Background
MacMurray, Frederick Martin was born on August 30, 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois, United States. Son of Frederick and Maleta (Martin) MacMacMurray.
MacMurray, Frederick Martin was born on August 30, 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois, United States. Son of Frederick and Maleta (Martin) MacMacMurray.
Studied at Carroll College, Waukesha, Wisconsin, 1926.
MacMurray began as a musician, crooner, and bit-part player before Paramount signed him up in 1934, originally as a male lead for Claudette Colbert in The Gilded Lily (35, Wesley Buggies). He came on fast in Alice Adams (35, George Stevens) and Hands Across the Table (35, Mitchell Leisen, for whom he worked nine times). Paramount tried to vary his modem-dress smartness in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (36. Henry Hathaway), The Texas Rangers (36, King Vidor), and Maid of Salem (37, Frank Lloyd), but the penthouse belt was his natural milieu: Thirteen Hours by Air (36, Leisen); The Princess Comes Across (36, William K. Howard); Champagne Waltz (37, Edward Sutherland); and brilliantly weak in Su ing High, Swing Low (37, Leisen). He was with Ray Milland (an exact contemporary at Paramount) in Men With Wings (38, William Wellman) and carried on in Sing You Sinners (38, Buggies); Café Society (39, Edward H. Griffith); Invitation to Happiness (39, Ruggles); Honeymoon in Bali (39, Griffith); Remember the Night (40, Leisen); and Little Old New York (40, Henry King).
He worked throughout the war, at home and on loan, without ever becoming a major star: Virginia (41, Griffith); New York Town (41, Charles Vidor); Dive Bomber (41, Michael Curtiz); The Lady Is Willing (42, Leisen); the male secretary in Take a Letter, Darling (42, Leisen); The Forest Rangers (42, George Marshall); Above Suspicion (43, Richard Thorpe); No Time for Love (43, Leisen); Standing Room Only (44, Sidney Lanfiekl); And the Angels Sing (44, Marshall); Practically Yours (44, Leisen); Murder He Says (45, Marshall); and Captain Eddie (45, Lloyd Bacon).
Briefly, in 1945, MacMurray had joined Fox, but after Smoky (46, Louis King) he went back to Paramount for Suddenly It's Spring (47, Leisen). Restlessness indicated a decline in his drawing power and he was forced to take work where he could: The Egg and I (47, Chester Erskine)—a big hit; Singapore (47, John Brahm); The Miracle of the Bells (48, Irving Pichel); and An Innocent Affair(48, Bacon).
After 1949, he found himself in inane comedies, routine adventure films, or tired womens pictures: apart from The Caine Mutiny and Pushover he made Woman ’s World (54) and Rains of Ranchipur (55)—both for Jean Negulesco; The Far Horizons (55. Rudolph Mate); There’s Always Tomorrow (56, Douglas Silk); and then a string of cheap Westerns of which Gun for a Coward (57, Abner Biberman) and Face of a Fugitive (59, Paul Wendkos) are above average.
Two things rescued MacMurray’s decline: a TV series. My Three Sons, which installed him as a consumer father such as the real MacMurray could have sold door-to-door; and, in the cinema, the favor of Walt Disney, who chose him as the older man kids would love to trust. It says something for stamina that MacMurrays smile stayed straight through The Absent-Minded Professor (61, Robert Stevenson); Bon Voyage! (62. Janies Neilson); Sou of Flubber (63, Stevenson); Follow Me, Boys (66, Norman Tokar): The Happiest Millionaire (67, Tokar); Charley and the Angel (73, Vincent McEveetv); The Chadwick Family (74, David Lowell Rich); Beyond the Bermuda Triangle (75, William A. Graham); and in The Swann (78, Irwin Allen).
The ingredients of the MacMurray man are paradoxical but consistent: brittle cheerfulness; an anxious smile that subsides into slyness; a voice that tries to he jocular and easygoing hut comes out fraudulent; the semblance of a masculine carriage that turns insubstantial and shifty. In other words, MacMurray is a romantic lead built on quicksand, a hero compelled to betray, a lover likely to desert.
In Hollywood this has been a rare character and MacMurray let the tawdry con-man grin through the all-American wholesomeness with a rare conjurer's swiftness so that the ear and eye suspected a dud despite even protestation of the script. For, sadly, Hollywood allowed him very few truly flawed characters: the insurance agent in Double Indemnity (44. Billy Wilder) urged into danger by the brazen Barbara Stanwyck; as Keefer, cowardly mischief maker in The Caine Mutiny (54, Edward Dmytryk); as a crooked cop entranced by Kim Novak in Pushover (54, Richard Quine); and as Sheldrake, the chronic exploiter, in The Apartment (60, Billy Wilder). Here are four memorable versions of a counterfeit nice guv in which the crispness of a new hank note turns sodden and limp once it is put down in spilt gin.
Against that, one has to set a lifetime of hollow good cheer.
Married Lillian Lamont, June 20, 1936. Married June Haver, June 28, 1954. 3 children.