RIP Don Murray

 

RIP Don Murray. Veteran American film and television actor Don Murray died on January 2, 2024. He was 94. Born Donald Patrick Murray in Hollywood he was raised in New York. Don attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He then made it into the cast of the original 1951 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’ Tony Award-winning “The Rose Tattoo”. Universal offered him a contract for $150 a week, but he turned it down. “They could put you in whatever picture they wanted,” he said, and he wanted none of that, choosing to work in live TV. Murray was a conscientious objector during the Korean War, but he spent nearly three years working in German and Italian refugee camps in the Brethren Volunteer Service, a forerunner to the Peace Corps. He came back to the U.S. in 1955. When he appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in “Bus Stop” (1956) tt was his first movie, and he was 26 at the time. Television audiences will best remember Murray as Sid Fairgate, the husband of Michele Lee’s character, on the CBS primetime soap ‘Knots Landing’. Murray appeared in one Spaghetti western 1966’s “Kid Rodelo” in the lead role with Broderick Crawford and Janet Leigh. He was to appear in a previous Spaghetti called “Talion” in 1964 but it was never filmed.