Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908 – November 5, 1991) was an American actor. He appeared in more than one hundred films and a successful television series in a career that spanned nearly a half-century. His career as a major film leading man began in 1935, but his most renowned role was in Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir Double Indemnity. From 1959 to 1973, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Happiest Millionaire. He starred as Steve Douglas in the television series My Three Sons.

Early life and education Frederick Martin MacMurray was born on August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta (née Martin) and concert violinist Frederick Talmadge MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin. His aunt, Fay Holderness, was a vaudeville performer and actress. When MacMurray was an infant, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught music. They relocated within the state to Beaver Dam, his mother's birthplace.

MacMurray attended school in Quincy, Illinois, where he played football and baseball, ran on the track team and worked in a local pea cannery. After graduation, he received a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He played the saxophone in numerous local bands, having picked up the instrument when he was looking to fill his spare time. He continued to play saxophone while attending the Chicago Art Institute in the evenings.

Career

Musician MacMurray sang and played saxophone with two of the leading dance bands of the day. Firstly with the George Olsen orchestra from 1928 and then Gus Arnheim from 1930.

Acting

In 1928, MacMurray chauffeured his mother to Los Angeles for her health and to visit family. While there he found work as an extra and continued his saxophone playing, then with the California Collegians, a vaudeville group that was formed out of the pit orchestra at the Warner Brothers Hollywood Theatre. His extra work was earning him $10 a day. The band was hired to appear on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930–31) with Fred Allen, Clifton Webb and Libby Holman, resulting in a move to New York City from California. MacMurray was offered a role in the production, leading to a further casting in the musical Roberta alongside Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope (1933–34). MacMurray signed with Paramount Pictures in 1934.

Stardom

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. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams, with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion, and with Carole Lombard in four productions: 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 and musicals, MacMurray became one of the film industry's highest-paid actors of the period. In 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.

MacMurray did not serve in the military during the Second World War, instead working to sell war bonds and as an air-raid warden in his Brentwood neighborhood. The movies that he did produce during this period were mostly considered to be "morale-boosters" rather than outright "war pictures" that some of his contemporaries were churning out. In 1944, his earnings increased to $439,000, making him again the highest-paid actor.

During the production of the 1947 film The Egg and I, the hens appearing in the movie laid over 300 eggs. MacMurray and costar Claudette Colbert autographed one egg each in fifty cartons. The eggs were sold at a local farmers market and profits were donated to the Braille Institute of America.

Having starred in many episodes of Lux Radio Theatre in the late 1930s and 1940s, MacMurray returned to the medium in 1952. He featured in Bright Star, along with Irene Dunne, in which he portrayed a reporter for a local newspaper.

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 to kill her husband in the film noir classic Double Indemnity. MacMurray stated in 1956 that this was his favorite role, and that it "...proved I could do serious acting". In another turn in the "not so nice" category, MacMurray played the cynical, duplicitous Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Dmytryk's film The Caine Mutiny. Six years later, MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning film The Apartment. In 1958, he guest-starred in the premiere episode of NBC's Cimarron City Western series, with George Montgomery and John Smith. MacMurray's career continued upward the following year, when he was cast as the father in the Disney film The Shaggy Dog.

Retirement

In the early 1970s, MacMurray appeared in commercials for the Greyhound Lines bus company. In 1979, he appeared in a series of commercials for the Korean chisenbop math calculation program. MacMurray's final film was The Swarm, costarring Michael Caine, Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda. The actor, semi-retired at this point, was called back for one last film by director Irwin Allen entitled Fire!; however, his diagnosis of throat cancer caused him to pull out. Allen then offered him the small role (for a total of two days on set) of a pharmacist in The Swarm. MacMurray told reporters that he did not "...really miss it. A lot of actors go crazy if they aren't working, but I guess I'm a little lazy." He successfully underwent treatment for his cancer during the production.

Business ventures MacMurray was also a prolific businessman, frequently earning over $400,000 a year in the 1940s. 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. One of MacMurray's children 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".

In 1944, he purchased the Bryson Apartment Hotel in the Westlake, Los Angeles neighborhood for $600,000, using profits from Double Indemnity, and was a co-owner of three other apartment buildings. MacMurray insisted upon a percentage of gross of the films in which he starred.

