In Murray's Steps

Lambeth Palace, in the southeast part of London, is one of the official residences of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not from this pile but from the narrow, grubby street nearby came the name of England's present dance fad, the greatest in years--the Lambeth Walk. A number in a successful musicomedy, Me and My Girl, which opened last winter, the Lambeth Walk by last week was being played to a frazzle on the radio, whistled to death in the streets, performed every fourth dance in London hotels and clubs. The dance--an easy, arm-in-arm walk, mock-Cockney fashion, with simple turns, knee-slappings and, at the end, a shout of "Hey!" or "Oi!" --had reached the continent, had penetrated even to Scotland. And last week, Arthur Murray, Manhattan dance teacher, returned from Europe with the Lambeth Walk at his toe-tips, vowing to launch it as a U. S. diversion. Said he: "It will undoubtedly be better than the Big Apple. It's extremely simple, gay, and makes adults act like children."

Arthur Murray had other things besides a new dance to think of. Although he has done a mail-order business since 1921, with 750,000 pupils, neither he nor any other top-notch teacher had ever tapped the dancing masses by means of a book. This week he proposed to do that very thing, with How To Become a Good Dancer, result of three years of collaboration between him and his publishers.* Most notable novelty in Teacher Murray's book is its eight cut-outs--The Murray Magic Footprints. Put these on the floor according to diagrams in the book, walk on them while humming simple tunes, practice assiduously; such is the Murray magic.

Born Murray Teichman 43 years ago in Manhattan, Arthur Murray had some dancing experience before he took a business course at Georgia School of Technology. He made money teaching dancing in Asheville, N. C. and Atlanta before he left college in 1921. He set up in Manhattan in 1923, now has eight floors on East 43rd Street and grosses $500,000 a year. Typical Murray pupil is a businessman over 40 who pays $100 for 20 lessons. With 260 people on his $8,000-a-week payroll, Arthur Murray prefers Southern girls as teachers (he finds them forceful but gracious, extraverts all).

About 25% of Murray students are women, one of them an old lady with long white gloves who has been studying for eleven years, and many of them prefer female teachers to males. Arthur Murray has a back door and private elevator for timid souls who do not like to be seen entering. But such people as Paul Whiteman, Margaret Bourke-White, the Duke of Windsor, Myrna Loy, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Germany, James Roosevelt, Lowell Thomas, Elizabeth Arden and Ina Claire are not ashamed of having gone in the front way. Altogether the school handles 3,000 pupils a day. As result of a tie-up with Fleischmann's yeast (a mail order course for 81 yeast labels), Arthur Murray has acquired 350,000 correspondence students since last March. House organ of Murray's, edited by his wife, is called the Murray-Go-Round.

--Simon & Schuster ($1.96).

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