Fred MacMurray

Thanks, OP, I'm watching it now, too.

Fred's overuse of the word "baby" is a bit much, though.

He always looked like he would be a good fuck when he was younger.

Tiny meat!

I can't imagine what might go wrong!

I bet it's that bitch, Barbara.

Are you S-U-R-E it's an accident???

He couldn't afford a better toupee?

No soap Mr. Norton!

I don't know if I've ever seen Edward G. Ribinson in anything else.

He is really good in Double Indemnity. I didn't mind him in My Three Sons. It was too many Disney movies and cornball stuff that ruined his career. He was a musician, too.

Barbara Stanwick was a hot baby.

He was a hugely rich landowner in the valley. He s listed as one of the wealthiest actors of all time.

How do R4 and R5?

Rightwinger and notorious tightwad. Not a whole lot of range, but not a bad actor. He began by playing roles more like his Double Indemnity part.. He used to do his My Three Sons filming in blocs to enable him to appear in films. It meant they had to have a scripts done well ahead of time (which may be why the show deteriorated over time) and he often was shot on talking on the phone or to standins.

Come , come, r9 , ha had an extraordinarily successful career. Just because he didn't pull a Betty White didn't mean it was ruined.

How do, R12?

He spent most of the 1930s as a sort of male ingénue in light comedies. And he was actually quite hunky in his youth.

It was Billy Wilder who saw something deeper, more complex and sinister in his nice guy persona that caused him to cast Fred against type in Double Indemnity. Wilder would later do the same with Bill Holden in Sunset Boulevard, after Holden also languished for years as a sunny male ingenue.

After playing his last heel in The Apartment in 1960, MacMurray then finished off his career starring once again as the older Mr. Nice Guy in Disney comedies and, of course, as the Perfect Father on My Three Sons.

He actually enjoyed a very lengthy, successful and, most importantly, varied career.

Why not just kill Keyes?

I really like him in his early roles. The tightwad tendencies were infamous and his conservatism was typical but unattractive to many of us - me among them. Of course the know-not-enoughs here can flick him for the lower-end quality of his later Disney-type work, but at his age most actors and actresses were at the downslope period of their careers, and he did better than most in terms of visibility and income.

I'm always surprised "Remember the Night" isn't among the Christmas favorites - he's very good and had a natural vibe with Stanwyck. And he's quite funny in "The Egg and I," including in his dealings with the introduction of Ma and Pa Kettle in that film.

I'm stupidly forgetting the name of the film but he's particularly sexy as a NYC sandhog, a construction worker who who builds tunnels, in a 1940s comedy with Roz Russell. She's a magazine writer who wants to do a photo essay on him as the perfect male specimen. Some nice shirtless scenes in that one!

I'd love to see a Ma and Pa Kettle movie again.

Though, I thought I wanted to see a Marx Bros. movie again, until I recently did.

Oh, just kill Keyes, ALREADY!

I read somewhere he was the prototype for the original drawings for "Superman" in the 30's.

I can't imagine a worse job than selling insurance door to door, even in the 1940s.

Oh, God, she shot him!

The movie that R19 is thinking of is "No Time for Love" (1943) with Claudette Colbert. I remember seeing it on TV when I was about 12 and Fred MacMurray shirtless made me tingly down there.

R16 Director Billy Wilder and co-writer I.A. Diamond originally offered the role of Jeff Sheldrake in “The Apartment” (played by Fred MacMurray) to Paul Douglas who suffered a fatal heart attack prior to filming.

Billy Wilder said, "I saw him and his wife, Jan Sterling, at a restaurant, and I realized he was perfect, and I asked him right there in the parking lot. About two days before we were to start, he had a heart attack and died.”

For me, Paul Douglas’ most memorable role was that of Porter Hollingsway in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “A Letter to Three Wives.”

Billy Wilder also offered MacMurray the role of Joe Gillis in "Sunset Boulevard" but MacMurray thought that he was too old for the part.

I like Paul Douglas but think that MacMurray was more believable as an office Lothario who could reel in someone as young as Shirley MacLaine. I like Douglas best in "The Solid Gold Cadillac'>

He was married twice. His first wife died and he married actress June Haver. I think he was sterile or something, because all four of his children from both marriages were adopted. He was also a staunch Republican, and a bit of a tightwad. But yeah, easy on the eyes early in his career.

Oh, yeah, apparently he had a large cock....

R27 Interesting point of view. I never considered the Jeff Sheldrake character that of an office Lothario but rather more the head honcho of the old boys' club with first pickings from the secretarial and elevator operator pools.

R8 If you like suspense/film noir, for Edward G. Robinson, also try to see "Scarlet Street" with Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea, "The Stranger" with Loretta Young and Orson Welles and "Key Largo" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Thank you, R31. That was very nice.

[quote] I read somewhere he was the prototype for the original drawings for "Superman" in the 30's.

No, it was Captain Marvel, not Superman.

[quote] Fred MacMurray shirtless made me tingly down there

I got the same feeling watching the guy in the leopard trunks Claudette was shooting for the "Body Beautiful" cover R25.

Here's a link to a small (around 7:00 minutes) decorating video showing Fred's "Farmhouse Retreat". Looks pretty much unchanged.

I couldn't get it to work on Firefox, but it did work on Chrome.

More recommended Robinson dramas-

The Sea Wolf

The Woman in the Window

And Robinson comedies-

A Slight Case of Murder

Brother Orchid

Larceny, Inc.

Ethel) You men MY Fred???

