Mae Murray
| Mae Murray | |
|---|---|
Murray as seen in Photoplay in 1917
|
|
| Born |
Marie Adrienne Koenig May 10, 1885 New York City |
| Died | March 23, 1965 (aged 79) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Resting place | Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery |
| Occupation | Actress, dancer, film producer, screenwriter |
| Years active | 1916–1931 |
| Spouse(s) |
William M. Schwenker, Jr. (m. 1908; div. 1910) Jay O'Brien (m. 1916; div. 1918) Robert Z. Leonard (m. 1918; div. 1925) David Mdivani (m. 1926; div. 1934) |
| Children | 1 |
Mae Murray (May 10, 1885 – March 23, 1965) was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen".
She was born Marie Adrienne Koenig in New York City, the second oldest child of Joseph and Mary (née Miller) Koenig. Her maternal grandparents had emigrated from France while her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Germany. She had two brothers, William Robert (born November 1889) and Howard Joseph (born January 1884).
The family eventually moved to an apartment in the Lower East Side. In May 1896, Joseph Koenig, Murray's father, died from acute gastritis due to his alcoholism. To support the family, Mary Koenig took a job as a housekeeper for Harry Payne Whitney.
She first began acting on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon Castle. In 1908, she joined the chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies, moving up to headliner by 1915. Murray became a star of the club circuit in both the United States and Europe, performing with Clifton Webb, Rudolph Valentino, and John Gilbert as some of her many dance partners.
Murray made her motion picture debut in To Have and to Hold in 1916. She became a major star for Universal, starring with Rudolph Valentino in The Delicious Little Devil and Big Little Person in 1919. At the height of her popularity, Murray formed her own production company with her director, John M. Stahl. Critics were sometimes less than thrilled with her over-the-top costumes and exaggerated emoting, but her films were popular with movie-going audiences and financially successful.
In 1925, Murray, Leonard, and Stahl produced films at Tiffany Pictures, with Souls for Sables (1925), starring Claire Windsor and Eugene O'Brien, as the first film made by Tiffany. For a brief period of time, Murray wrote a weekly column for newspaper scion William Randolph Hearst.
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