Fred MacMurray
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| Fred MacMurray | |
|---|---|
| Image:FredMacMurrayDoubleIndemnity.jpg Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1944) | |
| Birth name | Fredrick Martin MacMurray |
| Born | 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) |
Fredrick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an actor who appeared in over one hundred movies and a highly successful television series during a career that lasted from the 1930s to 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 slightly stammering Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch on the CBS TV series, My Three Sons. The show ran from 1960 until 1972.
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[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]
Early in his acting career, before signing with Paramount Pictures in 1934, he also appeared on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930-1931), and in the original production of Roberta (1933-1934), on which the movie Roberta (1935) was based. In addition to MacMurray, the Roberta cast included Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope.[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, the first of which was The Gilded Lily; he also co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table, The Princess Comes Across, and True Confession.
Mostly cast as decent, amiable characters in a succession of light comedies, dramas (The Trail of the Lonesome Pine), 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 his "nice guy" image, MacMurray often stated that the best film roles he ever played were two in which he was cast against type by Billy Wilder. 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. In 1960, he played Jeff Sheldrake, a slimy, 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 revived his career in the 1960s, starring as good-natured father figures in the Disney comedies The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber.[5]
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 containing 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.
[edit] Personal life
MacMurray was married twice. He married his first wife, Lillian Lamont, on June 20, 1936 and they adopted two children. Lamont died on June 22, 1953. He married actress June Haver in 1954, and they also adopted two 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]
MacMurray established MacMurray Ranch in the 1940s, which is now a popular winery with winemaker Susan Doyle.
MacMurray died of pneumonia at the age of 83 in Santa Monica, California. He had long suffered from leukemia. He was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In September, 2007 the first full-length book on the life of Fred MacMurray will be published by Bearmanor Media. The book is titled Fred MacMurray: A Biography by Charles Tranberg with an introduction by Don Grady.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Features
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[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 Disney Legendsde:Fred MacMurray
es:Fred MacMurray fr:Fred MacMurray id:Fred MacMurray ja:フレッド・マクマレイ ro:Fred MacMurray fi:Fred MacMurray sv:Fred MacMurray
