After serving as a pilot in World War II, Dunphy began his broadcast television career in 1953. He was the news director/anchor at then-CBS owned-and-operated WXIX in Milwaukee. Dunphy also was a sports reporter at another CBS O&O, WBBM-TV, in Chicago. Dunphy also served as a color commentator for Green Bay Packers telecasts on CBS in 1956. In 1960, Dunphy took over the anchor chair at the Los Angeles CBS O&O station KNXT, where he anchored Los Angeles' most popular newscast, later titled "The Big News", a program that often attracted a quarter of Los Angeles television owners, ratings unheard of in the market. He was still popular when fired in 1975, yet KNXT sought to adopt a faster-paced, "Eyewitness News" type format. It was then that Dunphy joined KABC-TV, bringing it to the top of the ratings, making it Southern California's news leader. Since Dunphy's unceremonious firing, Channel 2 never recovered in the ratings, until the mid-2000s. Dunphy left KABC-TV in 1989 and joined the upstart KCAL-TV that July as one of the pioneering anchors of the three-hour primetime news format, "Prime 9 News". He returned to KCBS-TV in 1995 and remained until 1997 as an anchorman, and rejoined KCAL-TV in 1997, where he remained until his death. Dunphy was one of the first newscasters to interview President Richard Nixon after his resignation in 1974. He would later sit down with Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. Dunphy also performed regular cameos in L.A.-based films including Warning Shot, Night of the Lepus, Oh God!, Short Cuts, The Jerky Boys and Independence Day, as well as in episode 6 of Batman Film Way,,,Way Out, and is considered to be the inspiration for two fictional television characters: Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Kent Brockman on The Simpsons. Dunphy was also a songwriter. One of his songs was called, appropriately, "From the Desert to the Sea" and was recorded by country music star T.G. Sheppard.
Dunphy was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was attacked and shot by would-be robbers in 1983 but made a full recovery. Although he had suffered two previous heart attacks in 1978 and 1991, he had been in good health and had even anchored broadcasts the week before he succumbed to a heart attack on May 20, 2002. He suffered this heart attack on his way to work the week before. On this night, former Los Angeles Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn, while doing play-by-play for a Lakers playoff game on KCAL, announced that Dunphy had suffered a heart attack. After the game went off the air, KCAL co-anchor Pat Harvey, fighting back tears, announced Dunphy's death on the 9 PM newscast: When KCBS-TV/KCAL-TV moved into its new studios at CBS Studio Center in 2007, a newsroom was named in Dunphy's honor. KCAL news promos still occasionally incorporate Dunphy's "from the desert to the sea to all of southern California" phrase, with other anchors speaking the lines in reference to their program's wide range of coverage. He had six children: Jerry Dunphy Jr., Karen Dunphy, Linda Curb, Tad Dunphy, Megan Dunphy and Erin Dunphy. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. On May 9, 1984, Dunphy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in the television industry, located at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard.
