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Frankly, Murphy was no great shakes at the box office, a fact well realized by his boss, MGM's Louis B. Mayer. But Mayer liked Murphy for other reasons. As a two-term president of the Screen Actors Guild, Murphy had helped clean out left-wingers and labor racketeers who had infiltrated the movie industry. Along the way, Murphy dropped his Democratic affiliation and became a Republican. Mayer, an ardent Republican himself, had heard Murphy deride Democrats, and he liked the cut of George's gibe. He encouraged Murphy to take on after-dinner speaking assignments. Before too long, Murphy hung up his taps, became one of Hollywood's busiest goodwill ambassadors, and with Mayer calling the turn, received an Oscar for "interpreting the motion-picture industry correctly to the country at large."
"Low to the Ground." Politics was only a two-step away. Murphy was a G.O.P. National Convention delegate in 1948, 1952 and 1956, served a brief stint as Republican state chairman. At the same time, he moved from the sound stages into moviedom's business offices, where today he functions as a vice president for public relations with Technicolor Corp. And last year he began thinking seriously about running for the Senate. "I had this thing researched for months," he says. "I wanted to learn if people would accept an actor running for office. And the word was that I had a pretty fair chance. After all, people remember me from all those old movies, and I never played a bad guy. I was always a good guy. It sounds corny, but don't knock it. I found that my biggest support would come from the ladies, the ones over 35. They are real workers. I mean if they are for you, they go all over the neighborhood like a pack of muskrats."
Murphy easily won the G.O.P. Senate nomination, and he has been campaigning tirelessly ever since. His pitch is Basic Barry. Liberals are "Fabian Socialists." Democrats are a conspiratorial sort, and the words Yalta and Potsdam fall easily from Murphy's lips as places and names of derision. On issues such as the nuclear test ban, federal aid to education and medicare, Murphy hews close to the Goldwater line, but he disagrees with Barry on the Civil Rights Act and foreign aid.
He has sidestepped California's hottest state issue: repeal of the Rumford Act against racial discrimination in housing (TIME, Sept. 25). In agricultural areas, Murphy wins votes for his stand favoring the bracero program, under which fruit and vegetable farmers hire immigrant labor from Mexico. "You have to remember," explains Murphy, "that Americans can't do that kind of work. It's too hard. Mexicans are really good at that. They are built low to the ground, you see, so it is easier for them to stoop."
As it must to all candidates, some disappointment has come to Campaigner Murphy. Just recently, he got himself hauled out to Antelope Valley, a desert crossroads that might have served as the eerie setting for Bad Day at Black Rock. Nothing went right. The head of the arrangements committee, a Mrs. Tucker, had borrowed five cars from the local Chevrolet dealer but had lost the keys. After Mr. Tucker rounded up a new set, Mrs. Tucker remembered that the door prize, a movie projector, had been left at home. Back home went Mr. Tucker.