Dudley Murphy

Biography

Dudley Bowles Murphy (July 10, 1897 – February 22, 1968) was an American film director. 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.