Arthur Murray Dies at 95; Renowned Dance Teacher

Arthur Murray, the son of poor immigrant Jewish parents who waltzed his way to fame and fortune teaching dance and running a nationwide chain of 500 “Arthur Murray Dance Studios,” died Sunday in his Diamond Head penthouse in Hawaii. He was 95.

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

In addition to the chain of dance studios, Murray had an 11-year television show, the “Arthur Murray Dance Party,” which premiered in 1950 and featured such frequent guests as actress Helen Hayes and Milton Berle. More recently, Murray managed investments. A tennis injury forced him into permanent retirement in 1983.

Murray, the intrepid master of ballroom dancing, was shy and gawky growing up on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, where he was born Moses Teichman on April 4, 1885. His parents had emigrated from Austria.

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

Dancing did not come easy for Murray, who recalled his first attempt as far from successful.

“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.”

Murray said he continued to have difficulty dancing until one day a girl took pity on him and gave him lessons. “She had patience and in due time I could dance,” he once said.

Patience was an ingredient he would later stress with his instructors. Teachers were required not to lose their tempers no matter how hopeless, trying or impossible a pupil appeared. Instead, students were to be flattered and reassured.

With practice, he said he soon acquired poise and self-confidence. While toiling as an office boy during the day, he began teaching in dance halls at night, working for a time at Castle House, run by Vernon and Irene Castle, the best known ballroom dancers of their day.

At the age of 18, Murray opened his first dance studio. Two New York hotels asked Murray to organize dances to teach guests the new dance crazes. Instructors were given a free room 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 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.” It soon became so successful, the networks began paying Murray to produce the show.

But by the 1960s, when the twist came into fashion, the dance studios and the television show began to decline in popularity. The twist came in with rock ‘n’ roll and the studios began to lose favor with the public.

“I have a theory,” he said, “that everyone wants to dance alone, to show off and that’s why the twist is so popular.”

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

Murray sold the dance studios in the 1950s for $5 million, but remained on as manager of the chain until 1964, when he and his wife, Kathryn, moved to Hawaii.

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.