Stephen Umfreville Hay Murray (6 September 1912 – 31 March 1983) was an English cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

.

Background and education

A member of Clan Murray

Clan Murray

Clan Murray is a Highland Scottish clan. The Murrays were a great and powerful clan whose lands and cadet houses were scattered throughout Scotland.- Origins of the Clan :...

 headed by the Duke of Atholl

Duke of Atholl

Duke of Atholl, alternatively Duke of Athole, named after Atholl in Scotland, is a title in the Peerage of Scotland held by the head of Clan Murray...

, he was born in Partney

Partney

Partney is a small village, around 3 miles north of Spilsby in the Lincolnshire Wolds. This village was the birth place of Henry Stubbe, the noted seventeenth century thinker.-Transport links:...

, Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire

Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...

, the son of the Reverend Charles Murray, Rector of Kirby Knowle

Kirby Knowle

Kirby Knowle is a village and civil parish in Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England, on the border of the North Yorkshire Moors and near Upsall, about 4 miles north east of Thirsk....

, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, and Mabel (née Umfreville). He was the great-grandson of the Right Reverend George Murray

George Murray (bishop of Rochester)

George Murray was a British churchman, Archdeacon of Man, Dean of Worcester, Bishop of Sodor and Man and Bishop of Rochester.-Background and education:...

, Bishop of Rochester

Bishop of Rochester

The Bishop of Rochester is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Rochester in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers the west of the county of Kent and is centred in the city of Rochester where the bishop's seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin...

, while the diplomat Sir Ralph Murray

Ralph Murray

Sir Francis Ralph Hay Murray KCMG, CB , was a British journalist, radio broadcaster and diplomat.-Background and education:...

 was his elder brother. He was educated at Brentwood and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. He was also the great uncle of the comedian Al Murray

Al Murray

Alastair James Hay "Al" Murray , is a British comedian best known for his stand-up persona, The Pub Landlord, a stereotypical xenophobic public house licensee. In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy...

.

Acting career

Murray found his greatest fame as the new Number 1, later promoted to Lieutenant Commander in The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark was a radio sit-com about life aboard a British Royal Navy frigate named HMS Troutbridge, based in HMNB Portsmouth, though in series 1 and 2 the ship and crew were stationed offshore at an unnamed location known simply as "The Island." In series 2 this island was revealed to be...

on BBC Radio

BBC Radio

BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...

. His film debut was as the second police officer who interrupts an amorous Eliza and Freddy (Wendy Hiller

Wendy Hiller

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller DBE was an Academy Award-winning English film and stage actress, who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly sixty years. The writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took...

 and David Tree

David Tree

David Tree was an English stage and screen actor from a distinguished theatrical family whose career in the 1930s included roles in numerous stage presentations as well as in thirteen films produced between 1937 and 1941, among which were 1939's Goodbye Mr...

) in Pygmalion

Pygmalion (1938 film)

Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller....

(1938). He was Gladstone to John Gielgud

John Gielgud

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...

's Disraeli in The Prime Minister

The Prime Minister (film)

The Prime Minister is a British film from 1941 directed by Thorold Dickinson. It details the life and times of Benjamin Disraeli, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and stars John Gielgud, Diana Wynyard, Fay Compton and Stephen Murray.-Plot:...

in 1941. He played Dr. Stephan Petrovitch in the 1943 Ealing war movie Undercover. Among his other larger film roles were Uncle Henry in London Belongs to Me

London Belongs to Me

London Belongs to Me is a 1948 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel of the same name by Norman Collins...

(1948, heavily made-up to look several decades older) and the lead in Terence Fisher

Terence Fisher

Terence Fisher was a film director who worked for Hammer Films. He was born in Maida Vale, a district of London, England.Fisher was one of the most prominent horror directors of the second half of the 20th century...

's Four Sided Triangle

Four Sided Triangle

Four Sided Triangle is a 1953 British science-fiction film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Film Productions.The film dealt with the moral and scientific themes that were soon to put Hammer Films on the map with the same director's The Curse of Frankenstein...

(1953). He once again appeared under heavy make-up as the elderly Dr Manette in A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities (1958 film)

A Tale of Two Cities is a 1958 British film of the Charles Dickens novel A Tale of Two Cities. It starred Dirk Bogarde and Dorothy Tutin, and was directed by Ralph Thomas.-Cast:*Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton*Dorothy Tutin as Lucie Manette...

(1958).

Murray made his stage debut at Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon

Stratford-upon-Avon is a market town and civil parish in south Warwickshire, England. It lies on the River Avon, south east of Birmingham and south west of Warwick. It is the largest and most populous town of the District of Stratford-on-Avon, which uses the term "on" to indicate that it covers...

 in 1933, and he played such parts as Seyton in Macbeth

Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...

