August 30 - Fred MacMurray

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On this day, in 1908, Frederick Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois. Fred’s performing abilities came down from his father’s side of the family: dad was a music teacher and his aunt spent time on the vaudeville circuit and appeared in a slew of silent films. By 1910, the MacMurray family had moved to the Madison, Wisconsin area, near where his mother had been born. During his adolescence, Fred developed his vocal talents and began playing the saxophone. He earned a full ride scholarship to Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin but failed to graduate. Maybe that was inevitable given his creative tendencies, but his time spent singing and playing with a variety of local bands certainly contributed to his dropping out. Not that it hurt him any in the long run.

In 1930, Fred was a featured vocalist on not one but three songs: All I Want Is Just One Girl with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra and I’m in the Market for You and After a Million Dreams, both with George Olsen’s band. This exposure helped him get into Broadway shows. The first was a musical revue, Three’s a Crowd, that ran for 271 performances starting in October of 1930. Two years later, Fred starred in Jerome Kern’s musical Roberta, alongside Bob Hope and Sydney Greenstreet, all three of them just waiting to become big Hollywood stars. That show ran for 295 performances, ending just in time for Fred to move to California to start his path to stardom as a contract player with Paramount Pictures.

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Fred jumped right into the deep end of movies almost as soon as he got to Hollywood, appearing in seven movies in 1935 alone. Throughout the rest of the Thirties and into the Forties, he worked with most of the heavy hitters in Tinsel Town: Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Billy Wilder, Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, the list goes on and on. Part of Fred’s genius was the ability to do just about any role. He could be the smart guy in a comedy, the bad guy in film noir and could hold his own in a musical. Because of his versatility, Fred quickly rose to the top of his profession. By 1943, he was the highest paid actor in town pulling in over $420,000 that year (the equivalent of over $6.2 million today). And most of his best known work was still to come.

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One of the great film noir performances, for Fred or anyone else, happened in 1944 when he took on the role of Walter Neff, the unscrupulous insurance salesman who not only conspires to murder Barbara Stanwyck’s husband but plans to make the insurer he works for pay for it in Double Indemnity. Fred pulled off another less than savory character a decade later opposite Humphrey Bogart as Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in The Caine Mutiny. His third famous go-around as a guy you’d like to punch in the face came in 1960 when he played Jeff Sheldrake, an adulterous businessman vying with Jack Lemmon for Shirley MacLaine’s um… affections in The Apartment. He once reported that women would publically berate him for Sheldrake’s sleaziness following the release of the now classic film. Arguably, though, his biggest roles were much nicer guys and mostly came about through a long relationship with the Walt Disney Company.

The names Fred MacMurray and Walt Disney were first joined together in people’s minds in 1959 when Fred was cast in the studio’s very first fully live action movie, The Shaggy Dog. Playing the father of the titular dog, he was able to help propel the movie to the biggest financial success Disney had ever enjoyed to that point (co-starring with Annette Funicello and Tommy Kirk didn’t hurt). I’m not saying this was a key factor in making Fred one of Walt’s favorite actors, but it certainly helped. So did the success of his subsequent films. In 1961, Fred reteamed with Tommy and first played Ned Brainard, nerdy scientist and creator of a super substance called flubber, in the smash hit The Absent-Minded Professor. That performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination, the only time the vastly underrated actor ever got any nomination. Professor was so popular it spawned Disney’s first sequel just two years later, The Son of Flubber, which Fred and Tommy of course returned for. In between the two flubber flicks, Fred and Tommy joined Jane Wyman for a family vacation comedy, Bon Voyage! Three more light hearted comedies followed: 1966’s Follow Me, Boys!, 1967’s The Happiest Millionaire and, finally, 1973’s Charlie and the Angel. Fred’s seven pictures with Disney comprised more than half of his last dozen film appearances and probably more than three quarters of what he’s recognized for today. And those seven pictures became the basis for Fred achieving another Disney first when, in 1987, he was declared the inaugural Disney Legend.

As if appearing in a fair number of hit movies throughout the Sixties wasn’t enough success for one man, Fred was also appearing weekly in a hit television show as well. In 1960, he was cast as Steven Douglas, an aeronautical engineer and widowed father of three sons, on the aptly named My Three Sons on CBS. The series also starred William Frawley (of I Love Lucy fame) and one of Fred’s co-stars from The Shaggy Dog, Tim Considine. For the next five years, My Three Sons was part of the bedrock of ABC’s lineup. When the network declined to pony up for a changeover to color filming, CBS gladly snapped it up, colorized it and ran with it for seven more years, finally ending it in 1972. With 380 episodes, it’s the ranks as the #3 sitcom (in terms of number of episodes) behind The Simpsons and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. And yes, just like The Simpsons has become, that final season was kind of unwatchable.

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Fred’s final acting gig came in 1978, during the disaster movie craze. He played the mayor of a Texas town being invaded by killer bees in The Swarm (which was apparently even worse than you can possibly imagine it) and decided to retire. Because, let’s face it, he didn’t need any more money. Not only was he once the highest paid actor in Hollywood, but he’d made some fantastic investments over the years and was estimated to be worth something in the range of $150 million when he died. So retiring to his 1750-acre ranch in Northern California wasn’t a bad deal at all. At least it wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t had a string of severe health problems. Fred, a lifelong smoker, was diagnosed with throat cancer in the late Seventies, shortly after ending his career. He beat it, but the cancer recurred in 1987. In the early Eighties, he was diagnosed with a mild form of leukemia, which he lived with for a decade. In 1988, he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He was able to recover about 90% of his movement over the next few years but it didn’t matter in end. In 1991, he contracted pneumonia and that was the final straw for his beleaguered body. Fred passed away in a Santa Monica hospital being treated for the pulmonary disease on November 5, 1991. He was 83.

