Did you know the founder of American dance lessons started it all in Atlanta?
It’s true. The founding father of all things ‘dance’ came to Georgia in 1919 to study business administration at Georgia Tech, and he taught ballroom dancing at the Georgian Terrace Hotel. That was just the beginning of Murray’s fancy footwork in Atlanta! His classes for children and teenagers proved so successful that he soon had nearly a thousand pupils, and was featured in a Forbes magazine article titled “This College Student Earns $15,000 a Year.”
In 1920, Murray organized the world’s first “radio dance”; a band on the Georgia Tech campus played “Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech” and other songs, which were broadcast to a group of about 150 dancers (mostly Tech students) situated atop the roof of the Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta. Murray was inspired by a casual remark made by William Jennings Bryan one evening at the hotel: “… You know, I have a fine idea on how you can collect your money. Just teach ’em with the left foot and don’t tell ’em what to do with the right foot until they pay up!”
Murray thought about what Bryan’s remark, and devised the idea of teaching dance steps with footprint diagrams supplied by mail. Within a couple of years, over 500,000 dance courses were sold.
After Arthur married Kathryn, the Murrays opened a dance school offering personal instruction. Their business prospered, especially in 1938 and 1939 when Arthur picked 2 little-known dances, the “Lambeth Walk” and “The Big Apple”, and turned them into dance crazes. They were taught at hotel chains throughout the country, and the name “Arthur Murray” became a household word.
There are now hundreds of Arthur Murray studios globally, with specially trained instructors, making Arthur Murray the most successful dance instructor in history. In 1925, Murray launched his franchise system, which is the second-oldest franchise in North America (following A&W). His slogan was: “If you can walk, we teach you how to dance”, and the company guaranteed that the pupils learn to dance in ten lessons. After WWII, Murray’s business grew with the rise of interest in Latin dance, and he regularly taught and broadcast in Cuba in the 1950s. Murray went on television with a dance program hosted by his wife, Kathryn Murray, The Arthur Murray Party, which ran from 1950 to 1960, on CBS, NBC, DuMont, ABC, and then on CBS. Among the Arthur Murray dance instructors in the early 1950s was future television evangelist D. James Kennedy, who won first prize in a nationwide dance contest. The Murrays retired in 1964; but they continued to be active for some time, appearing as guests on the Dance Fever disco show in the late 1970s. By then, there were more than 3,560 dance studios bearing his name.