| Fred MacMurray | |
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Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1944) |
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| Born | Frederick Martin MacMurray August 30, 1908 Kankakee, Illinois, United States |
| Died | November 5, 1991 (aged 83) Santa Monica, California, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1929–78 |
| Spouse | Lillian Lamont (1936–53; her death) 2 adopted children June Haver (1954–91; his death) twin daughters (adopted) |
Frederick Martin "Fred" MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 movies and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s.
MacMurray is well known for his role in the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity directed by Billy Wilder, which he starred in with Barbara Stanwyck. Later in his career, he became better known as the paternal Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960–1965 and then on CBS from 1965–1972.
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MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois to Frederick MacMurray and Maleta Martin, both natives of Wisconsin. When MacMurray was two years old the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin and several years later settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where his mother had been born in 1880. He earned a full scholarship to attend Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In college, MacMurray participated in numerous local bands, playing the saxophone.
In 1930, he recorded a tune for the Gus Arnheim Orchestra as a featured vocalist on All I Want Is Just One Girl on the Victor 78 label.[1] Before he signed on with Paramount Pictures in 1934, he had already appeared on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930–31) and alongside Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope in the original production of Roberta (1933–34).[2]
In his heyday, MacMurray worked with some of Hollywood's greatest names, including directors Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges and actors Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich. He played opposite Claudette Colbert in seven films, beginning with The Gilded Lily. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams, with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion, and with Carole Lombard in four films, Hands Across the Table, The Princess Comes Across, Swing High, Swing Low and True Confession.
Usually cast in light comedies as a decent, thoughtful character (The Trail of the Lonesome Pine) and in melodramas (Above Suspicion 1943) and musicals (Where Do We Go from Here? 1945), MacMurray had become one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors; for 1943, when his salary reached $420,000, he was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, and the fourth highest-paid American.[3]
Despite being typecast as a "nice guy," MacMurray often said his best roles were when he was cast against type by Wilder. In 1944, he played the role of Walter Neff, an insurance salesman (numerous other actors had turned the role down) who plots with a greedy wife Barbara Stanwyck to murder her husband in Double Indemnity. Sixteen years later he played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning comedy The Apartment, with Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon. In another turn in the "not so nice" category, MacMurray played the cynical, duplicitous Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in 1954's The Caine Mutiny.[4]
MacMurray's career got its second wind beginning in 1959, when he was cast as the father figure in a popular Disney comedy, The Shaggy Dog.[4] In the 1960s, he starred in My Three Sons, which ran for 12 seasons, making it one of America's longest-running television series. Concurrent with My Three Sons, MacMurray stayed busy in films, starring in 1961 as Professor Ned Brainerd in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor and in its sequel, Son of Flubber, in 1963. Using his star clout, MacMurray had a provision in his "Sons" contract that all his scenes be shot first. This freed him to pursue his film work and golf hobby. It's also interesting to note that two character names on "My Three Sons" were obviously nods to his real life children, that of Rob (as in Rob Douglas) and Katherine (Kate); he often referred to his TV son Robbie as 'Rob' and later TV daughter-in-law Katie Douglas as 'Kate.'
He was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. He joined Bob Hope and James Stewart to campaign for Richard Nixon in 1968.
He was one of the wealthiest and, at the same time, most frugal actors in the business. Studio co-workers noticed that even as a successful actor, MacMurray usually brought a brown bag lunch to work, often with a hard-boiled egg. According to his co-star on My Three Sons, William Demarest, MacMurray continued to bring dyed Easter eggs for lunch several months after Easter so as not to waste them. Friends and business associates jokingly referred to him as "the thrifty multimillionaire." After the cancellation of My Three Sons in 1972, MacMurray made only a few more film appearances before retiring in 1978.
In the 1970s, MacMurray did commercials for Greyhound Bus. Towards the end of the decade, he also did a series of commercials for the Korean chisenbop math calculation program.
MacMurray was married twice. He and his first wife, Lillian Lamont, were married on June 20, 1936, and they adopted two children, Susan (b. 1940) and Robert (b. 1946). After Lamont died on June 22, 1953, he married actress June Haver the following year; he and Haver adopted two more children, twins Katherine and Laurie (b. 1966). MacMurray suffered from throat cancer in the late 1970s and it reappeared in 1987; he also suffered a severe stroke at Christmas 1988 which left his right side paralyzed and his speech affected, although with therapy he was able to make a 90% recovery.[5]
In 1941 MacMurray purchased land in the Russian River Valley in Northern California and established MacMurray Ranch where he spent his time when not making films and engaged in raising prize-winning Aberdeen Angus cattle. In line with his wishes that the property's agricultural heritage be preserved it was sold in 1996 to Gallo, which planted vineyards on it for wines that bear the MacMurray Ranch label.[6] Haver and MacMurray's daughter, Kate, now lives on the property (in a cabin built by her father) and is "actively engaged in Sonoma's thriving wine community, carrying on her family's legacy and the heritage of MacMurray Ranch."[7]
After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, MacMurray died from pneumonia in 1991, aged 83 in Santa Monica. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery.
In 2007, Bearmanor Media published the first full-length biography of Fred MacMurray by author Charles Tranberg.
In 1939, artist C.C. Beck used MacMurray as the initial model for the superhero character who became Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel.[8]
MacMurray was the first person honored as a Disney Legend, in 1987.[9]