Mae Murray

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Mae Murray (born Marie Adrienne Koenig; May 10, 1885 – March 23, 1965) was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter.

Murray came to fame during the silent film period, and was dubbed "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen."

Early life

Murray was born in New York City, the second-oldest child of Joseph and Mary (née Miller) Koenig. While her maternal grandparents had emigrated from France, her paternal grandparents had immigrated from Germany. William Robert (born November 1889) and Howard Joseph (born January 1884) were both her brothers.

The family then migrated to a Lower East Side apartment. Joseph Koenig, Murray's father, died of acute gastritis as a result of his alcoholism in May 1896. Mary Koenig worked as a housekeeper for Harry Payne Whitney to help the family.

Personal life

Murray married William M. Schwenker Jr., the unemployed son of a brewery supply chain who cut off his son's pension on announcement of the wedding; they divorced in 1910. On December 18, 1916, she married former dancer and potential Olympic bobsled champion Jay O'Brien. He had been married to Irene Fenwick when she was conceived.

Murray wed film director Robert Z. Leonard on August 18, 1918, after divorcing O'Brien in 1918; the pair divorced on May 26, 1925.

Murray married David Mdivani, her fourth husband, on June 27, 1926. Before divorcing in 1933, they had one child, Koran David Mdivani (1926-2009). Koran was later raised by Sara Elizabeth "Bess" Cunning of Averill Park, New York, who began caring for him in 1936 after the child was recovering from a double mastoid surgery (Cunning's brother Dr. David Cunning was the surgeon). According to The New York Times, Cunning and her other brothers, John, Ambrose, and Cortland refused to regain custody of her son in 1939, which is when Murray and her late husband, Mdivani, entered a bitter custody dispute in which Murray and her ex husband, Mdivani, were arguing. It came to an end in 1940, with Murray being given legal custody of the child and the court ordering Mdivani to pay $400 per month maintenance. However, Koran Mdivani continued to live with Bess Cunning, who adopted him in 1940 under the name Daniel Michael Cunning. Mdivani, it was discovered, was able to loot nearly all of Murray's funds.

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Career

Murray performed on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon Castle. She joined the Ziegfeld Follies' chorus line in 1908, rising to the front page by 1915. Murray has performed with Clifton Webb, Rudolph Valentino, and John Gilbert as two of her many dance partners, making her a favorite of both the United States and Europe.

Murray made her motion picture debut in 1916's To Have and To Hold. She made a name for herself in Universal's The Delicious Little Devil and Big Little People, starring Rudolph Valentino in 1919. Murray formed her own film company with her producer, John M. Stahl, during her adulation. Critics were less ecstatic with her over-the-top costumes and exaggerated emoting, but her films were still popular with movie-going audiences and were financially viable.

Murray, Leonard, and Stahl produced films at Tiffany Pictures (1925), starring Claire Windsor and Eugene O'Brien as the first Tiffany film ever made. Murray wrote a newspaper column for a short period of time, in honor of newspaper scion William Randolph Hearst.

Murray, as well as other well-known Hollywood celebrities such as Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Jesse L. Lasky, Harold Lloyd, Hal Roach, Donald Crisp, Conrad Nagel, and Irving Thalberg, was a trustee of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a non-profit group that provides assistance and support to those in the motion picture and television industries in the early 1920s and 1970s. Murray herself obtained support from the group four decades ago.

Murray was first painted by well-known Hollywood portrait painter Theodore Lukits in the 1920s. This work, titled Symphony in Jade and Gold (The Actress Mae Murray's private collection, northern California), depicts Murray nude gazing in a mirror. It was on display at the Pacific Asia Museum in 1999 and two other locations as part of the exhibit Theodore Lukits, An American Orientalist.

Murray appeared in the title role in Erich von Stroheim's film The Merry Widow (1925), opposite John Gilbert. Peacock Alley (1930), a revival of her earlier 1921 version Peacock Alley, made an insecure debut in the new medium when silent films gave way to talkies. In 1931, she was cast alongside newcomer Irene Dunne, leading man Lowell Sherman, and Norman Kerry, a silent screen actor in the talkie Bachelor Apartment. At the time of release, the film was critically panned, but Murray made just one more film, High Stakes (1931), with Sherman, which was also with Sherman.

Pola Negri and Barbara Hutton, respectively, suffered a critical blow to her film career after she married her fourth husband, David Mdivani, a Georgian man of minor aristocratic roots, whose brother Serge and Alexis married actor David Mdivani. The couple married on June 27, 1926, and Mdivani became her boss, implying that his new wife should leave MGM. Murray took her husband's advice and walked out of MGM's employment, making her a potential target for studio manager Louis B. Mayer. She would soon be able to forget her glory and pleaded for return, but Mayer would not rehire her. Murray was thus barred from working in the Hollywood studios as a result of Mayer's hostility.

Murray's then-masseuse, Hollywood's most popular fitness specialist, was sued for the outstanding sum of $2,125 in 1927; a humiliating and lengthy court case ensued.

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