Last night Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater hosted a double feature of Josh Logan’s BUS STOP (1956) and Michael Anderson’s SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL (1959) – two classic films at a fair price ($10 for non-members) with the added value of a special appearance by Don Murray, the star of both films, who participated in a warm and informative Q&A between screenings with filmmaker Nick Redman.  The LA-born, New York-raised son of a Ziegfeld Girl and a Hollywood dance director, Murray made his Broadway debut in 1951 in Tennessee Williams’ THE ROSE TATTOO, staged by Daniel Mann.  Josh Logan had the athletic and startlingly handsome youth in mind for a role in PICNIC (which opened in 1953) but Murray had other ideas.  Declaring himself a conscientious objector during the Korean War (1950-1953), Murray channeled his military service into a stint with the Brethren Volunteer Service, a precursor of the Peace Corps.  (Murray had approached both the Quakers and the Mennonites as a volunteer and was turned down by both!)  While the role in PICNIC went to a young unknown named Paul Newman, Murray got to work in Europe, aiding war victims in Italy.  While overseas, he used his meager stipend to see American movies whenever possible – even saving up the then-princely sum of 35 cents to see Howard Hawks’ “Wonder Musical of the World” – GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (1953), starring rising star Marilyn Monroe.  Little did Murray know that only two years later he’d be back in Hollywood with Marilyn as his leading lady.

Contracting hepatitis from working and living in often unsanitary conditions in war-torn Italy, Murray was duly shipped home to the States.  During his recuperation, he was cast in a traveling production of Thornton Wilder’s THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH.  Josh Logan saw the show and had Murray test for the role of lovelorn cowboy Beauregard “Bo” Decker in Twentieth Century Fox’s BUS STOP.  Although the studio wasn’t crazy about him, Murray got the part and the rest is Hollywood history.  While Monroe lived up to every unflattering story told about her on set (perpetually late, perpetually unprepared), Murray liked her and the chemistry between the two performers is palpable and persuasive.  While the dailies were unpromising, the film cut together like a dream.  The film’s substantial box office receipts convinced Fox to offer Murray a long-term contract (which the studio was initially hesitant to do, even they did offer one to Murray’s fiance, Hope Lange, who had a supporting role in the film).  An Academy Award nomination for “Best Actor” gave Murray substantial credibility in Hollywood, allowing him to customize his contract, to do films he wanted to do and enjoy a “Broadway break” every two years so that he could pursue stage work if he so desired.

Throughout the rest of his long career, Don Murray divided his time between programmers and projects closer to his heart.  In these more personal films, Murray’s characters were darker and more complex, reflecting the actor’s disinterest in image.  Far afield from the brash innocence of Bo Decker were his heroin addicted Korean war veteran in A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957), Fox’s film adaptation of the stage play by Michael V. Gazzo, and his Washington politico driven to suicide by the revelation of a past homosexual relationship in Otto Preminger’s ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962).  For British director Michael Anderson, Murray appeared as an American World War I veteran studying medicine in troubled Ireland in SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, adapted from the 1933 novel by Rearden Connor.  Having glutted his taste for blood in the trenches of France, Murray’s peaceable Kerry O’Shea is sympathetic to the victims of “the troubles” but unwilling to take lives for the cause… until a friend (an impossibly young Ray McAnally, later of THE MISSION and MY LEFT FOOT) dies from a British bullet and he himself is brutalized by a ranking officer (Christopher Rhodes) of the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve (aka “The Black and Tan”).  Under the watchful eye of “The General” (James Cagney), a maverick Dublin physician by day and two-fisted Irish patriot by night, Kerry is inaugurated into the Irish Republican Army (never so-named) and proves a dedicated and loyal fighter… until the guerrillas kidnap the beautiful daughter (Dana Wynter) of a high-ranking British official and he finds his conflicted heart irrevocably torn between righteous hatred and unconquerable love.

Not only did SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL afford Donald Patrick Murray a working vacation on his ancestral turf but it stuck him plum in the middle of an incredible cast of British and Irish actors:  Cyril Cusack (wonderful as a Gaelic poet turned gunman), Richard Harris (an IRA man more than thirty years before playing a Sin Fein bigwig in PATRIOT GAMES), Glynis Johns (as the film’s tragic “bad” girl), Donal Donnelly (so memorable in John Huston’s THE DEAD), Niall MacGinnis (NIGHT OF THE DEMON), Sybil Thorndike (sentenced to prison in the film by her real life husband, Lewis Casson) and Michael Redgrave.  Unlike the lushly Technicolor BUS STOP, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL was shot in shadowy but seductive black and white by Erwin Hillier, who had photographed ‘I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING’ (1945) for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger; this film has a similarly Archer-esque feel for Ireland’s wide open spaces, the coastline and the heath, as well as the claustrophic confines of cobblestoned Dublin.  Michael Anderson had previously directed a film adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 (1956) and this film shares a bit of that story’s paranoia and uncertainty.  Anderson’s career is a bit uneven (he would later direct Richard Harris in the JAWS-inspired ORCA) but SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL compares favorably with OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965), an exceedingly grim espionage tale starring George Peppard and Sophia Loren, and the made-for-cable SWORD OF GIDEON (1984), based on the same events that inspired Steven Spielberg’s MUNICH (2005).  Rarely screened or discussed and not currently available on DVD, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL is, as we film bloggers are wont to say time and time again, sorely in need of reevaluation and no small amount of praise.

Two months shy of his 80th birthday, Don Murray bounded down to the front of the theater at the Egyptian last night like a man half his age.  Spry, sharp and still movie star handsome, Murray regaled the audience with anecdotes about these films in particular and his life, career and activism in general – admitting, even, to feeling unexpected emotions at the sight of first wife Hope Lange on the screen with him in BUS STOP.  (A busy actress on stage, television and in film, Lange passed away in 2003 at the age of 70.)  Murray also spoke with pride at having starred in a groundbreaking (although now sadly obscure) TV western, THE OUTCASTS, which aired weekly on ABC between September 1968 and the following May.  Offered the choice of three prospective series (with a guarantee of at least 26 episodes), Murray opted for this project over a small screen reboot of THE PROFESSIONALS (1966) and a speculative drama about American life under Soviet rule because it gave equal billing and status to black actor Otis Young.  (The popular espionage series I SPY, starring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, had ended its three-season run on NBC that spring, just two weeks after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King.)  Although THE OUTCASTS did not endure, Murray continued working.  Having produced HOODLUM PRIEST (1961) and CHILDISH THINGS (1966/1969) – both of which concerned issues of criminality and spirituality – he turned his hand to directing with the like-minded THE CROSS AND THE SWITCHBLADE (1970).  Probably best remembered these days as an original cast member of the prime time soap KNOT’S LANDING, Murray also lives in the hearts of cult film fans for his participation in the third sequel to PLANET OF THE APES.  In CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (1972), Murray excelled in an atypically villainous role, as the fascistic Governor Breck brought down by Roddy McDowall’s chimp Che Guevara.  (Adding to the behind-the-scenes fun, no doubt, is that Murray and McDowall had at one time been roommates.) And who among us who has seen ENDLESS LOVE (1981) doesn’t think of Murray whenever we jaywalk through a busy city intersection?

It was a great night out last night with Don Murray, his movies and his memories.  Thanks to the American Cinematheque @ The Egyptian and to Nick Redman for making it happen.

Keep an eye pealed for Don Murray’s new movie… BREATHE!