Renowned Dance Teacher Arthur Murray Dies at 95

Arthur Murray, the famed dance instructor who ran a string of 500 dance schools, died Sunday at his home. He was 95.

Murray’s death was confirmed by a spokesman at Borthwick Mortuary. No further details were released.

The Diamond Head penthouse where Murray and his wife, Kathryn, lived was a long way from the Lower East Side of New York City, where he was born Moses Teichman on April 4, 1895, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Austria.

A nationwide chain of dance studios, an 11-year television show and managing the investments of friends and relatives filled Murray’s life until a tennis injury sent him into permanent retirement in 1983.

“I started out with a strong inferiority complex,” Murray once said in an interview. “I didn’t think I had any ability. I found I had three careers.”

Murray recalled the first time he tried to dance.

“I lived in the New York ghetto, near the Henry Street settlement house,” he said of his youth. “They had a dancing class at the settlement house. I went there and asked a girl to dance. I didn’t know how. After a few steps she told me, ‘You dance like a truck driver.’ But I kept at it.”

He began teaching in dance halls at night while working as an office boy during the day. He taught for a time at Castle House, the school founded by Vernon and Irene Castle, the best known ballroom dancers of their day.

Murray started his first dance studio at age 18. The business expanded only after two New York hotels asked him to set up dances in 1937. He wasn’t paid for the dances and arranged to have his instructors teach new dance crazes in return for free rooms and 50% off meals.

When the hotels discontinued the popular service after a year, Murray decided to rent space on the second floor of a downtown building to accommodate students who wanted to continue, and “that’s how the studios started.”

The idea proved so successful that there were 400 Arthur Murray Dance Studios in operation by 1950, when his television show premiered.

“I made a business out of dancing and then later on, to advertise our studios, I bought time on television.”

The “Arthur Murray Dance Party” featured such guests as actress Helen Hayes and Milton Berle competing in dance contests. It soon became so successful, the networks began paying Murray to produce the show.

Two years later, Murray sold the studios for $5 million, but remained on as manager of the chain until 1964, when he and his wife moved to Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the television show continued through the 1950s and Murray found the dance that remained his favorite.

“The bossa nova was a dance that was popular in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I went down there to learn it and I made up my own variations,” he said.

“After that, the twist came in with rock ‘n’ roll, and that knocked out my television show. You just can’t show celebrities standing, flailing their arms around.”

By the time the show went off the air in 1960, there were more than 500 dance studios.

With the studios and the television show behind him, Murray had time to concentrate on financial investments, eventually managing $15 million in investments for friends and family members.

Murray didn’t have high hopes for the return of ballroom dancing.

“Ballroom dancing is a means of getting people together, and they don’t seem to need that now. A man says, ‘Your place or mine.’ ”

Survivors include his wife and twin daughters, Jane Heimlich and Phyllis McDowell.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.