George Murphy: Hollywood Song and Dance Man Who Started the Candy Desk

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George Murphy, the only U.S. senator with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was born on July 4, 1902, in New Haven, Connecticut, to an Irish Catholic family; his father Mike Murphy was a noted athletic trainer. After Yale, Murphy entered films in 1930 as studios sought stage-trained talent for talkies, and he became a leading song and dance man in musicals such as the Broadway Melody series and For Me and My Gal. He acted for 22 years, retired in 1952, and received an honorary Oscar in 1951 without ever earning a competitive nomination. He organized entertainment for troops in World War II, served as Screen Actors Guild president from 1944 to 1946, and held vice president posts at Desilu and Technicolor.

Murphy directed entertainment for the 1953, 1957 and 1961 presidential inaugurations, then in 1964 defeated Pierre Salinger, John F. Kennedy's former press secretary, for a California Senate seat. Ronald Reagan called him his John the Baptist. Throat cancer surgery later removed part of his larynx and left him able to speak only in a whisper. In 1970 he lost to John V. Tunney by more than 600,000 votes amid his health, his support for the Vietnam War, and reports that he still drew a Technicolor salary. He died of leukemia in Palm Beach, Florida, in May 1992, at 89.

• Salinger resigned two days early so Governor Pat Brown could appoint Murphy, giving him seniority over the rest of his freshman class.
• He chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 1967 and 1968.
• He voted for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
• He began the Senate candy desk tradition, now kept by Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin.
• Tunney's campaign inspired the 1972 Robert Redford film The Candidate, and Tom Lehrer wrote a satirical song titled George Murphy.