Arthur Murray (1895-1991) and Arthur Murray Dance Studios
by Libby Smigel
The Arthur Murray Dance Studios have become
a ubiquitous presence around the world,
despite changes in dance fashion over almost
ninety years. The silhouetted dancing couple
that adorns Arthur Murray Dance Studios
advertisements and storefronts has become a
recognizable sign of reputable dance instruction
and romantic connotations associated with
forms of ballroom dance. The hallmark
footprint patterns in Murray’s dance
instructions that date back to the 1920s have
also become a pervasive visual symbol of
ballroom dance.
Early Life and Initial Success
Murray was born Moishe Teichman. His family
immigrated to New York from a region then
known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The
young Murray took up dancing for his health,
grew to love it, and met new dance partners as
a self-admitted wedding crasher. He
abandoned plans to become an architect or
draftsman after winning a prize for his waltz at
the Grand Central Palace in 1912 and accepting
an opportunity to teach dance at G. Hepburn
Wilson Dance Studios. Many new social dances
of this period were enjoyed by the young set for
their freedom and novelty, but were disparaged
by the privileged classes as uncouth or erotic.
Perhaps with a wealthy client group in mind,
Murray’s preferences initially inclined toward
the more refined styles, and he studied and
eventually taught for the famous American
dance duo Vernon and Irene Castle.
In 1914, the Baroness de Kuttleston persuaded
Arthur Murray to move to affluent Asheville,
North Carolina, to tutor aristocrats in dance at
the elegant Battery Park Hotel. With the
growing anti-German and anti-Jewish reactions
during World War I, he shed his birth name and
assumed the more culturally neutral name by
which he is remembered. Although successful
in his Asheville venture, when he discovered
that the Baroness kept 90% of the $50 lesson
fee, Murray moved to Atlanta, Georgia, in 1919
with aspirations to set up a business
autonomously.
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Enrolled in business studies at Georgia Tech,
Murray augmented his income by teaching
social dances at the Georgian Terrace. He
marketed dance lessons in 1920 by promoting
the first “radio dance,” for which he arranged
for a campus band to broadcast dance music to
Georgia Tech students partying atop Atlanta’s
Capital City Club. Murray also used new
technology, creating films to be played on
kinetoscopes, as a way to make dance lessons a
mail-order business. The kinetoscope, which
was applied to first commercial uses in the
1890s, exhibited moving images within a
cabinet box by advancing a film strip with
sequential images over a light source.
Kinetoscope strips were, however, ill-suited to
mail delivery, with many of the packages
arriving damaged.
Always seeking ways to reach more prospective
dance students, Murray integrated his training
in architectural drawing and created diagrams
for a direct-mail dance-lesson business called
the Arthur Murray Mail-Order School of Dance.
Perhaps an early example of distance-learning,
instructions for popular social dances were
represented by sets of numbered footprints
that corresponded to the order and rhythm of
the dance patterns described in accompanying
written instructions. After distributing an
estimated five million mail-order lessons by
1925, this service was discontinued during the
Depression because of rising rates for magazine
advertisements and a shrinking number of
customers able to afford mail-order
subscriptions.
In 1938, Murray published his dance manual
How to Become a Good Dancer, which was
reissued and updated in many editions. The
book codifies his dance technique, much of
which appropriates from earlier ballroom dance
manuals the five positions and turnout of the
feet of ballet. The business-minded Murray
recognized the appeal of a high-art form, the
classical ballet, to those who were affluent or
who harbored social aspirations. His technique
emphasized stepping out onto the ball of the
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foot, where many other contemporary dance
teachers permitted a stride that more closely
resembled walking. His earlier association with
the Castles, famous for their “Castle Walk” onestep which relied on toe-stepping for the
precise speed and look of the steps, may have
influenced Murray’s long-standing preference
for dancing with the weight lifted high and the
stance on the ball. Murray’s manual emphasizes
the health benefits of proper dancing and
includes an “apology for dancing,” offsetting
some of the negative perceptions of the 1930s
“taxi dance halls,” where women were paid to
partner men, and “dance marathons,” contests
of stamina that provided a monetary prize for
the couple who could remain upright in a snug
ballroom position for the longest time. With his
publication, Murray sought the traditional
appeal of American and European dance
manuals but also accompanied the $1.96 book
with a strategic innovation: the Murray Magic
Footprints, the set of eight cutout footprints
that a novice could place on the floor to
practice the order of the dance steps.
From 1923 on, Murray established his own
dance studio on East 43rd Street in Manhattan
and was also in great demand in Los Angeles
where he coached many Hollywood stars. In its
first fifteen years, his New York studio took over
eight floors of its building, served an estimated
3,000 dance pupils each day, and grossed about
$500,000 annually. Murray engaged about 260
employees with a weekly payroll of $8,000, an
enormous sum at the time. Murray preferred
to hire young Southern women as instructors,
whom he characterized as forceful but gracious
extroverts. His female faculty served the
preferences of both his women pupils and his
businessman clients over age forty. A favorite
businessman’s lesson package was a set of
twenty lessons for $100.
