Dudley Murphy (July 10, 1897 – February 22, 1968) was an American film director. Murphy was born on July 10, 1897 in Winchester, Massachusetts. He began making films in the early 1920s after working as a journalist.In his first short film, Soul of the Cypress (1921), a variation on the Orpheus myth, the film's protagonist falls in love with a dryad (a wood nymph whose soul dwells in an ancient tree) and throws himself into the sea to become immortal and spend eternity with her.