Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an American actor and singer who appeared in more than 100 films and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s.

Fred MacMurray
Fred MacMurray publicity photo from the 1930s
Born(1908-08-30)August 30, 1908
Kankakee, Illinois, U.S.
DiedNovember 5, 1991(1991-11-05) (aged 83)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
OccupationActor
Years active1929–1978
Height6 ft 3 in (191 cm)
Spouse(s)
    Lillian Lamont
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1936; died 1953)​
      ​
      (m. 1954)​
      Children4

      His career as a major movie leading man began in 1935, but his most renowned role was in director Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, with costars Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. From 1959 through the 1960s, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Absent-Minded Professor, The Happiest Millionaire and The Shaggy Dog. In 1960, he turned to television as Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1965 and CBS from 1965 to 1972.

      Early life

      Fred Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta (née Martin) and Frederick Talmadge MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin.[1] His aunt, Fay Holderness, was a vaudeville performer and actress. Before MacMurray was two years old, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father was a music teacher.[1] They then relocated within the state to Beaver Dam, where his mother was born in 1880.[2] He later attended school in Quincy, Illinois before earning a full scholarship to Carroll College (now Carroll University) in Waukesha, Wisconsin. At Carroll, MacMurray played the saxophone in numerous local bands. He did not graduate from the college.

      Career

      MacMurray, as a featured vocalist, recorded in 1930 with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra on "All I Want Is Just One Girl" on the Victor label.[3][4] and with George Olsen on "I'm In The Market For You" and "After a Million Dreams". Before signing with Paramount Pictures in 1934, he appeared on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930–31) and alongside Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope in Roberta (1933–34).[5] In his early career, MacMurray played clarinet and tenor sax with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra (1930–31).

      Later in the 1930s, MacMurray worked with film directors Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges and actors Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and, in seven films, Claudette Colbert, beginning with The Gilded Lily (1935). He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams (1935), with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion (1943), and with Carole Lombard in four productions: Hands Across the Table (1935), The Princess Comes Across (1936), Swing High, Swing Low (1937), and True Confession (1937).

      With Carole Lombard in Swing High, Swing Low (1937)

      Usually cast in light comedies as a decent, thoughtful character (The Trail of the Lonesome Pine 1936) and in melodramas (Above Suspicion 1943) and musicals (Where Do We Go from Here? 1945), MacMurray became one of the movie industry's highest-paid actors of the period. By 1943, his annual salary had reached $420,000, making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and the fourth-highest-paid person in the nation.[6]

      Despite being typecast as a "nice guy", MacMurray often said his best roles were when he was cast against type, such as under the direction of Billy Wilder and Edward Dmytryk. Perhaps his best known "bad guy" performance was that of Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who plots with a greedy wife (played by Barbara Stanwyck) to murder her husband in the film noir classic Double Indemnity (1944). In another turn in the "not so nice" category, MacMurray played the cynical, duplicitous Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Dmytryk's 1954 film The Caine Mutiny.[7] Six years later, MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning romcom The Apartment, (1960) with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.

      In 1958, he guest-starred in the premiere episode of NBC's Cimarron City Western series, with George Montgomery and John Smith.[8] MacMurray's career continued upward the following year, when he was cast as the father in the Disney Studios comedy, The Shaggy Dog.[7] Then, from 1960 to 1972, he starred on television in My Three Sons, a long-running, highly rated series. Concurrent with My Three Sons, MacMurray stayed busy in films, starring as Professor Ned Brainard in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) and in the sequel Son of Flubber (1963). Using his star-power clout, MacMurray had a provision in his My Three Sons contract that all of his scenes on that series were to be shot in two separate month-long production blocks and filmed first. That condensed performance schedule provided him more free time to pursue his work in films, maintain his ranch in Northern California, and enjoy his favorite leisure activity, golf.[9]

      Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6421 Hollywood Boulevard

      Over the years, MacMurray became one of the wealthiest actors in the entertainment business, primarily from wise real estate investments and from his "notorious frugality".[9] 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 appeared in commercials for the Greyhound Lines bus company. Towards the end of the decade, he was also featured in a series of commercials for the Korean chisenbop math calculation program.

      Personal life

      MacMurray was married twice. He married Lillian Lamont (legal name Lilian Wehmhoener MacMurray, born 1908) on June 20, 1936, and the couple adopted two children, Susan (born 1940) and Robert (born 1946). After Lamont died of cancer on June 22, 1953, he married actress June Haver the following year. The couple subsequently adopted two more children—twins born in 1956—Katherine and Laurie. MacMurray and Haver's marriage lasted 37 years, until Fred's death.

