Fred MacMurray
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Fred MacMurray | |
|---|---|
 Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1944) |
|
| Born | Fredrick Martin MacMurray August 30, 1908 Kankakee, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | November 5, 1991 (aged 83) Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Years active | 1929 - 1978 |
| Spouse(s) | Lillian Lamont (1936-1953) June Haver (1954-1991) |
Frederick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an actor who appeared in over one hundred movies and in a highly successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, starting in 1930 and extending into the 1970s.
MacMurray is well known for his role in the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, in which he starred with Barbara Stanwyck. Later in life, he became better known as the avuncular Steve Douglas, widowed patriarch on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960-1965 and then on CBS from 1965-1972.
Contents |
[edit] Career
MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois to Frederick MacMurray and Maleta Martin. The family finally settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. MacMurray was five years old during the year that they settled in Beaver Dam.
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 appeared on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930-1931) with Sidney Greenstreet and Bob Hope and in the original production of Roberta (1933-1934).[2]
MacMurray's early film work is largely overlooked by many film historians and critics, but in his heyday, he worked with some of Hollywood's greatest talents, including director Preston Sturges and actors Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich. He played opposite Claudette Colbert in seven films, beginning with The Gilded Lily; he also co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in the classic, Alice Adams, and with Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table, The Princess Comes Across, 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 by 1943, when his salary reached $420,000.[3]
Despite being type-cast as a "nice guy", MacMurray often said that his best roles were when he was cast against type by Billy 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 wealthy heiress 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. He gave his finest dramatic performances, though, when cast against type as counterfeit nice-guys or hard-boiled heels: a crooked cop in Pushover.[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.[5]The 1960s saw him star 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 1964. Having the clout of a major star, MacMurray was able to have it in his "Sons" contract that all the scenes requiring him be shot first. This freed him to pursue his film work, and his golf habit.
He was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party who joined Bob Hope and James Stewart in campaigning for Richard Nixon in 1968. He was also, generally, considered one of the most frugal actors in the business. Studio co-workers noticed that even as a successful actor, MacMurray would usually bring a brown bag lunch to work, often featuring a hardboiled 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.
After the cancellation of My Three Sons in 1972, MacMurray made only a few more film appearances before retiring in 1978.
[edit] Personal life
MacMurray was married twice. With his first wife, Lillian Lamont (June 20, 1936), he adopted two children. After Lamont died on June 22, 1953, he married actress June Haver (1954), and the couple adopted two more children.
In 1939, artist C. C. Beck used MacMurray as the initial model for the superhero character who would become Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel.[6]
In the 1940s MacMurray established MacMurray Ranch, now a popular winery.
MacMurray died of pneumonia at the age of eighty-three in Santa Monica and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. He had long suffered from leukemia.
In September, 2007, the first full-length biography of Fred MacMurray, by author Charles Tranberg, was published by Bearmanor Media.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Features
|
|
[edit] Short Subjects
- Screen Snapshots: Art and Artists (1940)
- Popular Science (1941)
- Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 1 (1941)
- Show Business at War (1943)
- The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (1943) (narrator)
- Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc. (1949)
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Fred MacMurray at the Internet Movie Database
- Fred MacMurray at the TCM Movie Database
- Fred MacMurray at the Internet Broadway Database
- Fred MacMurray at Find A Grave
- Fred MacMurray at Disney Legends
