Murray, Bill (1950—)

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Murray, Bill (1950—)

Despite actor Bill Murray's high exposure and national success on television's Saturday Night Live and as the semi-delusional greenskeeper in the golf classic Caddyshack (1980) the enduring gift he had bequeathed to popular culture by the 1990s rested in the image of his smug and arrogant weatherman who, inexplicably one February 2, wakes up in the town of Punxsutawney and finds himself having to relive the day over and over again, until he recognizes the folly of his ways. The transformation of weatherman Phil into a loving, caring human being takes place in Groundhog Day (1993), an inventive "feel-good" fantasy with a message that springs from the tradition of Frank Capra and captivated cinema-going audiences. In the film, Murray demonstrated that he could be equally effective as a Mr. Nasty or a Mr. Nice, and earned serious plaudits.

When the network executives of NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) first saw Bill Murray, they wrote him off as an Irish Catholic street fighter. He was no Chevy Chase, and this perception of his quality almost cost him a job with the network and the stardom it brought him. Over the years, however, Murray churned through a succession of images, from slick Vegas nightclub singer, through con-artist scientist turned ghostbuster, to the suave weatherman of Groundhog Day.

The fifth of nine children of a Chicago lumber salesman, Bill Murray dropped out of a Jesuit college and into arrest on charges of marijuana possession. While on probation, he did a series of manual jobs before following his older brother Brian Doyle Murray into Chicago's famous improvisational comedy theater company, Second City. This led to his joining a cast that included John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda Radner for the National Lampoon Radio Hour in 1975 and the subsequent New York cabaret revue, the National Lampoon Show. The timing of Murray's move to New York was fortuitous, coinciding with the period when producer Lorne Michaels was developing a new television show, Saturday Night Live. Murray auditioned for the original cast of SNL, portraying the sleazy nightclub singer that he would later bring to the show, which he joined in 1977, having lost out to John Belushi the first time around.

When Chevy Chase left SNL after its first season, Michaels sought out Murray despite the network's reservations. At first, the newcomer remained in the shadows of SNL's stars Belushi and Aykroyd, but when the duo left, Murray was designated the new male star, and during the show's fifth season the majority of the male roles fell to him. He was a particular hit as Nick, the sleazy Las Vegas lounge singer and as the clueless movie critic who never saw the movies he reviewed but panned them anyway.

Murray's success on SNL led him into movies, beginning with Meatballs (1979), a puerile adolescent comedy made in Canada, directed by Ivan Reitman, and written by a team of writers and actors including comedian Harold Ramis. He left SNL after the fifth season, and played a variety of roles, large and small, in movies of variable quality, including Caddyshack with Chevy Chase and the dramatic lead in a failed 1984 remake of The Razor's Edge (which he co-wrote). That same year he was reunited with Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and director Ivan Reitman for the hugely successful boxoffice hit, Ghostbusters (1984). His performance as Dr. Peter Venkman, brash, confident, cool, and seemingly unaffected by the cataclysmic events surrounding him, seemed tailor-made for Bill Murray. His persona, and the sardonic wink and roll of the eyes that became a trademark mannerism, appealed as much to movie audiences as it had to fans of SNL, and he graduated to solo star status with Scrooged (1988), a contemporary take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Playing Scrooge in the guise of a New York television company executive who is forced to confront the hollowness of his life. A more vulnerable, three-dimensional aspect of Murray's acting abilities was mined and revealed, and evolved further in Groundhog Day.

These roles evidenced a new thoughtfulness in Bill Murray's approach to his career, and he sought to continue challenging his abilities by playing characters of substance. Although established as a popular and successful leading man in the 1990s, he still took supporting roles in movies such as Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Ed Wood (1994), and Rushmore (1998). His performances in all of these movies brought critical acclaim. While he has not altogether abandoned the use of his comedic talents, which brought him his initial success, he has moved on, demonstrating sufficient versatility to carry his career into the twenty-first century.

—John J. Doherty