The Studio Empire
Over the years, his list of dance students
became a Who’s Who of public figures,
including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt,
philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., orchestra
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leader Paul Whiteman, cosmetics entrepreneur
Elizabeth Arden, photographer Margaret
Bourke-White, actresses Myrna Loy and Ina
Clare, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton,
writer/broadcaster Lowell Thomas, and boxer
Jack Dempsey. Murray divided his own time
between the East and West Coasts, where his
dance lessons were in high demand, while
developing the nationwide studio system that
bears his name, largely from the interest of the
Statler hotels that wanted Murray-trained
instructors available at all of its hotels.
Murray expanded his dance empire with the
establishment of what is believed to be the first
franchise dance studio with his name in
Minneapolis, Minnesota. This franchise
operation made Arthur Murray, Inc., the second
American franchise company to have been
established, the first having been the A&W
company. At its height, the Arthur Murray, Inc.,
corporation grew to 350 franchises
internationally and grossed around $25 million.
Even with imitators such as the Fred Astaire
Dance Studios, which emerged in the late 1940s,
the Arthur Murray studio brand remained
unparalleled, usually logging about twice the
number of franchises as its nearest competitor.
Arthur Murray Dance Studios were able to
adapt to new trends and practices, promptly
offering some form of instruction on most
current fads. Although some of the lessons in
the new dances were unlikely to conform to
popular practice (following in the tradition of
the Castles, Murray would have refined the
dance according to his notions of ballroom or
nightclub decorum), the ability to supply the
lessons that the public demanded was a basic
formula for success. Murray could also identify
where related markets would strengthen the
dance studios and diversify the income. In the
1950s, Murray launched two projects that took
his name into greater visibility and new markets.
One was the new world of television; the
second was the recording industry.
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Arthur Murray and his wife Kathryn (née
Kohnfelder) launched, initially at their own
expense, a weekly television program titled
Arthur Murray Party Time (renamed The Arthur
Murray Party) on the ABC network in July 1950.
The program was carried by all four of the
television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and
DuMont) at different times during the course of
its ten years on air. The show expanded from
15 to 30 minutes in 1952 when the program
acquired its first advertising sponsor, General
Foods. Murray was reputed to have a stammer
and awkward manner in front of the camera,
perhaps the reason he delegated host duties to
Kathryn. The program followed conventions of
a variety show, with couples competing for
prizes (dance lessons at one of the Murray
studios), guest stars who sang, other celebrities
from sports and entertainment, and
professional dancers featured in exhibition
numbers. Among the celebrities who appeared
on The Arthur Murray Party were Johnnie Ray
and Don Cornell (1954), Andy Williams and The
Platters (1956), Bert Lahr (1957), and Buddy
Holly (1957) whose performance of “Peggy Sue”
and “That’ll Be the Day” may be the only extant
live footage recorded of Holly. The formula
ending to each show included a waltz to music
by Johann Straus. Thirteen of these early shows
and portions of some episodes are preserved on
kinescope within the J. Fred and Leslie W.
MacDonald Collection at the Library of Congress.
Harnessing the music industry to advance his
dance studios, Murray also contracted with a
major record label to issue sets of dance music,
and with each record a coupon for a free dance
lesson was included. Capitol Records issued the
dance music series as “Arthur Murray Favorites,”
initially in a 10-inch EP (extended play) vinyl
format and later as 12-inch LPs (long-playing).
Les Baxter and His Orchestra recorded the
Tango (1951) and Waltz (1955) albums.
Trumpeter Billy May debuted as band leader for
the Mambos and Foxtrot records and ghostconducted on a number of other Murray
records, using the name Billy May’s Rico
Mambo Orchestra when he performed Latin
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music. The Ray Anthony Orchestra contributed
the Swing Foxtrot album and Latin American
band leaders Chuy Reyes and Enric Madriguera
were engaged for rumba and samba albums
respectively. The Fred Astaire Dance Studios
took a cue from the Arthur Murray record deal
and entered into a similar arrangement with
RCA Victor for a record set called “Perfect for
Dancing” in the mid-1950s. RCA Victor
collaborated with Murray in the early 1960s for
another dance series titled “Music for Dancing,”
capitalizing on the popularity of new dances like
the Twist. For this set of records, RCA’s inhouse arrangers (Johnnie Camacho, Bill
Stegmeyer, Ray Carter) led the bands, usually
listed as the Arthur Murray Orchestra or the
Arthur Murray TV Dance Orchestra. Some of
the recordings have been re-issued on CD by
Sony under the category of “easy listening.”
