Mae Murray (born Marie Adrienne Koenig; May 10, 1885 – March 23, 1965) was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter.

Murray became a star of the club circuit in both the United States and Europe, performing with Clifton Webb, Rudolph Valentino, and John Gilbert as some of her many dance partners.

Critics were sometimes less than thrilled with her over-the-top costumes and exaggerated emoting, but her films were popular with movie-going audiences and financially successful.

[citation needed] At her career peak in the early 1920s, Murray, with other notable Hollywood personalities such as Cecil B. DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Jesse L. Lasky, Harold Lloyd, Hal Roach, Donald Crisp, Conrad Nagel and Irving Thalberg, was a member of the board of trustees at the Motion Picture & Television Fund – a charitable organization that offers assistance and care to those in the motion picture and television industries without resources.

[citation needed] Murray appeared in the title role in the Erich von Stroheim-directed film The Merry Widow (1925), with John Gilbert.

In 1931, she was cast with Irene Dunne, Lowell Sherman, and fellow silent screen star Norman Kerry in Bachelor Apartment.

Murray took her husband's advice and walked out of her contract with MGM, making a powerful foe of studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

[6] In the 1940s, Murray appeared regularly at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe, a nightclub that specialized in a "Gay '90s" atmosphere, often presenting stars of the past for nostalgic value.

Her appearances collected mixed reviews: her dancing (in particular the Merry Widow Waltz) was well received, but she was criticized for her youthful costumes and heavy makeup application, which were seen as attempts to conceal her age.

On the evening of February 19, 1964, 78-year-old Murray was found disoriented in St. Louis, thinking that she had completed a bus trip to New York City.

[10] Many years later, Murray moved into the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, California, a retirement community for Hollywood professionals.