Today let's celebrate the day of the year when Fred MacMurray was born, way back in 1908. He passed away in 1991, but is still fondly remembered for his many TV and movie roles.
I first got to know the actor as the dad on the hit 60's TV show My Three Sons, which ran for over ten seasons. As a kid, I tuned in often for his straight-man style of comedy. The show's premise was a bit different for its time; it was about a widower raising his three sons, with the help of lovable old curmudgeon Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie was added to the show about halfway through its run, and he was all I knew in that secondary adult role. Pretty funny with all his cranky remarks. Apparently, My Three Sons places third as TV's longest-running live-action sitcom.
MacMurray enjoyed a long career in film, beginning with minor parts in a few 1929 movies! I must have been a young kid when I first saw ol' Fred in a movie, and that was most likely one of his late 50's and 60's comedies, like The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, and Son of Flubber (sequel to The Absent-Minded Professor).
Though MacMurray appeared in over 100 films, I've only seen a handful of them. The best of the ones I've seen is definitely the 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity. It's a very tense and moody thriller, which I can still enjoy to this day.
Fred MacMurray was typecast as the "nice guy" in the majority of his pictures, yet perhaps his most effective and intriguing roles were where he was cast against type, Double Indemnity the best example of that. Other less savoury characters he played were in The Caine Mutiny and The Apartment, both of which I saw many, many years ago. Long from my memory, but possibly worth a re-watch soon.
A true renaissance man, MacMurray worked as a musician in his early years, and later, during and after his acting years, was a livestock and crop rancher, not to mention his painting, fishing and skeet shooting past-times.
For me, though, he'll always be the My Three Sons dad... and the shifty insurance salesman Walter Neff in Double Indemnity. Like day and night.
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