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Fred MacMurray, "Disney Legend" and actor, with daughter Katie, wife June Haver, and Mega Genius^®

Fred MacMurray was an American actor who starred in more movies than any other star except John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and achieved further fame as Steve Douglas, the father in the famous television series My Three Sons, which ran from 1960 to 1972.

From 1930 through the early ‘40s, Fred shared the silver screen with many of Hollywood’s greatest talents, including Claudette Colbert, Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon.  His motion pictures included Dive Bomber; The Egg and I; The Gilded Lily; Alice Adams; Hands Across the Table; The Princess Comes Across; True Confession; The Trail of the Lonesome Pine; Above Suspicion; and Where Do We Go from Here?

By 1943, Fred MacMurray was one of the world's highest-paid actors, and soon became one of the wealthiest people in Hollywood.

In 1944, he starred in the Billy Wilder, Academy Award-nominated, classic murder-thriller Double Indemnity, co-starring Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson, based on a true story.  In the film, in case censors felt that the murderous Walter Neff – played by Fred MacMurray – had not suffered enough for his crime, Wilder shot an alternate, but never shown, ending in which MacMurray’s character went to the gas chamber.

Some of Fred’s later movies included Pushover, The Caine Mutiny, and Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.  Fred said in later years that Double Indemnity and The Apartment were the only two films that he had made in his entire career that required any acting.  (When Fred had asked Barbara Stanwyck for her secret of acting, she had told him, “Just be truthful -- and if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”)

In 1959, he starred in the popular Disney comedy The Shaggy Dog, followed by two other Disney movies, The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber.  In 1987, he was the first person to be named a Disney Legend.

Concurrently with those motion pictures, My Three Sons, which ran for 12 seasons, was one of America's most successful and longest-running television series.  According to the provisions of Fred’s contract, all the TV scenes in which he appeared each season had to be shot first.  Then all the other actors shot their remaining scenes without him, while he was free for the rest of the season to make more movies.  .

According to Charles C. Beck, the Fawcett Comics’ artist who first drew Captain Marvel, his model for the superhero character was movie star Fred MacMurray.

Fred was married to American film actor June Haver.  They both have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

While being treated for leukemia, Fred MacMurray passed away from pneumonia in 1991, at age 83.

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