fiction.wikisort.org - Actor

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 film noir Double Indemnity. During 1959–1973, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Follow Me, Boys!, and The Happiest Millionaire. He played Steve Douglas in the television series My Three Sons. After his success in films, he became a highly successful businessman.

Fred MacMurray
MacMurray in the 1930s
Born	Frederick Martin MacMurray (1908-08-30)August 30, 1908 Kankakee, Illinois, U.S.
Died	November 5, 1991(1991-11-05) (aged 83) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1929–1978
Political party	Republican
Spouses	Lillian Lamont ​ ​ (m. 1936; died 1953)​ June Haver ​ (m. 1954)​
Children	4
Relatives	Fay Holderness (aunt)

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.[1] 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.[1] They relocated within the state to Beaver Dam, his mother's birthplace.[2] MacMurray attended school in Quincy, Illinois, before earning a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He played the saxophone in numerous local bands. He did not graduate from college.

Career

A featured vocalist, MacMurray recorded with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra on "All I Want Is Just One Girl" on the Victor label in 1930,[3] 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).[4]

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.[5]

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. In another turn in the "not so nice" category, MacMurray played the cynical, duplicitous Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Dmytryk's film The Caine Mutiny.[6] 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.^{[citation needed]} MacMurray's career continued upward the following year, when he was cast as the father in the Disney film The Shaggy Dog.[6]

From 1960 to 1972, he starred in My Three Sons, a long-running, highly rated TV series. Concurrently with it, MacMurray starred in other films, playing Professor Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber. 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.[7] Over the years, MacMurray became one of the wealthiest actors in the entertainment industry, primarily from wise real estate investments and from his "notorious frugality".[7] After his final film The Swarm, MacMurray appeared in commercials for the 1979 Greyhound Lines bus company. Towards the end of the decade, he appeared 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 and Robert. 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.

MacMurray was a businessman who became the fourth-highest-paid citizen in the United States.[8] In 1941, he 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.[9][10] 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.[11] 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".[12][13] In 1944, he purchased the iconic Bryson Apartment Hotel in the Westlake, Los Angeles neighborhood and used it for about thirty years. Later in life, MacMurray insisted upon a percentage of gross of the films in which he starred.[8]

Illness and death

A lifelong heavy smoker, MacMurray had throat cancer in the late 1970s, and it recurred in 1987. He had a severe stroke in December 1988 that paralyzed his right side and affected his speech. With therapy he made a 90 percent recovery.[14] After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, MacMurray died of pneumonia on November 5, 1991, in Santa Monica, California.[5]

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.[15] MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for The Absent-Minded Professor. He was the first person honored as a Disney Legend in 1987.[16]

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.[17]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1929	Girls Gone Wild	Extra	Film debut Uncredited
1929	Why Leave Home?		Uncredited
1929	Tiger Rose	Rancher	Uncredited
1934	Friends of Mr. Sweeney	Walk-on part	Uncredited
1935	Grand Old Girl	Sandy
1935	The Gilded Lily	Peter Dawes
1935	Car 99	Trooper Ross Martin
1935	Men Without Names	Richard Hood / Richard 'Dick' Grant
1935	Alice Adams	Arthur Russell
1935	Hands Across the Table	Theodore Drew III
1935	The Bride Comes Home	Cyrus Anderson
1936	The Trail of the Lonesome Pine	Jack Hale
1936	13 Hours by Air	Jack Gordon
1936	The Princess Comes Across	Joe King Mantell
1936	The Texas Rangers	Jim Hawkins
1937	Champagne Waltz	Buzzy Bellew
1937	Maid of Salem	Roger Coverman of Virginia
1937	Swing High, Swing Low	Skid Johnson
1937	Exclusive	Ralph Houston
1937	True Confession	Kenneth Bartlett
1938	Cocoanut Grove	Johnny Prentice
1938	Men with Wings	Pat Falconer
1938	Sing You Sinners	David Beebe
1939	Cafe Society	Crick O'Bannon
1939	Invitation to Happiness	Albert 'King' Cole
1939	Honeymoon in Bali	Bill 'Willie' Burnett
1940	Remember the Night	John Sargent
1940	Little Old New York	Charles Brownne
1940	Too Many Husbands	Bill Cardew
1940	Rangers of Fortune	Gil Farra
1941	Virginia	Stonewall Elliott
1941	One Night in Lisbon	Dwight Houston
1941	Dive Bomber	Joe Blake
1941	New York Town	Victor Ballard
1942	The Lady Is Willing	Dr. Corey T. McBain
1942	Star Spangled Rhythm	Frank in Card-Playing Skit
1942	Take a Letter, Darling	Tom Verney
1942	The Forest Rangers	Don Stuart
1943	No Time for Love	Jim Ryan
1943	Flight for Freedom	Randy Britton
1943	Above Suspicion	Richard Myles
1944	Standing Room Only	Lee Stevens
1944	And the Angels Sing	Happy Morgan
1944	Double Indemnity	Walter Neff
1944	Practically Yours	Daniel Bellamy
1945	Where Do We Go from Here?	Bill Morgan
1945	Captain Eddie	Edward Rickenbacker
1945	Murder, He Says	Pete Marshall
1945	Pardon My Past	Eddie York / Francis Pemberton
1946	Smoky	Clint Barkley
1947	Suddenly, It's Spring	Peter Morely
1947	The Egg and I	Bob MacDonald
1947	Singapore	Matt Gordon
1948	On Our Merry Way	Al
1948	The Miracle of the Bells	Bill Dunnigan
1948	An Innocent Affair	Vincent Doane
1949	Family Honeymoon	Grant Jordan
1949	Father Was a Fullback	George Cooper
1950	Borderline	Johnny McEvoy – aka Johnny Macklin
1950	Never a Dull Moment	Chris
1951	A Millionaire for Christy	Peter Ulysses Lockwood
1951	Callaway Went Thataway	Mike Frye
1953	Fair Wind to Java	Captain Boll
1953	The Moonlighter	Wes Anderson
1954	The Caine Mutiny	Tom Keefer
1954	Pushover	Paul Sheridan
1954	Woman's World	Sid Burns
1955	The Far Horizons	Captain Meriwether Lewis
1955	The Rains of Ranchipur	Thomas "Tom" Ransome
1955	At Gunpoint	Jack Wright
1956	There's Always Tomorrow	Clifford Groves
1957	Gun for a Coward	Will Keough
1957	Quantez	Gentry / John Coventry
1958	Day of the Badman	Judge Jim Scott
1959	Good Day for a Hanging	Marshal Ben Cutler
1959	The Shaggy Dog	Wilson Daniels
1959	Face of a Fugitive	Jim Larsen aka Ray Kincaid
1959	The Oregon Trail	Neal Harris
1960	The Apartment	Jeff D. Sheldrake
1961	The Absent-Minded Professor	Professor Ned Brainard
1962	Bon Voyage!	Harry Willard
1963	Son of Flubber	Ned Brainard
1964	Kisses for My President	Thad McCloud
1966	Follow Me, Boys!	Lemuel Siddons
1967	The Happiest Millionaire	Antony Drexel-Biddle
1973	Charley and the Angel	Charley Appleby
1978	The Swarm	Mayor Clarence Tuttle	Final film role

