Fred MacMurray

At 83 years old, Fred MacMurray has this physical status:

Frederick Martin MacMurray (August 30, 1908-November 5, 1991), an American actor and singer who appeared in more than 100 films and a successful television series during his career, from 1930 to 1970s, from 1930 to 1970. MacMurray is best known for his role in Billy Wilder's 1944 film noir Double Indemnity, in which he starred Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.

He appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Absent-Minded Professor, The Happiest Millionaire, and The Shaggy Dog later in his career.

MacMurray's 1960 appearance on television in the role of Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch of My Three Sons, which appeared on ABC from 1960 to 1964 and then on CBS from 1965 to 1972.

Early life and education

Frederick Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta (née Martin) and concert violinist Frederick Talmadge MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin, were born on August 30, 1908. Fay Holderness, his uncle, was a vain comedian and actress. When MacMurray was a child, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught music. They migrated from Beaver Dam, Oregon, to Beaver Dam, his mother's birthplace. MacMurray attended school in Quincy, Illinois, before receiving a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In many local bands, he was a member of the saxophone. He did not graduate from college.

Personal life

MacMurray was married twice. On June 20, 1936, Lillian Lamont married Lilian Wehmhoet (legal name Lilian Wehmoener MacMurray, born 1908) and the couple had two children, Susan and Robert. Since Lamont died of cancer on June 22, 1953, he married actress June Haver the following year. The couple later adopted two more children, twins born in 1956—Katherine and Laurie. Until Fred's death, MacMurray and Haver's marriage lasted 37 years.

MacMurray, a businessman who rose to the fourth highest-paid citizen in the United States, was a businessman who became the fourth highest-paid citizen in the United States. He bought property in Northern California's Russian River Valley in 1941 and established MacMurray Ranch. He raised prize-winning Aberdeen Angus cattle, cultivated prunes, apples, alfalfa, and other crops, and enjoyed watercolor painting, fly fishing, and skeet shooting at the 1,750-acre ranch. MacMurray's agricultural history was preserved, so five years after his death in 1996, it was sold to Gallo, which planted vineyards on it for wines branded MacMurray Ranch. Kate MacMurray, the niece of Haver and MacMurray's father, now lives on the farm (in a cabin built by her father), is "actively involved in Sonoma's burgeoning wine industry, passing on her family's roots and the history of MacMurray Ranch" in Sonoma. He bought the historic Bryson Apartment Hotel in the Westlake, Los Angeles suburb, in 1944, and it has been in use for nearly thirty years. MacMurray maintained that a percentage of the gross sales of the films in which he appeared later in life.

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Career

MacMurray, a featured vocalist on the Victor label, appeared on "All I Want Is Just One Girl" on the Victor label in 1930, as well as "After a Million Dreams" and "After a Million Dreams." He appeared on Broadway in Three's a Crowd (1930–31), and in Roberta (1933–34), before signing with Paramount Pictures in 1934.

MacMurray worked with film producers Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges, as well as actors Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich, and seven films, beginning with The Gilded Lily. Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams, with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion, and Carole Lombard in four productions: Hands Across the Table, Swing High, Swing Low, and True Confession are all true confessions. Normally portrayed in light comedies as a sympathetic, thoughtful character (The Trail of the Lonesome Pine), and in melodramas and musicals, MacMurray became one of the finest-paid actors of the period. His annual salary had risen to $420,000 in 1943, making him Hollywood's highest-paid actor and the country's fourth highest-paid actor.

Despite being stereotyped as a "nice guy," MacMurray's best roles came when he was cast against type, such as under Billy Wilder's direction and Edward Dmytryk. In the film noir classic Double Indemnity, Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who plans with a cynical spouse to murder her husband, was perhaps her best known "bad guy" role. MacMurray played Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Dmytryk's film The Caine Mutiny, another entry in the "not so nice" category. In Wilder's Oscar-winning film The Apartment, six years ago, MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive. He appeared in the premiere episode of NBC's Cimarron City Western series in 1958, alongside George Montgomery and John Smith. MacMurray's career continued to grow the following year, when he was cast as the father in the Disney film The Shaggy Dog.

He appeared in My Three Sons, a long-running, highly rated television series, from 1960 to 1972. MacMurray appeared in other films as well as Professor Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber. MacMurray had a promise in his My Three Sons contract that all of his scenes on the series would be shot in two separate month-long production blocks and premiered first, using his actor-power clout. He had more time to pursue his film career, maintain his ranch in Northern California, and partake in golf, his favorite leisure activity. MacMurray has become one of the entertainment industry's top players over the years, mainly due to wise real estate investments and his "notorious frugality." MacMurray appeared in commercials for the 1979 Greyhound Lines bus company in his last film, The Swarm. He appeared in a string of advertisements for the Korean chisenbop math calculation scheme early in the decade.

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