Clyde Francis Murphy was born on Oct. 3, 1899 in Great Falls, Montana. He grew up in Great Falls and then moved to Anaconda, Montana, in 1911. His father, Charles F. Murphy, worked for the Great Northern Railroad. From 1909 to 1911 Charles Murphy served as the mayor of Great Falls. He then became superintendent of the Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific Railroad. Charles Murphy also served in the Montana state legislature until his death in 1935. Clyde Murphy graduated from high school in Anaconda and then joined the U.S. Navy in 1917, serving in the hospital corps. In the course of his transport duties he crossed the Atlantic nine times. He was honorably discharged in Sept. 1919. He then enrolled at Montana State University (now the University of Montana at Missoula) and received his law degree in 1923, and was admitted to the Montana bar that same year. He married Kathryn Donohue of Missoula, Montana, and they moved to California. He practiced law in Hollywood, California, for seventeen years at the firm of Page, Nolan, Rohe & Hurt as a trial lawyer. In 1939 he retired to write.
He is best known for his book The Glittering Hill, a fictional history about Irish copper miners in Butte, Montana, in the 1890s. He also wrote poetry, and was working on a second book about mining life in Helena, Montana when he died. The Glittering Hill was first published in 1944 by E. P. Dutton & Co., and it won the first Lewis and Clark Northwest contest for a prize worth $1,500. In 1945 Sam Jaffe and director Lloyd Bacon bought the movie rights to the book for $75,000. They had cast Humphrey Bogart in the leading role as Nick Stryker, but could not sign him to play the part.
Mr. Murphy passed away in 1946 in California. He was a member of the Eugene Field Society of Authors, the Allied Post of the American Legion, the Los Angeles Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the Authors Club of Hollywood.
From the guide to the Clyde F. Murphy Papers, 1897-1946, (Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library Archives and Special Collections)
