Mary Murphy (January 26, 1931 – May 4, 2011) was an American film and television actress of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Biography

Murphy was born in Washington, D.C., and spent most of her early childhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father, James Victor Murphy, died in 1940. Shortly afterwards, she and her mother moved to Southern California. While working as a package wrapper at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills, she was signed to appear in films for Paramount Pictures in 1951.

She first gained attention in 1953, when she played a good-hearted girl who is intrigued by Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The following year, she appeared opposite Tony Curtis in Beachhead, and with Dale Robertson in Sitting Bull, and the year after that as Fredric March's daughter in the thriller The Desperate Hours, which also starred Humphrey Bogart. She co-starred with actor-director Ray Milland in his Western A Man Alone.

Among her television appearances she was featured in the title role of defendant Eleanor Corbin in the 1962 Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Glamorous Ghost." She also appeared in dozens of other television series including The Lloyd Bridges Show, I Spy, The Outer Limits and Ironside. She was long absent from the big screen before acting in 1972 with Steve McQueen in Junior Bonner.

Murphy died of heart disease at her home in Beverly Hills, California, aged 80.