Arthur Murray - Early Life and Start in Dance

Early Life and Start in Dance

Arthur Murray was born in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, in 1895 as Moses Teichman. In August 1897, he was brought to America by his mother Sarah on the S.S. Friesland, and landed at Ellis Island. They settled in Ludlow Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his father, Abraham Teichmann.

Murray was shy as a child and self-conscious about his tall, lanky appearance. He wanted very much to be a part of the social activities that most of his friends enjoyed, particularly the dances, but was afraid to socialize with girls. At the age of 14, Joe Feigenbaum, a friend of his whom he admired because of his popularity with girls, taught him his first dance steps. To get practice on the dance floor, Murray attended weddings in his neighborhood, where he found willing dance partners of every size and age.

In 1912, at the age of 17, he taught 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.

Murray won his first dance contest at the Grand Central Palace, a public dance hall where he later became a part-time dance teacher after graduation from high school. The first prize had been a silver cup, but Murray went home with nothing to show for his win. His partner of the evening took it; it was destined for a pawnshop. This loss made an impression on Murray, and in later years every winner in his dance contests took home a prize.

Between jobs as a dance instructor, Murray worked as a draftsman at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and as a reporter at the New Haven Register.

He soon began teaching ballroom dancing to the residents of Boston, Massachusetts, at the Devereaux Mansion in Marblehead, Massachusetts, before moving to Asheville, North Carolina. At the outbreak of World War I, under the pressure of the anti-German sentiment prevalent in the U.S., Teichmann changed to a less German-sounding name.

In 1919, Murray began studying business administration at Georgia Tech, and taught ballroom dancing in Atlanta at the Georgian Terrace Hotel. In 1920, he organized the world's first "radio dance"; a band on the Georgia Tech campus played "Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech" and other songs, which were broadcast to a group of about 150 dancers (mostly Tech students) situated atop the roof of the Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta.

Murray was inspired by a casual remark made by William Jennings Bryan one evening at the hotel: "... You know, I have a fine idea on how you can collect your money. Just teach 'em with the left foot and don't tell 'em what to do with the right foot until they pay up!" Murray thought about Bryan's remark, and devised the idea of teaching dance steps with footprint diagrams supplied by mail. Within a couple of years, over 500,000 dance courses had been sold.

On April 24, 1925, Murray married his famous dance partner, Kathryn Kohnfelder (September 15, 1906, Jersey City, New Jersey – August 6, 1999, Honolulu, Hawaii), whom he had met at a radio station in New Jersey. She had been in the audience while he was broadcasting a dance lesson.

After their marriage, the mail-order business declined and the Murrays opened a dance school offering personal instruction. Their business prospered, especially in 1938 and 1939 when Arthur picked 2 little-known dances, the "Lambeth Walk" and "The Big Apple", and turned them into dance crazes. They were taught at hotel chains throughout the country, and the name "Arthur Murray" became a household word.

There are now hundreds of Arthur Murray studios globally, with specially trained instructors, making Arthur Murray the most successful dance instructor in history.

Arthur and Kathryn Murray had twin daughters, Jane and Phyllis. On June 4, 1951, Jane married Dr. Henry Heimlich who became famous for the Heimlich maneuver in 1974. Phyllis married educator Edward Irvine "Ted" McDowell.