By Patrick F. Cannon

I bet you haven’t thought about actor Fred MacMurrey (1908-1991) lately if you’ve ever thought about him at all. In his day, he was among the most famous of the screen actors; in fact, for several years, he was Hollywood’s highest-paid performer. If he is remembered, it’s usually for his long running television series, My Three Sons, which ran from 1960 to 1972.

            Toward the end of  his career, he was most associated with family friendly films like The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent-Minded Professor (1963), and Son of Flubber (1963). His characters tended to be good-hearted, if a bit, as in the title of the movie, a bit absent-minded. In real life, he was a shrewd businessman, who amassed a fortune far beyond his acting income alone. Born in Kankakee, Illinois to a devout Roman Catholic family, he apparently retained a strong faith for the rest of his life. He married the actress June Haver in 1954 after his first wife died, and they apparently had a happy marriage until he died in 1991.

            But it’s the films where he played against type that are still worth seeing and are, in fact, classics.  The first of these is Billy Wilder’s 1944 Double Indemnity. MacMurray plays Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who is lured by a very seductive Barbara Stanwyck into killing her husband for the insurance money. The screenplay was written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, based on a novel by James M. Cain. Insurance investigator Edward G. Robinson plays Neff’s friendly nemesis. As you might imagine, it doesn’t end well for poor Walter.

            In 1954, he played Navy Lt. Thomas Keefer in the movie version of Herman Wouk’s 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Caine Mutiny.  The cast also included Humphrey Bogart as the unhinged Captain Queeg (he was nominated as Best Actor but lost to Marlon Brando). Van Johnson and Jose Ferrer also gave exceptionally fine performances. I won’t go into the plot in detail, but MacMurray’s Keefer instigates a mutiny against Queeg, then denies involvement at the subsequent court martial, letting his fellow officers hang out to dry.

            Finally, he starred with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, which won the 1960 Academy Award for Best Picture. MacMurray plays a despicable personnel manager who coerces aspiring executive Lemmon to lend him his apartment to carry out his extra-marital affair with elevator operator MacLaine. It would be difficult to imagine a more unsympathetic character, but he did a convincing job of it!

            MacMurray made more than 100 films in his career, including comedies and westerns. He got lucky with these three, which became classics.  Of the three, he said his favorite was Double Indemnity, in which his character at least generates some sympathy. But he made important contributions in all of them, which you should see if you haven’t already.

            Fred wasn’t Kankakee’s only famous son. It also boasts Harold Gray, creator of the ageless Little Orphan Annie; nor should we forget Kankakee native Geoge Ryan, one of four Illinois governors who have served time in Federal prisons. It also has a great name, rivaling Walla Walla, Kalamazoo, and Ashtabula. And let’s not forget Kokomo, Indiana.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon