Mae Murray Movies
"Once you become a star, you are always a star," Mae Murray once stated, and she fully believed in that credo for the rest of her life -- despite having made her final film in 1931, and the final successful one in 1925. Publicized by Florenz Ziegfeld in the 1910s as the "Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips," Murray had made a professional debut of sorts singing "Comin' Through the Rye" in a 1906 Lew Fields concoction entitled About Town. She was in the Follies two years later and earned heaps of publicity when substituting for an ailing Irene Castle in Irving Berlin's Watch Your Step (1910). Adolph Zukor of Paramount spotted her in the 1915 version of the Ziegfeld Follies, in which she impersonated Mary Pickford while being chased around by comedian Ed Wynn, and signed her to a screen contract.Although she attempted to get out of her obligations to Paramount on several occasions, Mae Murray took to Hollywood -- and the Hollywood lifestyle -- like a fish to water, starring in scores of melodramas with titles such as Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1916), Princess Virtue (1917), Her Body in Bond (1918), The Delicious Little Devil (1919), and On With the Dance (1920), all of them popular and all of them more or less variations on the classic Cinderella tale. Her most frequent director was Robert Z. Leonard and she married him during a break from What Am I Bid? (1919) (having previously divorced New York playboy Jay O'Brien mere days after their highly publicized wedding). The union with Leonard lasted a bit longer and produced Tiffany, a company created to present her in the best light possible.
Releasing through Metro, Murray starred in the popular Peacock Alley (1923) and when the releasing company merged with Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer, she became the new conglomeration's first star. She was delighted when Mayer ushered her into a lavish screen version of The Merry Widow (1925) but clashed throughout with director Erich Von Stroheim, publicly denigrating him as a "dirty Hun." Surprisingly, the results of all the fighting proved a smash hit and Murray, on the top of the world, added the title of "Princess" to her name by marrying the Ukrainian Prince David Mdivani. Increasingly imperious, she then made the mistake of turning down Women Love Diamonds (1927), which she felt beneath her new status. Pauline Starke replaced her and she was virtually blackballed in Hollywood.
An old friend, Lowell Sherman, came to her rescue but Murray's appearances in both Bachelor Apartment and High Stakes (both 1931) were downright embarrassing; the years had not been kind and she now rather resembled Mae West but without the humor and talent. She briefly replaced Gladys George in The Milky Way on Broadway and performed in several dance recitals, but when a biography, The Self-Enchanted, appeared in 1959, few remembered her and it was quickly forgotten. Not by Murray, however, and in 1964 she embarked on a self-appointed publicity tour to New York. Sadly, she did not get any further than St. Louis, MO, where she was found, ill and destitute, by the Salvation Army and returned to her home in Hollywood. In her final years, Murray was known to hum a few bars of the "Merry Widow Waltz" in public, lest anyone forgot, and reportedly insisted on being called Princess Mdivani even when dying at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. With some justification, it has been suggested that Mae Murray was the true inspiration for the character of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's poignant Sunset Boulevard. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1918
Few directors were as successful in coaxing a convincing performance out of the beautiful but highly variable actress Mae Murray as her longtime husband Robert Z. Leonard. In the Leonard-directed The Bride's Awakening, wealthy Elaine Bronson (Murray) is promised in marriage to socialite Richard Earle (Lew Cody). Like everyone else around her, Elaine is much taken by Earle's suave sophistication and honeyed words. Only after their marriage does the heroine realize that Earle is nothing more than a craven fortune hunter. In the manner later adopted by MGM, Elaine is shown suffering majestically in mink, surrounded by such trappings of wealth as country estates, custom-made roadsters and private golf courses. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1918
When Della Arnold (Mae Murray), a hopeful young actress, winds up stuck at an inn with the troupe's leading man, Julian Lawrence (Philo McCullough), he signs them in as husband and wife. Although nothing happens -- the hotel proprietor puts a halt to his advances -- this goes on to haunt her throughout the film. She leaves acting, and through a friend, Myrtle Harris (Claire DuBrey), meets George Addison (Arthur Shirley), who finds her work as an artist's model with Wilbur Henderson (George Chesebro). Henderson falls in love with Della and they plan to get married, but he runs into Lawrence, who tells him that they had stayed at a hotel together, giving it the lascivious bent he had wished it had. Henderson grills Della on this but refuses to believe her, so she sends him away and goes to visit Myrtle. Addison is among the people there. She reveals her broken engagement and Addison asks to marry her. Before she accepts she tells him the story about Lawrence. He believes her, and finally Della has a man with whom she can be happy. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1918