, among smaller roles. He later did seasons at the Malvern Festival and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, where he played Hamlet. He worked at the Old Vic in London with Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

 and Tyrone Guthrie

Tyrone Guthrie

Sir William Tyrone Guthrie was an English theatrical director instrumental in the founding of the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, at his family's home, Annaghmakerrig, in County Monaghan, Ireland.-Life and career:Guthrie...

. He also played at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, and in the West End. At the Westminster Theatre in 1940 he portrayed the title character in John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater

John Drinkwater was an English poet and dramatist.He was born in Leytonstone, London, and worked as an insurance clerk...

's Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

. He was in many of the plays of George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

, and he did later engagements at the Mermaid Theatre in London and at Stratford, Ontario

Stratford, Ontario

Stratford is a city on the Avon River in Perth County in southwestern Ontario, Canada with a population of 32,000.When the area was first settled by Europeans in 1832, the townsite and the river were named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England. It is the seat of Perth County. Stratford was...

. His leading roles on television included Svengali

Svengali

Svengali is a fictional character of George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby. Svengali "would either fawn or bully and could be grossly impertinent. He had a kind of cynical humour that was more offensive than amusing and always laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place...

. In 1952 he returned to the Old Vic to play King Lear

King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...

, and toured Europe in that production. Several years later he also played Lear on radio.

Radio became one of Murray's most triumphant acting areas. He played Macbeth in 1947 with Flora Robson

Flora Robson

Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...

, a month after playing the part on television (with Ruth Lodge), so different were the two medium's audiences deemed to be. He played the part again on radio in 1960. He was a fine Leontes in The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale

The Winter's Tale is a play by William Shakespeare, originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies, some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare's late romances. Some critics, among them W. W...

in 1951 with Elspeth March

Elspeth March

-Early years:She was born as Jean Elspeth Mackenzie in Kensington, London, England, the daughter of Harry Malcolm and Elfreda Mackenzie.-Career & marriage:...

 and Fay Compton

Fay Compton

Fay Compton was an English actress from a notable acting lineage; her father was actor/manager Edward Compton; her mother, Virginia Bateman, was a distinguished member of the profession, as were her sister, the actress Viola Compton, and her uncles and aunts. Her grandfather was the 19th-century...

, and again in 1966 with Rachel Gurney

Rachel Gurney

Rachel Gurney was an English actress. She began her career in the theatre towards the end of World War II and then expanded into television and film in the 1950s. She remained active mostly in television and theatre work through the early 1990s...

 and Edith Evans

Edith Evans

Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...

. He played Shakespeare's Timon of Athens

Timon of Athens

The Life of Timon of Athens is a play by William Shakespeare about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon , generally regarded as one of his most obscure and difficult works...

both in 1961 and in 1975. In 1964, he played the title role in the monumental BBC Radio production of Marlowe's Tamburlaine with Sheila Allen

Sheila Allen (English actress)

Sheila Allen was an English actress, who was best known to the wider public for her role on television as Cassie Manson in Bouquet Of Barbed Wire and its sequel Another Bouquet...

 as Zenocrate with Timothy West

Timothy West

Timothy Lancaster West, CBE is an English film, stage and television actor.-Career:West's craggy looks ensured a career as a character actor rather than a leading man. He began his career as an Assistant Stage Manager at the Wimbledon Theatre in 1956, and followed this with several seasons of...

, Andrew Sachs

Andrew Sachs

Andrew Sachs is a German-born British actor. He made his name on British television and is best known for his portrayals of Manuel in Fawlty Towers, a role for which he was BAFTA-nominated, and Ramsay Clegg in Coronation Street.-Early life:Sachs was born in Berlin, Germany, the son of Katharina , a...

, Joss Ackland

Joss Ackland

Sidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland CBE , known as Joss Ackland, is an English actor who has appeared in more than 130 films and numerous television roles.-Early life:...

, Gabriel Woolf

Gabriel Woolf

Gabriel Woolf is an English film and television actor.-Career:His roles include Sir Percival in the 1953 film,Knights of the Round Table and Sutekh in the 1975 Doctor Who serial Pyramids of Mars....

, Bruce Condell and other leading Shakespearian actors of the day. He did two versions of the BBC radio epic The Rescue by Edward Sackville-West, where he played Odysseus. Other classic 50s roles included Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, John Gabriel Borkman

John Gabriel Borkman

John Gabriel Borkman is the penultimate composition of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, written in 1896.-Plot:The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to illegally speculate with his investors' money...

and Brand

Brand

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...

as well as Calderon's The Mayor of Zalamea. However, his longest running part was that of "No 1" in The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark was a radio sit-com about life aboard a British Royal Navy frigate named HMS Troutbridge, based in HMNB Portsmouth, though in series 1 and 2 the ship and crew were stationed offshore at an unnamed location known simply as "The Island." In series 2 this island was revealed to be...

in which he starred from 1960 to 1977.