Lucy) Well I don't mean Fred MacMurray

R31 You are welcome- Agree with R36, Edward G. RULES in "Key Largo"! as Johnny Rocco, as cruel and heartless as it gets.

I just remembered another good and different Robinson performance that shows his versatility. "Our Vines Have Tender Grapes" where he plays a kindly Norwegian American farmer in the Midwest with Margaret O'Brien as his daughter.

R39 I love " Our Vines Have Tender Grapes"- such a gentle, beautiful movie.

Quite good in a supporting role in The Caine Mutiny

Wasn't he just a Jimmy Stewart knock-off?

I think MacMurray actually was kind of like Paramount's answer to MGM's Jimmy Stewart in the 1930s, the tweedy boy next door to an Ivy League college type. But they both went on to highly varied careers in the 1940s and onwards into the 1970s.

I'm not a big fan, but thought he was superb in "The Apartment". I wonder why he wasn't nominated for an Oscar instead of Jack Kruschen, who was OK, but nothing special, in a smaller, sit-com neighbor kind of role. Maybe MacMurray's role was too unsympathetic...

I definitely would've loved to have been inside him quite deeply, circa 1939. I've always crushed on him.

Did Joanie get a piece of Fred?

I wonder why he was so frugal.

Who?

R9 Yeah. “Kisser for my president” where Fred played the First Lady to President Polly Bergen was a career killer.

I hate the name Fred. It’s just so…old man sounding. And I’ve never found him attractive anyway. Just too bland.

He was no Dean Jones, that's for sure.

Fred MacMurray was before my time, so only really know the man from television reruns of "My Three Sons", and of course seeing his film on television.

Still have to say young Fred MacMurray was hot as fuck.

But he smoked, which is a total sex killer far as one is concerned.

Oh, Fred!

Very easy on the eyes.

Agree, cannot see Paul Douglass as serial philanderer Jeff Sheldrake, he would have brought a whole other flavor to role. Sort of like Tony Soprano pulling airline hostesses.

But Fred MacMurray was a good looking middle aged man with a bit of suave sophistication that comes from being part of WASP male class at that time. Sort of what you'd imagine Stephen Haines (The Women) would look like and be; a gentleman .

Forgot picture...

Paul Douglas was a big smoker (he did tons of adverts for Chesterfield cigarettes), which along with his weight probably contributed to cardio vascular problems and ultimately heart attack.

Truth to tell Paul Douglas had been quite ill for sometime, how Billy Wilder didn't know one obviously cannot say. Mr. Douglass was filming an episode of Twilight Zone written especially for him at that time, and his appearance on set was described by some as death warmed over, but others put it down to heavy drinking. Either way as noted episode was never completed because Mr. Douglass dropped dead.

Last Paul Douglas post..

In case anyone was wondering, name of that Twilight Zone episode was "The Mighty Casey".

Sterling managed to get filming completed even after PD died, but found using the man's last days on earth in film distasteful, and wanted studio to leave film in the can. CBS OTOH had other ideas....

Fred MacMurray was one of the highest-paid film actors of his day. His shrewd investments in real estate and stocks made him one of the richest men in Hollywood. Perhaps one reason he was so rich, apart from his smart business sense, was his frugality, some might say, stinginess with a buck. Actor Robert Vaughn, who co-starred with him in Good Day for a Hanging (1959), told a revealing story about some boots. Vaughn arrived on the set one morning wearing a pair of expensive new leather boots he had recently purchased at a fashionable Hollywood boutique. MacMurray was much taken with them and asked Vaughn where he got them. The next day Fred appeared wearing a similar pair. When Vaughn asked him about them, he said he had spent the previous afternoon visiting one local thrift shop after another until he found just the pair he wanted!

"During his Disney years, MacMurray also found success on the small screen. From 1960-1972 he played widowed dad Steve Douglas on the popular sitcom “My Three Sons.” His clout by this point was such that he could demand a provision in his contract that he only worked 65 days per year. All of his scenes were shot first, and had to be edited in with the rest of the scenes filmed later. This allowed him to continue to work in films and spend time on his ranch.

Not only was MacMurray a gifted actor, he was also a shrewd businessman and became one of the wealthiest celebrities in Hollywood. In 1943, he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood and the fourth-highest paid person in the nation. He had a reputation for being extremely frugal, and made several wise real estate investments. In 1941, he purchased land in Northern California that became a working ranch; that land is now a vineyard owned by Gallo, producing wines that bear the MacMurray Ranch label."

His last film with Stanwyck, There's Always Tomorrow, directed by Douglas Sirk is well worth checking out. He plays a successful business man and suburban married father of 3 kids whose wife (Joan Bennett) and family takes him for granted. Then an old flame (Stanwyck) from the past shows up at his doorstep. Another chance for Sirk to critique American middle class family values of the 50s.

And MacMurray reprised what he did in Double Indemnity in the 1954 noir Pushover, this time playing a cop falling into the snare of Kim Novak (in her debut). Underrated noir that anticipates both Rear Window (a number of scenes of MacMurray and his partner surveying the activities in the apartments across the courtyard from them as they do an undercover job) and Vertigo (several scenes of MacMurray tailing Novak around LA as she goes about her business. Worth checking out.

Having only known Joan Bennett from those two "Father of The Bride" films, was rather refreshing to see her play a streetwalker (in West/Greenwich Village NYC of all places), in Scarlett Street. Dan Duryea is her pimp, doing is usual role, knocking women about...

Shining star is Edward G. Robinson. Far different role than tough gangster one usually saw him playing in films.