Her Body in Bond was another money-spinning collaboration between actress Mae Murray and her director husband Robert Z. Leonard. Murray gets to show off her considerable terpsichorean skills in the role of Peggy Hamilton, who with her husband Joe (Kenneth Harlan) performs a vaudeville dancing act. On the verge of "hitting it big" on Broadway, Joe collapses from exhaustion, obliging Peggy to carry on the act by herself. Soon thereafter, she catches the eye of rakish millionaire Jimmie Quinn (Albert Roscoe), who intends to make Peggy his wife -- or to just make her, period. With the help of Peggy's drug-addicted stepfather, Quinn convinces the girl that Joe has deserted her. When Joe finds out what's been going on, he beats Quinn to a pulp and reclaims his bride. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1918
Whenever she was directed by her husband Robert Z. Leonard, Mae Murray ceased behaving like a Movie Star and started acting like a human being. Such was the case in Danger! Go Slow!, in which Murray was cast as a tough, streetwise sneak thief. When the cops close in, she hops a freight to a small rural town, where to protect herself from molestation she disguises herself as a boy. Adopted by a kindly old woman (Lydia Knott), Murray decides to keep up her masquerade, though slowly but surely she divests herself of her criminal tendencies and learns to enjoy being honest. The story ends happily as the heroine, at last revealing her true gender, marries the old woman's son (Jack Mulhall), whom she has saved from financial ruin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1917
The second 1917 collaboration between husband-and-wife team actress Mae Murray and director Robert Z. Leonard was On Record, wherein the star is cast as the much-put-upon Helen Wayne. Accused of a crime she didn't commit, Helen is dragged into police headquarters, where she is subjected to the humiliation of fingerprinting. Once she is set free, Helen falls in love with brilliant young inventor Rand Calder (Tom Forman). Frederick Manson (Charles Ogle), Calder's hated rival, gets his hands on Helen's police fingerprints, hoping to use them to discredit Calder in the eyes of the public. Once again, poor Helen is hauled into court, where she is at last able to thoroughly exonerate herself. The judge destroys the fingerprints, boots Manson out of his courtroom, and performs the obligatory marriage ceremony, with Helen and Calder exchanging the "I Do's." The huge supporting cast included 22-year-old character actor Lucien Littlefield, already an established expert in "old man" characterizations. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Justine Gibbs (Mae Murray) is a very romantic young woman who is in line to inherit a fortune. She is engaged to Ralph Gaylor, who only wants her for her money. But Justine is unaware of this; she only wishes he were more romantic, like her favorite author, Hartley Poole (Sam T. Hardy). Things get complicated when Poole actually shows up in Justine's town. She makes sure she gets to know him, and he uses her as research for his latest book. What he doesn't realize is that he's gradually falling in love with her. Finally he figures it out and Gaylor, with his callous machinations, is left out in the cold. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Mormonism was considered something of a hot potato in 1917, with many sideline observers (including such self-proclaimed "experts" as Arthur Conan Doyle and Zane Grey) regarding the religious movement as a sinister cult, promoting blasphemy, polygamy and mind control. Director Robert Z. Leonard valiantly attempted to present a balanced view of the subject in his 1917 epic The Mormon Maid, using carefully delineated "good" and "bad" Mormons, just as D.W. Griffith patronizingly offered both heroic and villainous African Americans in his controversial The Birth of a Nation. The story begins in 1848, as frontiersman John Hogue (Hobart Bosworth and his family watch the westward procession of Mormons, who are in the process of escaping religious persecution in the East. Among these pilgrims are the sincerely religious Tom Rigdon (Frank Borzage) and tyrannical Mormon elder Darius Burr (Noah Beery Sr.). Both men are attracted to Hogue's beautiful daughter Dora, played by director Leonard's wife Mae Murray. When the Hogue homestead is attacked and burned down by Indians, the family is rescued by the Mormons, who take them along to the "promised land" of Utah. By and by, Nora becomes engaged to Rigdon, while the polygamous Burr plots and plans to add the heroine to his "harem." The emotionally overwrought climax finds the virtuous Nora lying about her sexual history to save herself from a forced marriage to the despotic Burr. While A Mormon Maid was considered to be scrupulously fair in 1917, modern-day viewers may be offended by the prejudicial depiction of the Mormon Elders, and by the misinformation cavalierly dispensed about the Mormon movement in general. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Previously filmed in England as The Incomparable Bellairs, Agnes and Egerton Castle's romantic novel Sweet Kitty Bellairs(originally The Bath Comedy) served as an early movie vehicle for Mae Murray. Set in 18th-century England, the story concerns a flirtatious debutante who falls in love with a dashing highwayman. Robert Gray co-starred as bandit chieftain Captain O'Hara, while Tom Forman was cast as Lieutenant Varnay, the heroine's erstwhile sweetheart. Though Mae Murray was never much of an actress, she was a fascinating screen presence, and it was her natural charisma that carried the film over its rough spots. Based on the David Belasco stage version of the Castles' novel, Sweet Kitty Bellairs was remade as a musical comedy in 1930. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1916