In 1970 Murray played alongside Glenda Jackson

Glenda Jackson

Glenda May Jackson, CBE is a British Labour Party politician and former actress. She has been a Member of Parliament since 1992, and currently represents Hampstead and Kilburn. She previously served as MP for Hampstead and Highgate...

 in the BBC drama series Elizabeth R

Elizabeth R

Elizabeth R is a BBC television drama serial of six 85-minute plays starring Glenda Jackson in the title role. It was first broadcast on BBC2 from February to March 1971, through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia and broadcast in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre.- Episodes...

about the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In this he played Sir Francis Walsingham

Francis Walsingham

Sir Francis Walsingham was Principal Secretary to Elizabeth I of England from 1573 until 1590, and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Walsingham is frequently cited as one of the earliest practitioners of modern intelligence methods both for espionage and for domestic security...

, head of Elizabeth's secret service, and a noted Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

, whose work exposed the Babington Plot

Babington Plot

The Babington Plot was a Catholic plot in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, on the English throne. It led to the execution of Mary. The long-term goal was an invasion by the Spanish forces of King Philip II and the Catholic league in...

 which led to the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Even in the 1970s he enjoyed the difficult roles, like August Strindberg

August Strindberg

Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over 60 plays and more than 30 works of fiction, autobiography,...

's To Damascus

To Damascus

To Damascus , also known as The Road to Damascus, is a trilogy of plays by the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The first two parts were published in 1898, with the third following in 1904...

with Zena Walker

Zena Walker

Zena Walker was an English actress in film, theatre, and television.Walker was born in Birmingham, the daughter of George Walker, a grocer, and his wife Elizabeth Louise . She attended St. Martin's School in 1960 and then went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She starred in an...

.

His expressive voice was often anguished and uncertain in his roles, so he was ideal for A Hospital Case by Dino Buzatti, a play which Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

 had translated and adapted for the Paris stage. He also did new radio work like Peter Tegel's Rocklife. In 1970 he was the old Prince Bolkonsky in BBC radio's War and Peace

War and Peace

War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...

. He tried his hand at science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 in radio's The Tor Sands Experience by Bruce Stewart.

Personal life

Murray married Joan Alestha, daughter of John Joseph Moy Butterfield, in 1937. He died on 31 March 1983, aged 70.

Selected filmography

• The Prime Minister
  The Prime Minister (film)
  The Prime Minister is a British film from 1941 directed by Thorold Dickinson. It details the life and times of Benjamin Disraeli, who became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and stars John Gielgud, Diana Wynyard, Fay Compton and Stephen Murray.-Plot:...
  
  (1941)
• Undercover (1943)
• London Belongs to Me
  London Belongs to Me
  London Belongs to Me is a 1948 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Richard Attenborough and Alastair Sim. It was based on the novel of the same name by Norman Collins...
  
  (1948)
• Silent Dust
  Silent Dust
  Silent Dust is a 1949 British drama/thriller film, directed by Lance Comfort and starring Nigel Patrick, Sally Gray, Stephen Murray and Beatrice Campbell. The screenplay was by Michael Pertwee, adapted from his own play The Paragon...
  
  (1949)
• For Them That Trespass
  For Them That Trespass
  For Them That Trespass is a 1949 British crime film directed by Alberto Cavalcanti and starring Richard Todd, Patricia Plunkett and Stephen Murray...
  
  (1949)
• The Magnet (1950)
• Four Sided Triangle
  Four Sided Triangle
  Four Sided Triangle is a 1953 British science-fiction film directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Film Productions.The film dealt with the moral and scientific themes that were soon to put Hammer Films on the map with the same director's The Curse of Frankenstein...
  
  (1953)
• At the Stroke of Nine
  At the Stroke of Nine
  At the Stroke of Nine is a 1957 British crime film directed by Lance Comfort and starring Patricia Dainton, Stephen Murray, Patrick Barr and Dermot Walsh...
  
  (1957)
• The Nun's Story
  The Nun's Story (film)
  The Nun's Story is a 1959 Warner Brothers film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Audrey Hepburn. Based upon the 1956 novel of the same title by Kathryn Hulme, the story tells of the life of Sister Luke , a young Belgian woman who decides to enter a convent and make the many sacrifices...
  
  (1959)
• Master Spy
  Master Spy
  Master Spy is a 1964 British spy film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring Stephen Murray, June Thorburn and Alan Wheatley.-Partial cast:* Stephen Murray as Boris Turganev* June Thorburn as Leila* Alan Wheatley as Paul Skelton...
  
  (1964)

External links