18 Facts About Fred MacMurray

Frederick Martin MacMurray was an American actor.

Fred MacMurray appeared in more than one hundred films and a successful television series, in a career that spanned nearly a half-century.

Fred MacMurray starred as Steve Douglas in the television series My Three Sons.

Frederick Martin MacMurray was born on August 30,1908, in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta and concert violinist Frederick Talmadge MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin.

Fred MacMurray's aunt, Fay Holderness, was a vaudeville performer and actress.

When Fred MacMurray was an infant, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught music.

Fred MacMurray attended school in Quincy, Illinois, before earning a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Fred MacMurray co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams, with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion, and with Carole Lombard in four productions: Hands Across the Table, The Princess Comes Across, Swing High, Swing Low and True Confession.

Usually cast in light comedies as a decent, thoughtful character, and in melodramas and musicals, Fred MacMurray became one of the film industry's highest-paid actors of the period.

Six years later, Fred MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning film The Apartment.

Fred MacMurray's career continued upward the following year, when he was cast as the father in the Disney film The Shaggy Dog.

Concurrently with it, Fred MacMurray starred in other films, playing Professor Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor and its sequel Son of Flubber.

Fred MacMurray married Lillian Lamont on June 20,1936, and the couple adopted two children, Susan and Robert.

Fred MacMurray was a businessman who became the fourth-highest-paid citizen in the United States.

Fred MacMurray wanted the property's agricultural heritage preserved, so five years after his death, in 1996, it was sold to Gallo, which planted vineyards on it for wines that bear the Fred MacMurray Ranch label.

Later in life, Fred MacMurray insisted upon a percentage of gross of the films in which he starred.

Fred MacMurray had a severe stroke in December 1988 that paralyzed his right side and affected his speech.

Fred MacMurray was the first person honored as a Disney Legend in 1987.