.Illinois Born
Born Frederick Martin MacMurray in Kankakee, Illinois. His parents, Frederick MacMurray and Maleta Martin, eventually settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where Martin was born.
Music Scholar and Broadway Star
MacMurray studied music in school and was talented enough to win a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In the early 1930s, he was part of an orchestra. He eventually ended up on Broadway working alongside the likes of Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope. In 1934, he signed with Paramount where he was groomed for movie stardom. In 1935, MacMurray appeared in seven movies, starring opposite some of the most popular leading actresses of the day, including Claudette Colbert and Katharine Hepburn. But it was his star turn opposite Carole Lombard in Michell Leisen’s Hands Across the Table
that made him a bonafide movie star.Box Office Success
(Paramount’s biggest success that year) and True Confession. Had it not been for Lombard’s untimely death in 1942, there might have been more pairings.A "Paramount" Leading Man
During the late 1930s and 1940s, Paramount cast MacMurray opposite all of it’s top female stars, including Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard, and Barbara Stanwyck. MacMurray starred with Stanwyck in the Preston Sturges scripted, Leisen directed classic, Remember the Night
(1940), but it would be 1944’s Double Indemnity
that would forever link the two together.Icon Status
Cast against type as insurance salesman Walter Neff by director Billy Wilder, MacMurray showed a darker side the public had not seen before. Playing opposite Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson and Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes, MacMurray, who was topped billed, more than held his own. The film was a hit with the public and most critics of the day. Over the years, the film’s reputation has grown. In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked Double Indemnity 29 on its list of the 100 best American Films, which was nine spots higher than when the poll was taken in 1998.
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| Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the Billy Wilder classic Double Indemnity |
MacMurray continued his winning streak throughout the 1940s. He developed a reputation around Paramount as the perfect leading man. Never overpowering the leading lady, MacMurray costarred in seven films with Colbert, four with Stanwyck as well as starring in several films with Goddard and Madeleine Carroll. MacMurray could carry a film on his own as evidenced by the successful Murder, He Says
(1945), directed by George Marshall. |
| MacMurray and Claudette Colbert starred together in seven movies. |
A Turn in the Road
In 1953, his wife of 17 years passed away, leaving him with two children: 13-year old Susan and seven-year-old Robert. The following year, he married June Haver; they adopted twin daughters Katherine and Laurie in 1956. During the mid-1950s, MacMurray, like James Stewart, stayed busy starring in mostly western movies. As the 1950s came to an end, MacMurray’s career took yet another turn.
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| MacMurray in The Absent-Minded Professor |
Disney Legend
In 1959, Walt Disney tapped MacMurray for a starring role in The Shaggy Dog
. The low-budget film was a monster hit for the studio, which led to the title role in The Absent-Minded Professor 
in 1961 and its sequel, Son of Flubber
in 1963. Disney’s top director, Robert Stevenson (Jane Eyre
, Marry Poppins
), turned both films into box office gold. |
| MacMurray caused a stir by playing a philandering husband in The Apartment. |
Wilder Called Again
Director Billy Wilder called on MacMurray once again to play against type in 1960’s The Apartment
. Starring alongside Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, MacMurray played wife-cheating executive Jeff D. Sheldrake. His performance was jarring to many filmgoers, who were now used to his persona as a Disney star. The Apartment would be the last film in which he would play a heel. |
| The first season of My Three Sons featured William Frawley as Uncle Charlie. |
TV Star
Along with his new career at Disney, MacMurray entered series television in 1960 starring as widowed father Steve Douglas on My Three Sons
. One of the most popular TV series of all time, it ran for 12 years and cemented MacMurray’s place in American popular culture. MacMurray, always the shrewd businessman, arranged his TV filming schedule so he could continue making films. Between 1959-1973, MacMurray starred in seven movies for Disney, with Charley and the Angel (1973) being his last.Well Remembered
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| MacMurray's star is at 6421 Hollywood Blvd. |
A true movie legend, MacMurray earned his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Trivia: MacMurray worked with two of his My Three Sons co-stars long before the series debuted. William Frawley, who played grandfather Bub, co-starred alongside MacMurray in The Princess Comes Across
(1936). And William Demarest, who replaced the ailing Frawley as Uncle Charley, was one of Carole Lombard's prospective boyfriends in Hands Across the Table (1935).
and 
. In 1935, he knocked one out of the park with 
which was the studio’s biggest moneymaker in 1937. That same year, he directed the classic 
starring Jean Arthur. Leisen topped off the decade with the delightful 
starring Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche. This romantic comedy, one of the many great films released in 1939, unfortunately does not have the status of some of its less-worthy, but better-known contemporaries.
starring Stanwyck and MacMurray. The sensitive Hold Back the Dawn (1941) provided Olivia de Haviland with one of her best film roles up to that time. Leisen’s masterful direction helped de Haviland receive her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Later in the decade, he would direct de Haviland in her Oscar-winning performance for To Each His Own (1946). In 1944, Leisen was trusted with directing two big-budget Technicolor productions: Lady in the Dark starring Ginger Rodgers and Frenchman’s Creek starring Joan Fontaine. Both films were huge commercial successes and both focused on the talent and beauty of the female leads. As Dona St. Columb, Joan Fontaine never looked more beautiful. In 1945 Leisen directed Paulette Goddard to one of her biggest commercial and critical successes in Kitty. After seeing Goddard in that film, French film director, Jean Renoir decided to cast her as the lead in 
the following year.
in 1958, with movie projects nonexistent, Leisen turned his attention to television, directing episodes of popular shows like the Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.
. But the role that Stanwyck is most identified with is for her portrayal of the ultimate femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrichson In 
). The award she won for 
in 1935 was considered by many to be a consolation prize for losing the year before (Of Human Bondage was released in 1934).
, costarring Lombard's future husband, Gable. Ironically, Lombard was offered the role of Ellen Andrews, wanted, but was committed to making a movie with George Raft. Lombard never won an Academy Award and was only nominated once for her breakout role as Irene Bullock in 
. At the time of her death in 1942, Lombard was the highest paid actress in Hollywood with a bright future ahead of her. It's impossible to know what awards might have come her way had she lived.
, a role that was supposed to go to Barbara Stanwyck. Director, Michael Curtiz didn't want to work with Crawford. Desperate for the role, Crawford agreed to a screen test, which was unheard of for a star of Crawford's caliber, but it won Curtiz over.