Fred MacMurray

MacMurray's face was allegedly used as the model for comic-strip hero Captain Marvel.

"Whether I play a heavy or a comedian, I alway start out Smiley MacMurray, a decent Rotarian type. If I play a heavy, there comes a point in the film when the audience realizes I'm really a heel." --Fred MacMurray (quoted in NEW YORK TIMES obituary, November 6, 1991)

"I take my movie parts as they come. I don't fly into an emotional storm about them. I just do them. I guess I am an offhand comedian in a natural way." --Fred MacMurray (quoted in NEW YORK TIMES obituary November 6, 1991)

"The ingredients of the MacMurray man are paradoxical but consistent: brittle cheerfulness; an anxious smile that subsides into slyness; a voice that tries to be jocular and easy-going but comes out fraudulent; the semblance of a masculine carriage that turns insubstantial and shifty. In other words, MacMurray is a romantic lead built on quicksands, a hero compelled to betray, a lover likely to desert." --David Thomson in "A Biographical Dictionary of Film" (William Morrow & Company, 1976)