Profile of Mae Murray on Famous Like Me

Mae Murray (May 10, 1889 - March 23, 1965) was an American actress and dancer, who became known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen."

Born Marie Adrienne Koenig in Portsmouth, Virginia, she first began acting on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon Castle. In 1908, she joined the chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies, moving up to headliner by 1915.

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.

Her motion picture debut was in To Have and to Hold (1916). She became a major star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starring with Rudolph Valentino in Delicious Little Devil and Big Little Person in 1919.

Murray's most-famous role was probably in The Merry Widow (1925) opposite John Gilbert. However, when silent movies gave way to talkies, Murray's voice proved to be not compatible with the new sound, and her career began to fade. Her career was injured even further when her fourth husband, Prince David Mdivani (a Russian nobleman whose brother, Serge, married Pola Negri), became her manager and suggested that she leave MGM. Eventually, the pair divorced, and Murray lost custody of their son in a bitter court battle.

Murray's finances continued to collapse, and for most of her later life she lived in poverty. She wrote a not-particularly-successful autobiography, The Self-Enchanted.

She later moved into the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, a retirement community for Hollywood professionals, where she died.

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