Don Murray (actor)

Donald Patrick Murray (July 31, 1929 – February 2, 2024) was an American actor, screenwriter, and film director. His debut film role as Bo Decker in Bus Stop (1956), opposite Marilyn Monroe, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He would subsequently play a number of major leading and supporting roles in films during the 1950s and 60s, including A Hatful of Rain (1957), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959, with James Cagney), One Foot in Hell (1960, with Alan Ladd), Advise & Consent (1962, with Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton), and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965, with Steve McQueen and Lee Remick).

Murray also starred in several television series, notably as Earl Corey on The Outcasts (1968–69), Sid Fairgate on Knots Landing (1979–81), and Bushnell Mullins on Twin Peaks (2017). He also played a villain in the science-fiction film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), and the father of Kathleen Turner's character in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). His screenwriting credits included The Hoodlum Priest (1961), a biopic of Jesuit priest Dismas Clark in which he also starred and co-produced. In 1970, he wrote and directed The Cross and the Switchblade (1970), likewise based on the life of evangelists David Wilkerson and Nicky Cruz.