
Dudley Murphy
Directing
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. Description above from the Wikipedia article Dudley Murphy licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For

A British estate agent travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a London castle. After Dracula enslaves the agent and drives him to insanity, the pair return to London together, where Dracula, a secret bloodsucker, begins preying on socialites.
Dracula

A British estate agent travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a London castle. After Dracula enslaves the agent and drives him to insanity, the pair return to London together, where Dracula, a secret bloodsucker, begins preying on socialites.
Drácula

Unscrupulously ambitious, Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and, through bluff and bravado, finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.
Emperor Jones

A young college student gets pregnant by the man she loves, but circumstances prevent their marrying, so she marries a classmate she doesn't love. Soon, however, her lover returns, and she finds herself in a dilemma as to who to choose.
Confessions of a Co-Ed

Ballet Mécanique is a Dadaist, post-Cubist art film conceived, written, and co-directed by the artist Fernand Léger in collaboration with the filmmaker Dudley Murphy. It has a musical score by the American composer George Antheil.
Ballet Mécanique

Blondy and Swede are gruff best friends who build skyscrapers. Blondy gets sweet on a girl he saves from a falling beam, Sally, but when he is injured in an accident and temporarily crippled, he rejects her. Swede tries every desperate measure to get Blondy to fight back, to try to walk, even masquerading as stealing Sally away from him.
Skyscraper

Young Austrian Archduke Paul "Gustl" Gustave is in an arranged engagement but his uncle, the emperor, decides to let Gustl carry on a fling with ballet dancer Lisl Gluck.
The Night Is Young
A country boy travels to the city to make his fortune and prove his worth to the people back home
Alex The Great

A prosecutor's career and his adopted daughter's happiness hang in the balance when he is blackmailed by a gangster.
Main Street Lawyer

Two Dartmouth football players fall in love with the same girl following college graduation.
The Sport Parade

A young stockbroker is in love with a nightclub entertainer. He loses his job and the girl at work one night obtains some information about money making stocks and passes it on to her boyfriend. He then uses this information in the stock market.
Stocks and Blondes

The negligent owner of a tenement slum becomes romantically involved with one of the building's residents.
One Third of a Nation

Standard tale of husband and wife living a party lifestyle. He works in a gambling hall and she occasionally models and sings. Because they want to start a family wife feels the need to change their situation. Situation is changed and husband gets a new job and then a promotion but is tricked into a bad business deal and wants to go back to his old life.
Don't Gamble with Love

A young songwriter struggles to make good in New York.
Jazz Heaven

In this all-black cast short, legendary blues singer Bessie Smith finds her gambler lover Jimmy messin' with a pretty, younger woman; he leaves and she sings the blues, with chorus and dancers.
St. Louis Blues

Duke Ellington plays hot jazz in a fictional story that finds him down on his luck; he tries in vain to dissuade his friend, dancer Fredi Washington, from working with heart trouble even though it means work for his band. Sure enough, she collapses on stage...
Black and Tan

About the Russian dancer Yolanda who arrives in Mexico with her company in 1909. There she falls in love with the young cadet Julio. However, the influential Carlos opposes this love. He wants Yolanda for himself and threatens her with a possible deportation to Siberia if she rejected his romantic advances.
Yolanda

Influenced by California Pictorialist photography of the preceding decades, it was in its own day recognized as an avant-garde film, but nevertheless it secured successful commercial distribution.
Soul of the Cypress

The Black Death is ravaging Spain. As Camille Saint-Saëns's "Danse Macabre" plays on the soundtrack, a mix of animation and acted scenes tells the story of Youth and Love meeting one night. They dance, embrace, and kiss. As the night wears on, exuberant Death, a skeletal figure with a violin, pursues the couple. They try to elude him. Eventually, Love swoons. Youth is powerless to protect her. Is she doomed?
Danse macabre
A college girl (Bonnie Kildare) dreams of her boyfriend (Johnny Downs) as he sings her a love song. The song begins at graduation ceremony and eventually moves to a soda fountain. A mixed double quartet contributes a lovely chorus.