Charles Murphy Biography

According to his official studio bio, this ruddy-faced veteran character player was born in Dublin, Ireland, but his death certificate instead lists the rather less glamorous Independence, MO. Whatever his birthplace, Murphy (who sometimes billed himself C.B. Murphy or plain Charles Murphy) was a constant presence in serials and B-Westerns from the very beginning. In film from at least 1913, Murphy played the chief of boatmen in The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), considered the birth of the cliffhangers, and was a stagecoach driver 27 years later in Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). Murphy drove the stagecoach again in the 1942 Hopalong Cassidy western Lost Canyon but, sadly, with tragic consequences. During filming, the coach hit a rock, overturned, and fatally injured Murphy. He died from his injuries a few days later at a Bakersfield, CA, hospital. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi