Brother Murphy’s fame as a military hero and film star is memorialized in Oklahoma City’s National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Photo: Bro. Audie Leon Murphy, 32°, K.C.C.H., as he appeared in the 1954 film version of his autobiography, To Hell and Back A poor lad from a Texas sharecropper family, grade school dropout, orphaned at 16, goes off to war, becomes an acclaimed military hero, and then goes on to win fame and fortune in Hollywood. It sounds like the impossible, yet for Brother Audie Leon Murphy, 32°, K.C.C.H., it happened. Bro. Murphy was born near Kingston in Hunt County, Texas, on June 20, 1924. Although his family was financially poor, his direct ancestors had compiled fine military records in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. Other kinfolk had fought in the Texas Revolution, Mexican War, and World War I. Besides Audie, two more brothers saw World War II action. The young Audie Murphy faced a hard-scrabble existence. As a song lyric reads "daylight to dark, work’s never done, Lord have mercy on a sharecropper’s son." The story goes that Audie learned to be a crack shot because the family depended on his hunting for much of their meat supply and money for bullets was so scarce, that a missed shot meant no food on the table. In 1936 Emmett Murphy deserted his family. Audie quit school and went to work full time as a farm hand. He did whatever had to be done to help his mother and keep the rest of the family together. Then his mother, Josie Bell Murphy, died. Audie, at age 16, the oldest child at home, faced up to the dilemma of placing the younger children in an orphanage and going to work in the county seat at a combination grocery-service station. When World War II came along, he initially tried to enlist in the Marines but was rejected for being underweight. Finally, at 18, the U.S. Army took him into the infantry. After some months of training at Camp Wolters, Texas, and Fort Meade, Maryland, Private Murphy arrived in Casablanca, Morocco, in February 1943, assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division. Although Murphy saw little combat action in North Africa, his unit would more than make up for it when the campaigns in Sicily and Italy began. Later, he also experienced the war close up in the invasion of Southern France and, finally, inside Germany.
Audie Murphy’s wartime heroics landed his photo on the cover of the July 16, 1945 issue of Life. Among those who saw his picture was film star James Cagney, who thought the young soldier had potential in Hollywood. Audie, in fact, came to California and stayed for several weeks, but as no offers were forthcoming, he departed. Later he would return, and his luck would change. In the meantime, he experienced a triumphant homecoming in his honor, held at Farmersville, Texas, and an "Audie Murphy Day" at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. He also made a return trip to Europe at the behest of the US Army. Finally, a Hollywood deal came through. Audie landed a small part in an Alan Ladd–Donna Reed film at Paramount Studios. It was titled Beyond Glory. In this offering he played the part of a West Point cadet. Murphy had another small role in Texas, Brooklyn, and Heaven. His movie career seemed to be going nowhere until the fall of 1948 when he landed a major role in Bad Boy, an Allied Artist feature in which he played a juvenile delinquent who is rehabilitated at a place called "Boy’s Ranch" in Texas. Finally, Murphy’s Hollywood career began to zoom upward. So did his romantic life as he had begun to court and on January 8, 1949 married a young star named Wanda Hendrix, whose petiteness matched Audie’s perpetual youthfulness. Universal International offered him a seven-year contract at $2,500 weekly, and he moved into the starring role in The Kid From Texas, another film in a long list of movies about Billy the Kid. He then costarred with Wanda in another western titled Sierra. However, by the time the picture was released in June 1950, the couple’s marriage was headed for the divorce courts in the manner of many show business linkages. After another western titled Kansas Raiders, in which he portrayed Jesse James, Audie, on loan to MGM, starred as Henry Fleming in The Red Badge of Courage, an adaptation of Stephen Crane’s famous Civil War novel. More than his previous films this boosted his stature as an actor. As one critic wrote "Audie Murphy gives a sensitive performance, wonderfully conveying... the fall...of a man in combat." Universal followed this success by placing their star in eight consecutive westerns, the most notable being Destry, the third Hollywood rendition of Max Brand’s famed novel, Destry Rides Again. Meanwhile, on April 23, 1951, Audie married again to Pamela Archer, a former airline stewardess. This union endured and produced two children, Terry and James (nicknamed Skipper), on March 14, 1952 and March 23, 1954, respectively. By 1954 one could conclude that Audie had achieved stardom, albeit he was being increasingly typecast in westerns. That fall he began filming his own story, To Hell and Back, which turned out to be Universal’s biggest hit up to that time. Premiering in August 1955 in four Texas cities, the film quickly set attendance records and grossed some $10 million in its initial theatrical release. He also made some 10 percent of the net profits on the picture, which totaled up to some $387,000 through October 1966.
