Arthur Murray
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Arthur Murray (April 4, 1895 – March 3, 1991), was a dance instructor and businessman, whose name is most often associated with the dance studio chain that bears his name.
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[edit] Early Life and Start in Dance
Arthur Murray was born in New York, New York in 1895 as Moses Teichman. In 1912 at the age of 17, he began teaching dance at night while working as a draftsman by day. He studied under the popular dance team of Irene and Vernon Castle and went to work for them.
He soon began teaching ballroom dancing to the residents of Boston, Massachusetts at the Devereaux Mansion, before moving to Asheville, North Carolina.
At the outbreak of World War I, under pressure of the anti-German feeling prevalent in the U.S., Teichman changed his name to make it sound less German.
In 1919 he began studying business administration at Georgia Tech, and he taught ballroom dancing in Atlanta at the Georgian Terrace Hotel. In 1920, Murray organized the first "radio dance"; a band on the Georgia Tech campus was broadcast to dancers at Atlanta, Georgia's Capital City Club.
[edit] The Start of Arthur Murray Studios
His first business was selling dance lessons by mail, using a kinetoscope. Though the idea was successful, he had problems with the business, which failed. His second business was drawing and selling "footprints" (an unusual use of drafting skills) which prospective dancers could place on the floor and follow to learn how to dance. This mail-order business remained successful. His third business, launched in 1925, involved selling branded dance lessons through franchising. He trained dance instructors for the Statler Hotel chain, who then went to various hotels and gave lessons; Murray kept some of the profits from each franchise.
This business was expanded more widely in 1938, when an Arthur Murray dance studio franchise was opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Others followed.
After World War II, Murray's business grew further with the rise of interest in Latin dance, and he regularly taught and broadcast in Cuba in the 1950s. Murray went on television with a dance program hosted by his wife Kathryn Murray, The Arthur Murray Party, which ran from 1950 to 1960, on CBS, NBC, DuMont, ABC, and then back to CBS. The Murrays retired in 1964 although they continued to be active for some time, even appearing as guests on the Dance Fever disco show in the late 1970s.
At that date, there were over 3,560 dance studios bearing his name, but by 2003 there were only about 180 studios. There are currently approximately 190 Arthur Murray Studios in operation.
[edit] Arthur Murray in Pop Culture
The Murray name and franchise were immortalized in the 1942 hit song Arthur Murray Taught me Dancing in a Hurry written by Johnny Mercer and Victor Schertzinger.
Critics have complained that Arthur Murray's franchised dance studios and instruction methods have overly homogenized many popular dances, especially Latin dances, by using instruction methods that don't "teach to the music", and by giving the impression that there is only one correct way to do each dance.
The business is credited with promoting modern competitive ballroom dancing, also known as DanceSport.
In the original Dirty Dancing movie, Johnny tells Baby that he received his training at the Arthur Murray studios.
[edit] Trivia
- Arthur and Kathryn Murray have twin daughters.
- Arthur Murray Dance Studios claims to be the second-oldest franchised company (the first, A&W Restaurants, began in 1919).
- Pupils of Murray include: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Duke of Windsor, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Barbara Hutton, Elizabeth Arden, Manuel L. Quezon and Jack Dempsey.