A typical fanciful silent screen romance based on a bodice-ripping pulp novel, To Have and to Hold marked the screen debut of Mae Murray, the dancer with the bee-stung lips who had made quite a name for herself in several editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. Murray played Lady Jocelyn Leigh, who rather than marry Lord Carnal (Tom Forman), a man she loathes, changes places with her maid and sails to the New World as a mail-order bride. She is escorted by the dashing Captain Percy (Wallace Reid) and they fall in love. Lord Carnal, of course, isn't far behind and soon all three are shipwrecked and at the mercy of Robert Fleming's band of pirates. Mae Murray found filmmaking bewildering this first time out. Not expecting To Have and to Hold to be made out of sequence, she constantly turned to the more experienced Reid for advice. Happily, director George Melford never asked the dancer to do much more than strike ornamental poses while Reid performed his patented derring-do. A disillusioned Murray was all set to return to Broadway but Famous Players director Cecil B. De Mille persuaded her to stick around. She did and would eventually become the archetypal tempestuous silent screen star, the basis, some sources suggest, for the character of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Paramount remade To Have and to Hold in 1922 starring the rather more sensible Betty Compson. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1916
At the suggestion of his father, Colonel Slocum Castleton (Frank Keenan), young Rodney Castleton (Charles Ray) leaves his home in the South to expand his mind in New York City. Things don't work out that way, however, as Rodney becomes engaged to a trollop, Viola Bretagne (the vampy Louise Glaum). The Colonel comes up to meet this "sweet young thing" that Rodney holds dear and sees through her immediately. He takes the girl out for a night on the town himself just to show Rodney what she's really like, and this temporarily squelches the relationship. But after the old man leaves, the wily Viola gets Rodney drunk and hustles him into a marriage. Needless to say, the Colonel is less than thrilled when his boy comes home with Viola in tow. He takes her on a carriage ride and offers her money to leave Rodney. When she refuses, he rides the carriage over a cliff, killing them both. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Early in her screen career, former Follies sensation Mae Murray played a number of waif-like roles. Surprisingly, the formula worked; perhaps this is due in part to the direction of Robert Z. Leonard, who became the star's second (third, if you count a brief and apparently unconsummated union with New York broker Jay O'Brien) husband. Murray and Leonard met on this production. Lady Brentwood (Edythe Chapman) leads a sad and lonely life in London -- her daughter and son-in-law were killed in South Africa. However, she suspects that her granddaughter is still alive, and now that the girl would most likely be grown, she is determined to find her. She commands one of her poorer relations to do the searching, and he in turn sends young attorney John Stoddard (Elliot Dexter) to South Africa. Stoddard doesn't find the girl, but he does meet Margot (Murray), a tiny plow girl who is horribly abused by the farmer (Theodore Roberts) who is her boss. Stoddard rescues Margot from this terrible situation and brings her to London, claiming that she is Lady Anice, the long-lost granddaughter. Lady Brentwood's relative wants to marry Margot so he can get his hands on half the old lady's fortune, but Stoddard and Margot decide to confess. It turns out, however, that Margot really is Lady Anice after all, and she and Stoddard wind up together. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1916
Though many of Cecil B. DeMille's earliest films were based on plays and novels, The Dream Girl was a complete original, written directly for the screen by longtime DeMille associate (and reputed lover) Jeannie Macpherson. Still in her gamine period, superstar-to-be Mae Murray stars as Meg Dugan, a child of the San Francisco waterfront. To escape her shabby surroundings, Meg creates her own fantasy world, complete with a "Sir Galahad" galloping to her rescue. But the grim realities of life come crashing down upon Meg thanks to her reprobate father Jim Dugan (Theodore Roberts), who at present is trying to pass off his confederate "English Hal" (Charles West) as a nobleman, the better to win the heart -- and the bank account -- of susceptible young heiress Alice Merton (Mary Mersch). As luck would have it, Meg has been appointed the temporary ward of Alice's father Benjamin Merton (James Neill). Out of love for Alice's handsome brother Tom (Earl Foxe), Meg exposes her father's scheme, then resignedly returns to the waterfront. But Tom proves to be Meg's long-awaited Sir Galahad when he storms down to the docks and demands that she become his bride. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