Meanwhile, Bro. Murphy had begun his Masonic journey by joining North Hollywood Lodge No. 542. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice February 14, 1955; passed to the Degree of Fellowcraft on April 4, 1955; and raised a Master Mason on June 27, 1955. On May 14, 1956, he became a plural member of Heritage Lodge No. 764, also in North Hollywood. He retained membership in the Craft for the rest of his life. Murphy had purchased a home in Dallas in the early 1950s although he never lived in it on a regular basis. He did continue his Masonic endeavors there completing his Scottish Rite Degrees in Dallas on November 14, 1957. In October 1965, he was invested with the rank and decoration of K.C.C.H., and less than two months before his death, he moved his Scottish Rite membership to the Valley of Long Beach, California. Audie Murphy’s movie career continued to move forward in the later fifties as the older B pictures had faded into the past and "adult westerns" dominated television screens; the former war hero ranked among the few remaining cowboy film stars. Among his more memorable efforts from this period are The Guns of Fort Petticoat with Kathryn Grant–Crosby, Night Passage in which he costarred with James Stewart, and The Wild and the Innocent, where he portrayed a trapper who pursued dance hall queen Joanne Dru and was in turn pursued by the youthful teen star, Sandra Dee, who eventually got her man. Murphy also had a brief fling with television adult westerns by starring in a series titled Whispering Smith about the introduction of more modern police methods in Denver. Twenty-six shows were filmed, but the series lasted through only 13 of them. It was aired on the NBC Network in mid-1961. Although his TV series did not endure, Audie’s motion picture career continued to do well through the mid-1960s. The decade began with the release of Hell Bent for Leather in February 1960, Battle at Bloody Beach in 1961, and Trunk to Cairo in 1965. Cowboy films, however, remained his main bread-and-butter. Among his more notable pictures from this time include Posse From Hell (1960), Six Black Horses (1962), Gunfight at Comanche Creek (1963), and Bullet for a Badman (1964). A Murphy film that might be of some interest to Masons, Gunpoint (1965), featured two other noted members of the Fraternity, Edgar Buchanan and Royal Dano, in strong support roles. From 1965, Audie Murphy’s movie career began to fade. He made a pair of films for Columbia, The Texan (1966) and 40 Guns to Apache Pass (1967), the former shot near Barcelona, Spain. In 1969 the one-time war hero tried his hand at producing a picture titled A Time for Dying. However, the production was never finished, and the producer was still trying to raise funds to complete the picture at the time of Bro. Murphy’s untimely death.
Audie Murphy died in a plane crash on May 28, 1971, near
Blacksburg, Virginia, and he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on
June 7, 1971. Future President George Bush was numbered among those who attended
his funeral. Two years later his country honored him by naming the Audie
L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, for him. In 1996,
his movie contributions received recognition with his induction into the
"Hall of Great Western Performers" at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His pictures are shown regularly on TV, and several
are available on videocassette. Like Sergeant Alvin York from World War I,
Audie Leon Murphy has become the personification of the heroic citizen soldier.
On top of these achievements, Bro. Murphy needs to be remembered as one of
the most distinguished Masons of his era.
The above article is reprinted, with permission in slightly shortened form, from the Knight Templar magazine of October 1998.
During 1999, the Supreme Council hopes to install an original oil portrait of Brother Murphy in the Scottish Rite Hall of Honor in the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C. It will be a permanent memorial to Audie Murphy as American military hero, film star, and Freemason. A contribution of $20,000 is already in hand toward the $50,000 donation level required. All funds benefit the House of the Temple Historical Preservation Foundation, Inc., and are tax-deductible. To support this good cause, please send checks designated for the Audie Murphy Hall of Honor portrait, from Valley or personal funds, to: The Supreme Council, 1733 16th St., NW, Washington, DC 20009–3103. Thank you very much! |
Dr. Ivan
M. Tribe, 32°
Audie related
his experiences and his account of the war in the classic autobiography,
To Hell and Back (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1949). Modestly told, you
would hardly know from reading the text that Murphy had emerged from the
conflict as the most renowned citizen soldier of his era. Audie earned more
medals than anyone else in the Army during that war including three Purple
Hearts for actions on September 15, 1944; October 26, 1944; and January 25,
1945. His Medal of Honor resulted from actions in France on January 26, 1945.
By this time, he became a second lieutenant and commanded Company B. His
citation included Murphy’s indomitable courage and his refusal to give
an inch of ground. This saved his company from possible encirclement and
destruction, enabling it to hold the woods which had been the enemy’s
objective. Audie’s original postwar objective had been to go to West
Point, but his service-related injuries prevented it. He did, however, fulfill
his promise to get his younger siblings out of the orphanage, and he bought
a home for older sister Corrinne so she could help rear the children.
Prior to the
release of his film autobiography, Murphy starred in a boxing picture titled
The World in His Corner with Barbara Rush. However, the public seemed to
prefer their hero either in westerns or war movies (or a combination of both).
He did a different type of western in Walk the Proud Land, the story of John
Clum, an Apache Indian agent who pioneered in encouraging self-government
on reservations. A military comedy, Joe Butterfly set in postwar Japan,
represented Murphy’s only effort in a humorous mode, although several
of his westerns had their lighter moments.
