In his first
short film,
Soul of the Cypress (1921), a variation on the
Orpheus myth, the film's protagonist falls in love with a dryad (a wood nymph whose soul dwells in an ancient tree) and throws himself into the sea to become immortal and spend eternity with her. Murphy's then-wife Chase Harringdine played the dryad. Murphy followed this with
Danse Macabre (1922) featuring
Adolph Bolm,
Olin Howland, and
Ruth Page. Both of these early films are in the DVD collection
Unseen Cinema issued in October 2005. Murphy's eighth film,
Ballet mécanique, which he co-directed with the French artist
Fernand Léger, premiered on 24 September 1924 at the Internationale Ausstellung neuer Theatertechnik (International Exposition for New Theater Technique) in Vienna. Considered one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking,
Ballet mécanique also included creative input from
Man Ray and
Ezra Pound, and was presented at the exposition by
Frederick Kiesler. The film was scheduled to be screened with
George Antheil's masterpiece of the same name. However, the music ran close to 30 minutes while the film was 17 minutes long. In 2000, Paul Lehrman produced a married print of the film. In her book
Dudley Murphy: Hollywood Wild Card, film historian Susan Delson argues persuasively that Murphy was the film's driving force but that Léger was more successful at promoting the film as his own creation.
Ballet mécanique, with the
George Antheil music originally written for the film, was included in the DVD collection
Unseen Cinema released in October 2005. In addition to
Ballet mécanique, Murphy is best remembered for
St. Louis Blues (1929) with
Bessie Smith and
Jimmy Mordecai,
Black and Tan (1929) with
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra,
Confessions of a Co-Ed (1931),
The Sport Parade (1932) with
Joel McCrea, and
The Emperor Jones (1933), starring
Paul Robeson. In 1932, Murphy helped introduce the Mexican artist
David Alfaro Siqueiros to prominent people in the Los Angeles community. To show his gratitude, Siqueiros painted a mural on a wall in Murphy's Pacific Palisades home. The only intact mural by Siqueiros in the United States,
Portrait of Mexico Today was donated anonymously to the
Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1999. From the late 1940s through the 1960s Murphy and his fourth wife, Virginia, owned and operated Holiday House, an exclusive Malibu hotel designed by
Richard Neutra and favored by the Hollywood elite. ==Selected filmography==