Edward Murphy

Edward Wynne Murphy, born in 1936 in southwest Philadelphia, grew up in the Philadelphia suburb Upper Darby. He began his directing and acting career Friday mornings, presenting sketches based on the Donald Duck stories in Walt Disney comic books at the front of the room of Miss Moore's Keystone school sixth grade class. In his teens he learned to do magic tricks and juggle, and was a juggler and magician Thanksgiving and Christmas at family functions. When he started college in civil engineering at Villanova University, he landed a slot as a disk jockey on the campus radio station WVIL. Upon graduation, and after three years of law school, he was commissioned in the U.S. Air Force, and served as a captain in the Judge Advocate General Corps trying courts martial at bases in Japan and Clark Field in the Philippines. During his service, he appeared in several armature theater group plays, including leads in "Night of January 16th and "Under the Yum Yum Tree." After his service, Ed returned to the Philippines and took a job as a trouble shooter for the Soriano family of San Miguel beer fame, which gave him time to act in local television and movies, and in plays, including leads in two Neil Simon plays, "The Odd Couple" and "Barefoot in the Park," and parts in Hollywood movies shooting in the Philippines, including "The Mad Doctor of Blood Island," starring John Ashley, and "Guerrilla Strike Force," starring Broderick Crawford and directed by Jerry Hopper. Ed returned to the U.S. in 1969, got a part in another movie, "Wilbur and the Baby Factory," and then embarked on the practice of law in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. In his spare time, he gave himself a home course in cinema studies, purchased a 16-millimeter Bolex motion picture camera, and began writing screenplays. In 1978 he closeted his white shirts, ties and suits, and set sail full time to make it as a director. For three years he pitched his screenplays and treatments, and through perseverance and luck in 1981 got to write and direct a picture Dimension Pictures, which wanted that featured kung fu and zombies -- released in 1982 as "Raw Force." Media Home Entertainment acquired the cassette rights to Raw Force, and in 1984 signed Ed to write and direct the Vietnam movie, "Heated Vengeance," starring Michael J. Pollard and Richard Hatch. In 1988, he directed the first third of the shoot of "Trapper County War," starring Bo Hopkins, for which he requested no screen credit due to creative differences with the producer- and called the business quits. Ed returned to the law and took court appointments to represent defendants in criminal cases, in which over the following years included about thirty murder cases, in which he drew heavily on his acting and directing skills, and gave a number of talks to the Los Angeles County Bar Association on courtroom deportment, ethics, and lawyer interactions with juries. In the meantime he designed and built a house in the Hollywood Hills, and invented a computer program for lawyers marketed as Precedent.(TM) After retirement in 2022, Ed opened a website that accessed an internet magazine that details his story and the stories of others he knew and didn't know that impacted his story.