Fred MacMurray: Nice-Guy Movie Star

Fred MacMurray (1908-1991) was a popular movie star during Hollywood’s Golden Age. He was so popular, that in 1943, MacMurray was the highest paid movie star in the world. For most of his career, MacMurray played likeable characters in comedies, musicals, and dramas. The few times MacMurray played heavies or “bad” guys, he surprised audiences and impressed the critics. In the 1960s and 1970s, MacMurray was America’s favorite dad on TV’s My Three Sons.

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

Hands Across the Table was a breakthrough for both Lombard and MacMurray. The Lombard-MacMurray on-screen chemistry was a big hit with movie audiences. Paramount was quick to capitalize on their popularity by costarring them in three more films over the next two years. Lombard and MacMurray starred in two majors successes in 1937, Swing High, Swing Low (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.

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the Billy Wilder classic Double Indemnity

Popular Costars
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.

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

MacMurray's star is at 6421 Hollywood Blvd.

MacMurray had a natural, comfortable acting style that was often overlooked. His comedic timing was as good as anyone’s and his dramatic performances gain new respect and appreciation with each passing year. In 1987, MacMurray was the first person honored as a Disney Legend.


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).

From star to superstar

If 1936 was a watershed year for Carole Lombard, 1937 wasn't too bad either. Lombard starred in three films released in 1937, all of which were critical and box office successes. Swing High, Swing Low was the highest grossing film for Paramount Studios in 1937 as well as being one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

Lombard and MacMurray: Together again
Swing High, Swing Low was directed by Mitchell Leisen and costarred Lombard once again with Fred MacMurray. Not well regarded today because it seems to be one part screwball comedy, one part melodrama, and one part musical. What seemed innovative and inventive when first released seems a bit muddled and confusing to modern viewers. Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times wrote, "Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray skip through the formula devices of "Swing High, Swing Low" (nee "Burlesque") with their usual ease at the Paramount, raising a routine story to a routine-plus picture. The plus is extremely small, sometimes being almost invisible." Nugent ended his review by stating, "Its players really are worthy of better treatment." Still it has its moments and the Lombard/MacMurray chemistry delighted film-going audiences and most other contemporary film critics.

Lombard's next film for 1937 would be the much-heralded Nothing Sacred, costarring Fredric March with a script by Ben Hecht and direction by William A. Wellman. Produced by David O. Selznick, the film was given the A-treatment. Selznick spared no expense when it came to the film's production, including filming it in Technicolor, still a rare event in the late 1930s, especially for comedies. Nothing Sacred has the distinction of being the only color film Lombard ever made. The story goes that some people went to see the film just to get a glimpse of Lombard's beauty in color and they weren't disappointed: she looked luminous.

She's the top

One of the ironies of Lombard's career is how quickly she began to eclipse the stars that she used to support. In 1934, Lombard appeared with Fredric March in The Eagle and the Hawk, a film in which he received top billing. In less than three year's time, Lombard was the bigger star when they made Nothing Sacred, with her name above March's. Cary Grant, who also starred in The Eagle and the Hawk, billed above Lombard, but below March, would be billed under Lombard in In Name Only, released in 1939. In a relatively short period, Lombard was becoming one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.



Liar, liar
Lombard's last release of 1937 was True Confession,  with MacMurray and John Barrymore, her costar (again she's the bigger star now) from her breakthrough film, Twentieth Century. True Confession stars Lombard as a struggling fiction writer and habitual liar. MacMurray, her husband, is a straight-arrow lawyer who will only defend people he knows aren't guilty. Since they're both working hard to make ends meet, Lombard just doesn't understand how her husband can be so choosy about who he represents. To help out with the finances, Lombard secretly takes a job that doesn't require any skills, but pays a remarkable $50 for not even a full week's work! It doesn't take long for Lombard to realize that the job is mistress to the boss. Being an honorable, if a bit daffy wife, she quits almost immediately. When her boss ends up dead, with Lombard implicated in his murder, she concocts a story that helps get her acquitted of the murder and generates publicity to further her husband's law career.

True Confession was directed by Wesley Ruggles, who directed Lombard in No Man of Her Own. Ruggles was an early champion of Lombard's, considering her an actress of great depth and potential. Unfortunately for Lombard, Ruggles didn't run the the star factory at Paramount, where she was under contract, or her star might have risen sooner.

With three hit films, both commercially and critically, it seemed as if anything Lombard touched would turn to gold. Her relationship with Clark Gable was blossoming and her film career was approaching its zenith. But for Lombard, there were still more things she wanted to accomplish as a star and as an actress. The next few years would test her talent, resolve, and resiliency.