      In 1941, MacMurray purchased land in the Russian River Valley in Northern California and established MacMurray Ranch. At the 1,750-acre ranch he raised prize-winning Aberdeen Angus cattle, cultivated prunes, apples, alfalfa, and other crops, and enjoyed watercolor painting, fly fishing, and skeet shooting.[10][11] MacMurray wanted the property's agricultural heritage preserved, so five years after his death, in 1996, it was sold to Gallo, which planted vineyards on it for wines that bear the MacMurray Ranch label.[12] Kate MacMurray, daughter of Haver and MacMurray, 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."[13][14]

      He was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. He joined Bob Hope and James Stewart to campaign for Richard Nixon in 1968. In 1980, he campaigned alongside Charlton Heston and Dean Martin for Ronald Reagan.

      Illness and death
      MacMurray and wife June Haver's grave at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California

      A lifelong heavy smoker, MacMurray suffered from throat cancer in the late 1970s, and it reappeared in 1987. He also suffered a severe stroke during Christmas 1988 which left his right side paralyzed and his speech affected, although with therapy he was able to make a ninety percent recovery.[15]

      After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, MacMurray died from pneumonia at age 83 on November 5, 1991 at his home in Santa Monica, California.[6] His body was entombed in Holy Cross Cemetery. In 2005, his widow, actress June Haver, died at aged 79, and her body was entombed with him.

      Awards and influence

      In 1939, artist C. C. Beck used MacMurray as the initial model for the superhero character who became Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel.[16]

      MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for The Absent-Minded Professor (1961).

      MacMurray was the first person honored as a Disney Legend, in 1987.[17]

      Archive

      The Academy Film Archive houses the Fred MacMurray-June Haver Collection. The film material at the Academy Film Archive is complemented by material in the Fred MacMurray and June Haver papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.[18]

      Filmography

      Theater
      • Three's a Crowd (1930–31)
      • Roberta (1933–34)

      Short subjects
      • Screen Snapshots: Art and Artists (1940) as Himself
      • Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 1 (1941) as Himself (uncredited)
      • Popular Science (1941) as Himself (uncredited)
      • Show Business at War (1943) as Himself (uncredited)
      • The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith (1943) as Narrator (uncredited)
      • Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc. (1949) as Himself

      Radio

      Television

      Further reading
      • Tranberg, Charles (2007). Fred MacMurray: A Biography. Albany, Ga.: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-099-8. OCLC 154698936.
      • Arts & Entertainment December 17, 1996 video biography [23]

      References
      1. "Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910", Madison, Dane County, Wisconsin; enumeration page dated April 18, 1910. Bureau of the Census, United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington, D.C. Digital image of original enumeration page available at FamilySearch, a free online genealogical database provided as a public service by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. Retrieved June 2, 2017.
      2. "MacMurray Family Lived in Gladstone, Fred's Folks Friends of Mrs. S. Goldstein". The Escanaba Daily Press. September 26, 1935. p. 7. Retrieved December 19, 2014 – via Newspapers.com.
      3. "Gus Arnheim: Information re MacMurray". Answers.com. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      4. "All I Want is One", Fred MacMurray with Gus Arnheim's Coconut Grove Orchestra, YouTube. Retrieved 2013-02-23.
      5. The Broadway League. "IBDb". IBDb. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      6. Flint, Peter B. (November 6, 1991). "Fred MacMurray Is Dead at 83; Versatile Film and Television Star". The New York Times.
      7. "TCM Movie Database". Tcmdb.com. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      8. "Cimarron City". ctva.biz. Archived from the original on 2012-11-06. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
      9. Gaita, Paul. "Fred MacMurray", biographical profile, Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Retrieved June 2, 2017.
      10. Taylor, Dan (2013). "Healdsburg Museum exhibits memorabilia from actor Fred MacMurray's nearby ranch". Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, California), May 31, 2013, arts section. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
      11. Murphy, Linda (2003). "Hollywood to vine / A film star's daughter returns home to a Pinot paradise". San Francisco Chronicle, March 6, 2003. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
      12. "Gallo Family to Buy MacMurray Ranch". San Francisco Chronicle. May 6, 1996. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      13. "Kate MacMurray". MacMurray Ranch. February 25, 2008. Archived from the original on April 24, 2011. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
      14. Wright, Johnathan L. (July 26, 2017). "Inside the wine ranch once owned by a movie legend". Reno Gezette Journal. Retrieved April 25, 2020. Famed actor Fred MacMurray purchased the property in 1941. Today, his daughter Kate is the winery's guiding spirit.
      15. "Archives: Story". Filmsofthegoldenage.com. Archived from the original on 2013-01-23. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      16. "The Marvel Family Web". Marvelfamily.com. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      17. "Fred MacMurray: The First Disney Legend". Mouseplanet.com. 2009-08-26. Retrieved 2012-08-24.
      18. "Fred MacMurry-June Haver Collection". Academy Film Archive.
      19. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072698
      20. "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest. 35 (2): 32–39. Spring 2009.
      21. "Radio's Golden Age". Nostalgia Digest. 40 (1): 40–41. Winter 2014.
      22. Kirby, Walter (June 14, 1953). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 54. Retrieved July 1, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
      23. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fred+mcmurray+biography+video&docid=608041307250295073&mid=01E6225494B6A258722901E6225494B6A2587229&view=detail&FORM=VIRE
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