In 1945, along with former actor Leslie Fenton, MacMurray formed a production company, entitled "Mutual Pictures". With this production company the pair made one film, Pardon My Past, a moderate success.

Personal life

Family MacMurray was married twice, first to Lillian "Lily" Lamont (legal name: Lilian Wehmhoener MacMurray, born 1908) and after her death, actress June Haver.

Lillian Lamont Lamont and MacMurray met during the production of Roberta while in New York City while he was performing with the California Collegians in 1934, and they quickly became an item. Despite the budding romance he left New York and returned to Hollywood in efforts to continue his career.

In 1934, the couple announced the news that they were in a "test engagement", stating that they "want to be sure before we make any official announcement" that "...their personalities were the type which could pull in a double harness while they followed their careers". By late spring in 1936, the couple decided to make it official. Late on the night of June 19, 1936, MacMurray, Lamont and MacMurray's mother traveled by plane to Las Vegas to be married. The trip – and the marriage – were kept secret from friends and studio officials, who spent the day of the 20th trying to locate the actor. The newlyweds and family returned to Hollywood on a plane that same day.

In 1945, they moved into a 10-room, two-story Colonial house in Brentwood. Neighbors (and friends) included Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. Joan Crawford described the couple as having "one of the few happy and well-adjusted marriages". While they were known to be homebodies and family-oriented, they were also social within the Hollywood community. They hosted parties, both large and small, for friends. They were close with Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, often having Sunday afternoon BBQs with each other. At the larger gatherings, Lombard proved to be the source of entertainment for the assembled guests with her antics and off-color language.

After struggling with physical health issues for most of her life, her condition deteriorated even further in the early 1950s. She eventually succumbed to kidney and heart issues in June 1953, shortly after the couple's 17th wedding anniversary. In a 2006 interview between a MacMurray biographer and Lamont's cousin, the family states that she suffered from bulimia. This may have stemmed from her days as a model and contributed to her other health issues. By the early 1950s, Haver was grieving the sudden death of her fiancé Dr. John Duzik in 1949. In part because of her grief, Haver had considered a life as a nun. A life-long devout Catholic, she met with Pope Pius XII in 1951 and decided to follow her faith and join a convent. She realized after eight months that the convent life was not for her.

MacMurray purchased actor Red Skelton's good-luck pinky ring as an engagement ring, officially proposing to Haver after a trip to a drugstore. With the help of friend Ray Cardillo, a travel agency owner, the ceremony was held at the Ojai Valley Inn. She stated that she had no desire to act further, "I lost it all [desire]. I'm remaining a private citizen and will stay at home and work...it has been supplanted by something better. Now that I have four children in the family I have a lot to keep me busy".

Politics

Like many of his Hollywood contemporaries, MacMurray was a Republican politically, although he was not particularly outspoken about his beliefs. When speaking with columnist Parsons in 1947 about the Red Scare in Hollywood, the actor noted "I suppose there really are some Reds in Hollywood...but don't you think that actually some of the people...get that reputation because they talk too much about things they don't understand? I don't think an actor has any business to discuss politics unless he is an authority..." MacMurray appeared onstage along with other conservative luminaries stumping for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election, supported Ronald Reagan for Governor of California in the 1966 California gubernatorial election, and joined Bob Hope and James Stewart in supporting Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election.

Illness and death

A lifelong heavy smoker, MacMurray had throat cancer in the late 1970s, and it recurred in 1987.

After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, MacMurray died of pneumonia on November 5, 1991, in Santa Monica, California.

MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for The Absent-Minded Professor. In 1987, he became the first person to be honored as a Disney Legend.

Archive The Academy Film Archive houses the Fred MacMurray–June Haver Collection. The film materials are complemented by papers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.

Filmography Film

Short subjects

Television

Theater

Radio Lux Radio Theatre – Pete Dawes ("The Gilded Lily") (1937), Victor Hallam ("Another Language") (1937), John Horace Mason ("Made for Each Other") (1940), Bill Dunnigan ("The Miracle of the Bells) (1948) The Screen Guild Theater – The Philadelphia Story (1942) Screen Directors Playhouse – Take a Letter, Darling (1951) Bright Star – George Harvey (1952–53) Lux Summer Theatre – The Lady and the Tumblers (1953) The Martin and Lewis Show – Himself (1953)