murphy died of heart disease at her home in Beverly Hills, California, aged 80.