J. Harold Murray

[2] He made his debut on the musical theatre stage as J. Harold Murray in out-of-town productions of Arthur Hammerstein's Always You and Frank Tinney's Sometime, both in 1920.

During the rest of the decade, he starred in 10 musicals, and separately co-starred with Eddie Cantor (Make It Snappy, 1922), Fred Allen (Vogues of 1924) and Joe E. Brown (Captain Jinks, 1925).

Other shows were The Midnight Rounders of 1921, The Whirl of New York (1921), Springtime of Youth (1922), Caroline (1923), China Rose (1925) with Olga Steck, and Castles in the Air (1926) with Vivienne Segal.

He performed in several musical film shorts for Universal Pictures (Nite in a Night Club, 1934; The Singing Bandit, 1937; Somewhere in Paris, 1938; Wild and Bully, 1939), RKO (Phony Boy, 1937; Under a Gypsy Moon, 1938) and Vitaphone (Who Was That Girl, 1934; The Flame Song, 1934).

Modern theater musicals emerged from vaudeville and operettas, and J. Harold Murray played an important role in their early development.