Short subjects

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1940	Screen Snapshots: Art and Artists	Himself
1941	Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 1	Himself	Uncredited
1941	Popular Science	Himself	Uncredited
1943	Show Business at War	Himself	Uncredited
1943	The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith	Narrator	Uncredited
1949	Screen Snapshots: Motion Picture Mothers, Inc.	Himself

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1954	The Jack Benny Program	Himself	Episode: "The Jam Session Show"
1955; 1958	General Electric Theater	Richard Elgin / Harry Wingate	Episodes: "The Bachelor's Bride" and "One Is a Wanderer"
1956	Screen Directors Playhouse	Peter Terrance	Episode: "It's a Most Unusual Day"
1957	The 20th Century-Fox Hour	Peterson	Episode: "False Witness"
1958	Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour	Himself	Episode: "Lucy Hunts Uranium"
1958	Cimarron City	Himself	Episode: "I, the People"
1960	The United States Steel Hour	Himself	Episode: "The American Cowboy"
1960–1972	My Three Sons	Steve Douglas	380 episodes
1964	Summer Playhouse	Himself	Episode: "The Apartment House"
1974	The Chadwick Family	Ned Chadwick	Television film
1975	Beyond the Bermuda Triangle	Harry Ballinger	Television film

Theater

Year	Title
1930–31	Three's a Crowd
1933–34	Roberta

Radio

• Lux Radio Theater – 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)[18]
• The Screen Guild Theater – The Philadelphia Story (1942)
• Screen Directors Playhouse – Take a Letter, Darling (1951)[19]
• Bright Star – George Harvey (1952–53)
• Lux Summer Theatre – The Lady and the Tumblers (1953)[20]
• The Martin and Lewis Show – Himself (1953)

Further reading

• Tranberg, Charles (2007). Fred MacMurray: A Biography. Albany, Ga.: BearManor Media. ISBN 978-1593930998. OCLC 154698936.
• Arts & Entertainment December 17, 1996 video biography [21]

References

External links

• Fred MacMurray at IMDb
• Fred MacMurray at Rotten Tomatoes
• MacMurray Ranch timeline (documents MacMurray's involvement with the ranch)
• Fred MacMurray, A&E Biography on YouTube

На других языках

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[de] Fred MacMurray

Frederick „Fred“ Martin MacMurray (* 30. August 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois; † 5. November 1991 in Santa Monica, Kalifornien) war ein US-amerikanischer Schauspieler. Bekannt wurde er mit Rollen in Liebeskomödien – unter anderem neben Claudette Colbert – sowie in Familienfilmen, Ende der 1930er-Jahre hatte er seinen Durchbruch. MacMurray schlüpfte aber auch in dramatische Rollen, so zum Beispiel in Billy Wilders Filmklassiker Frau ohne Gewissen (1944).

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- [en] Fred MacMurray

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[es] Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin MacMurray (Kankakee, Illinois, 30 de agosto de 1908 - Santa Mónica, California, 5 de noviembre de 1991), más conocido como Fred MacMurray, fue un actor estadounidense de cine y televisión que participó en más de cien películas y exitosas series de televisión, en una carrera profesional que se extendió desde los años 1930 hasta los 70.

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[ru] Макмюррей, Фред

Фредерик Мартин «Фред» Макмю́ррей (англ. Frederick Martin «Fred» MacMurray, 30 августа 1908 — 5 ноября 1991) — американский актёр.

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