Career
In 1954, Murray returned from Europe to the U.S. and acting. He starred alongside Mary Martin in the stage version of The Skin of Our Teeth. Upon seeing his performance in the play, director Joshua Logan cast him in 20th Century Fox's film adaptation of William Inge's play Bus Stop.
Murray's role as Beauregard "Beau" Decker in Bus Stop (1956) marked his film debut. He starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, who played Cherie, the object of his desire. His performance as the innocent cowboy determined to get Cherie was well received, and he was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1957, Murray starred as reserved, married bookkeeper Charlie Sampson in The Bachelor Party. That same year he had one of his most successful roles, the morphine-addicted Korean War veteran Johnny Pope in the drama A Hatful of Rain. Despite director Fred Zinnemann's intention to cast Murray as the comical brother Polo, Murray insisted on playing the lead. The film was one of the first to show the effects of drug abuse on addicts and the people around them.
Murray starred as a blackmailed United States senator in Advise & Consent (1962), a film version of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Allen Drury. The movie was directed by Otto Preminger and co-starred Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton. Murray co-starred with Steve McQueen in Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) and played the ape-hating Governor Breck in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).
In 1976, Murray starred in the film Deadly Hero. In addition to acting, he directed a film based on the book The Cross and the Switchblade (1970). He starred with Otis Young in the ABC western television series The Outcasts (1968–69), featuring an interracial bounty hunter team in the post-Civil War West.
In 1979, Murray starred as Sid Fairgate on the prime-time soap opera Knots Landing. He also scripted two episodes of the show in 1980. In 1981, Murray left the series after two seasons either to concentrate on other projects, or, according to some sources, over a salary dispute. The character's death was notable at the time because it was considered rare to kill off a star character. The death came in the second episode of season three, following season two's cliffhanger in which Sid's car careened off a cliff. To make viewers doubt the character had actually died, Murray was listed in the credit sequence for season three; in fact, season three revealed that Fairgate had survived the plunge off the cliff (thus temporarily reassuring the viewers), but died shortly afterward in a hospital. Although he effectively distanced himself from the series after that, Murray contributed an interview segment for the 2005 reunion special Knots Landing: Together Again.
On Broadway, Murray played the title role in the short-lived musical Smith, was a replacement for Ted Bessell in the original run of Bernard Slade's Same Time, Next Year, and starred in Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests. In 1977-78, he starred in the national US touring production of Neil Simon's California Suite.
In 2017, 16 years after his last screen role, Murray came out of retirement to play Bushnell Mullins in the third season of Twin Peaks.
