George Lloyd Murphy (4 July 1902-3 May 1992) was a Republican US Senator from California from 1 January 1965 to 2 January 1971, succeeding Pierre Salinger and preceding John V. Tunney.
Biography[]
George Lloyd Murphy was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1902 to a family of Irish extraction. He worked as a Ford Motor Company tool-maker, miner, real estate agent, and nightclub dancer, and he became a song-and-dance musician during the 1930s and 1940s. He served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1944 to 1946, as director of entertainment for the presidential inaugurations of 1953, 1957, and 1961, and as the California Republican Party's director of entertainment for the Eisenhower-Nixon inauguration in 1953. Murphy went on to serve in the US Senate from 1965 to 1971, and he supported Bo Callaway's 1968 US Senate campaign in Georgia. He had his larynx removed in 1968 after developing throat cancer, and, for the rest of his life, he was unable to speak above a whisper. He was defeated for re-election by Senator John V. Tunney in 1970, as his throat problem, his staunch support for the Vietnam War, and rumors that he continued to receive a Technicolor salary eroded his popularity. He died of leukemia in Palm Beach, Florida in 1992.