Murphy was born in Munich, Germany, the daughter of American parents Mildred (née Taylor) and Robert D. Murphy, a diplomat. They left Germany in 1939, at the beginning of World War II.
She attended Manhattanville College and acting school at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio before beginning her career on stage. She made her stage debut in Germany, in a 1949 production of Peer Gynt. She made her Broadway debut in 1950 in The Tower Beyond Tragedy. She has gone on to appear in some 15 Broadway productions, most recently in Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings (1999).
She also acts in films and on TV, most notably portraying Sara Delano Roosevelt in the TV miniseries Eleanor and Franklin (1976) (for which she won an Emmy) and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977). She played the role of Maudie Atkinson in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), a motion picture based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name written by Harper Lee. She also played the infamous role of prostitute Callie Hacker in Walking Tall (1973).
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Last updated on Tuesday July 08, 2008 at 01:18:23 PDT (GMT -0700)
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