Dudley Murphy

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Dudley Murphy (July 10, 1897 - February 22, 1968) was an American film director.

Murphy was born on July 10, 1897 in Winchester, Massachusetts.

He began making films in the early 1920s after working as a journalist.

In his first short film, Soul of the Cypress (1921), a variation on the Orpheus myth, the film's protagonist falls in love with a dryad (a wood nymph whose soul dwells in an ancient tree) and throws himself into the sea to become immortal and spend eternity with her.

Murphy's then-wife Chase Harringdine played the dryad.

Murphy followed this with Danse Macabre (1922) featuring Adolph Bolm, Olin Howland, and Ruth Page.

Both of these early films are in the DVD collection Unseen Cinema issued in October 2005 (see link below).