Landmark Performance: Walter Neff - Double Indemnity (1944)
Other Great Performances:
- Peter Daws - The Gilded Lady
- Lt. Keefer - The Cain Mutiny (1954)
- Jeff Sheldrake - The Apartment (1960)
A musician from Illinois came on the Hollywood scene as a relative unknown. Fred MacMurray appeared in a few smaller and supporting roles until 1935 when he received a top bill alongside A-lister Claudette Colbert in the film the Gilded Lady. Fred MacMurray was almost instantly a success. Coming up alongside second generation superstars like Colbert appeared natural to MacMurray in his performances, he was charismatic, which gave him great screen presence.
1935 continued to be a big year for MacMurray. After sharing the screen with Colbert, he was offered a male lead in a romantic comedy called Alice Adams, which focused on socialites and ambition. He appeared alongside a relative newcomer, with fewer films than MacMurray under her belt. Katherine Hepburn and MacMurray had such great chemistry that the film received an Oscar nomination.
MacMurray continued appearing primarily in comedies due to his previous successes. Appearing alongside Jean Arthur in Too Many Husbands and Marlene Dietrich in the Lady is Waiting. Still, he appeared in a number of dramas and war movies as well (such as Dive Bomber in 1941). He was popular, but was still yet to appear in that one movie that would cement him into Hollywood history.
In 1944, Fred MacMurray was offered the lead in a film noir by an up-and-coming director named Billy Wilder. The film was Double Indemnity, one that is now considered one of the greatest films ever made, and also one of the greatest screenplays, thanks to Wilder’s clever pen. The movie was a perfect mix of comedy, with its fast and witty dialogue, and drama as it is a film in which a woman enlists Neff to aid in her husband’s murder. The movie was a massive hit, receiving critical acclaim and seven Oscar nominations. Fred MacMurray was no longer a film star, he was a Hollywood mainstay. He became one of the top billing actors of his day, starring alongside some of the most famous actors of the 1940’s and 50’s. He appeared with Claudette Colbert once again in the Egg Farm, and in a number of other comedies, and some of his new genre du jour, drama.
In 1954, he played Luietenant Tom Keefer in the Caine Mutiny alongside Humphrey Bogart and Jose Ferrer. The story followed a captain that is relieved of his duty by his subordinate after suspicions rise about his mental state. It was a classic and is considered one of the great classic war films, also receiving another seven Oscar nominations.
As the 1960 came along, MacMurray gave a terrific supporting performance in Billy Wilder’s the Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. The film was stunning melodrama that focused on one man named C.C. Baxter who is constantly manipulated into giving coworkers the key to his apartment so they can discreetly carry out illicit affairs. When a fling involving his boss and a lovely elevator attendant named Fran Kubelik (whom Baxter is outwardly smitten by) goes too far, leaving Kubelik broken hearted and suicidal, Baxter steps in as a friend and as a fellow human being. The film is an honest indictment of what empty, physical relationships can do to even the strongest people, and it, also is considered one of the greatest films of all time. MacMurray’s performance here as Jeff Sheldrake, the sniveling boss who is stringing Fran along is terrific. He does a great job of portraying the character as a manipulative, underhanded slime ball, something that is obviously intended. The Apartment received a stunning ten Oscar nominations, winning five.
After the Apartment, Fred MacMurray signed with Walt Disney Pictures for several live-action family films including the Absentminded Professor and Bon Voyage!. While the former was considered to be a classic, his other outings with Disney such as Kisses for My President and The Happiest Millionaire are considered to be some of the worst of the early live-action Disney films. These bombs left MacMurray’s career a little shaken.
He settled into the reliable work of television starring in the hugely popular series My Three Sons, which aired for twelve seasons. He continued to act, appearing in a few smaller films and in 1978 had a small role in the camp-fest the Swarm. It would be his final film role. After a very long struggle with leukemia, Fred MacMurray died in 1991.
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