While highly proficient and elegant, Arthur
Murray and his partners never achieved the
acclaim of dance performers like the Castles or
the team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Nonetheless, because of successful business
practices, “Arthur Murray” did become a
household name synonymous with social
dancing and dance lessons, especially old-time
dancing. His name pops up in songs, films, and
television shows where a reference to the name
is expected to provide an instantaneous
association. At the height of Arthur Murray’s
popularity, lyricist Johnny Mercer collaborated
with Victor Schertzenger on a novelty song
titled “Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a
Hurry” for the musical-comedy film The Fleet’s
In! (1942). Performed by actress Betty Hutton
and the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra, the song was a
huge hit. Years later it was referenced by lyrics
in Desi Arnaz’s song for the film “Cuban Pete”
(1946) to contrast the rhythms and tempos of
two cultures: "Cuban Pete doesn't teach you in
a hurry like Arthur Murray/You're now in
Havana, and there's always mañana.” In the
film The Sky’s the Limit (1943), Fred Astaire’s
character sarcastically replies “Arthur Murray”
to an admiring query about where he learned to
dance. In an I Love Lucy television episode
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titled “Little Ricky Gets a Dog” (1957), Lucy
Ricardo (Lucille Ball) tells her son she is learning
to dance the Mexican hat dance from Arthur
Murray, an ironic reference to the incongruity
of Murray’s dance expertise and a simplistic
inauthentic “Latin” dance that requires no
tutelage.
The financially successful Arthur Murray, Inc.,
however, faced a proliferation of legal
challenges in the 1950s through the 1970s,
some of which established precedent for
franchise enterprises. In one notable case,1 a
franchise studio sued its former instructor,
Clifford Witter, to prevent him from breaking
the non-compete agreement required by
Murray to prevent teachers from jumping to
the rival Fred Astaire studio chain. The court
found the non-compete clause to be
unreasonably restrictive and did not recognize
any possible economic effect if Murray’s former
employees joined another dance studio’s
faculty. More commonly, however, the noncompete covenants were upheld; for example,
in Worrie v. Boze,2 the court upheld the Murray
Dance Studios’ ban on competition within
twenty-five miles of franchised studios as a
reasonable geographical area which the studio
contract could protect.
In the 1960s, financial challenges for the parent
corporation emerged from its licensing of the
prominent name of Arthur Murray to its
franchised studios. In one 1967 case,3 a creditor
with no hope of payment from a California
franchise sued Arthur Murray, Inc., and the
courts found the national corporation was liable
for the local franchise’s unpaid bills, largely
because franchises all traded upon the name
recognition. Also in the 1960s, the U.S. Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) halted some of
Murray’s marketing ploys, customer contracts,
and quizzes whose prizes seemed
unredeemable without additional purchases. In
Syester v. Banta,4 the plaintiff accused the
faculty at a Des Moines franchise of flattery and
“false and fraudulent” selling techniques to
pressure her into a contract for 4,000 dance
lessons for a sum of more than $30,000, the
equivalent of a six-figure sum today.
While these lawsuits demonstrate a climate of
aggressive protection for the Arthur Murray
brand of ballroom dance, they also reveal that
the hospitable conditions for social dance were
changing. Many popular dances of the 1950s
and 1960s required little to no instruction, and
the rise of the new Fred Astaire franchises in
the late 1940s only intensified the survival
strategies needed to sustain the Murray
franchise empire. In 1964 Murray himself was
arrested for ignoring a subpoena to appear
before a grand jury in Minnesota on a related
fraud charge, but the arrest warrant was
cancelled when he agreed to testify. A few
months later, he resigned as president of Arthur
Murray Dance Studios, and a year later sold his
controlling stake in the company but remained
on the board as a consultant. He formally
retired in 1969, and enjoyed a lucrative second
career as a financial adviser in Honolulu, Hawai’i,
for a coterie of affluent friends in his social
circle.
Murray died of pneumonia on March 3, 1991, in
Hawai’i, and his wife, Kathryn, to whom he had
been married since 1925, died in 1999. His life’s
work, the Arthur Murray dance studios, still
exists, with approximately 250 independently
owned franchises operating across the world.
1
Arthur Murray Dance Studios of Cleveland v. Witter, 105
N.E.2d 685 (Ohio 1952).
2
62 S.E.2d 876 (Va 1951).
3
Nichols v. Arthur Murray, Inc., 56 Cal. Rptr. 728, 730
(1967).
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
4
133 N.W.2d 666 (Iowa 1965).
4
Libby Smigel MFA PhD co-chairs the Dance &
Culture Area of the Popular Culture
Association/American Culture Association, is
treasurer of the Congress on Research in Dance,
and is an associate editor of the Journal of
American Culture. She currently serves as
executive director of the Dance Heritage
Coalition.
Copyright © 2012 Dance Heritage Coalition
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