Though never a first string actor, Fred MacMurray had a long and successful career, stretching from the 1930s to the 1970s, encompassing both film and television roles. MacMurray made his name playing a particular type of male lead—amiable, upbeat, and anxious to please—that was easily adapted, in later life, to playing father figures on television and in children's films. On a number of occasions, however, MacMurray was furnished with roles that allowed a questioning and undermining of his more familiar persona.

Fred MacMurray

Likeable and pleasant looking, MacMurray appeared regularly in the 1930s and 1940s romantic comedies (working nine different occasions for Mitchell Leisen, one of the most expert directors of light farce), playing the affable leading man opposite Hollywood's top actresses. It is perhaps a mark of his percolation into the American consciousness as an exemplification of the ordinary, wholesome American...