January 20 - Leon Ames

On this day, in 1902, Harry Wycoff was born in Portland, Indiana. A fairly typical Midwestern boy, Harry attended Indian University at Bloomington, served in World War I in the Army as a field artillery gunner (later transferring to the flying corps) and always dreamed of becoming an actor. He began pursuing that dream as a stage manager for playwright Charles K. Champlin's theatre company. He eventually drifted on stage in progressively larger roles until he played the lead in Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Los Angeles.

That performance led to a name change to Leon Waycoff and, in 1931, to his big screen debut in a pre-code Spencer Tracy/George Raft film called Quick Millions. Leon spent the Thirties playing dozens of bit parts in film. By 1935 he'd changed his name again to Leon Ames. Fame still eluded him until he became an "overnight" success after playing Mr. Smith, Judy Garland's father, in Meet Me in St. Louis in 1944. Leon worked steadily for the rest of the decade and into the Fifties, working alongside Red Skelton, Clark Gable, Elizabeth Taylor and Doris Day.

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Leon was also a regular player on the stages of Broadway. He made his debut in 1933 in It Pays to Sin (which apparently didn't pay all that well, it closed after three performances). Over the next three decades, he appeared in a dozen shows on the Great White Way including 1942's The Russian People and 1958's Winesburg, Ohio.

Leon joined the Disney family in 1961 as the President of Medfield College, Rufus Daggett, in the Fred MacMurray classic The Absent-Minded Professor. He reprised the overly stuffy Rufus for the 1963 sequel, Son of Flubber. In 1964, he appeared with Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello in The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, as an overly stuffy judge (who also happens to write crime novels on the side). Leon would again reprise his role in that movie's sequel, The Monkey's Uncle, the following year.

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Leon spent much of the rest of his career as a staple on television and in movies. For the small screen, he had recurring roles in Mr. Ed, Father of the Bride (a one season series based on the Spencer Tracy film) and Bewitched. On the big screen, his appearances include Tora! Tora! Tora! and Timber Tramps. His final film was Peggy Sue Got Married in 1986 as Kathleen Turner's grandfather.

There are two other aspects to Leon's life worth mentioning. First, he was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933. In 1957, he would serve a term as its president. Second, on February 12, 1964, an armed intruder broke into his home and held Leon and his wife hostage in demand for $50,000. Leon called his business partner for the money, the business partner alerted the police on the way over and the intruder was captured shortly after leaving the house (with Mrs. Ames and the business partner in the trunk of the car).

Leon would enjoy his twilight years until he suffered a stroke on October 12, 1993. He passed away in his home in Laguna Beach, California from complications brought on by that stroke and was buried in the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery. He was 91.

November 9 - Ed Wynn

On this day, in 1886, Isaiah Edwin Leopold was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Isaiah attended high school only until the age of 15. He then ran away from home, found work as a hat salesman (the job his father held) and eventually found his way into show business. To spare his family the embarrassment of having a comedian in the family, he morphed his middle name into the stage name Ed Wynn.

Ed started out on the Vaudeville circuit in 1903. By the mid Teens, he was starring in the annual Broadway revues, the Ziegfeld Follies, working alongside the likes of W.C. Fields. Ed would appear in several other shows on Broadway, including ones he wrote and directed like 1921's The Perfect Fool.

In the early Thirties, Ed, like many other vaudevillians, made the transition to radio. He was the host of Texaco's The Fire Chief and would even play the role in two movies, Follow the Leader and The Chief. Ed even started his own radio network, the Amalgamated Broadcasting Network, but it went belly up after just a few weeks. The effects on his marriage, his finances and his mental health were all devastating. Ed continued appearing on Broadway and in movies throughout the rest of the Thirties and most of the Forties.

In 1949, Ed made the leap to the small screen, although technically his first appearance was as part of an experimental broadcast in 1936. As the host of one of the first variety shows on television he welcomed comedians such as Lucille Ball, Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges. From 1950-52, Ed also hosted Four Star Revue on a rotational basis with Danny Thomas, Jack Carson and Jimmy Durante. He even got his own show, The Ed Wynn Show, though it only lasted one season.

It was around this time that Ed's son, Keenan (who was also an actor), encouraged him to branch out into more dramatic roles. The two would appear together a number of times over the years. The first time was 1956's Requiem for a Heavyweight. Ed was terrified to do a straight acting gig but shined for the actual performance. The second time was the same year in the movie The Great Man. The final time was, oddly enough, in a 1960 piece about the making of the 1956 Requiem. Ed had established himself so well as a serious actor, he appeared in 1959's Diary of Anne Frank and nabbed an Oscar nomination. One of my favorite television appearance's of Ed's around this time was for The Twilight Zone in an episode that Rod Serling wrote specifically for him, "One for the Angels."

Ed joined the Disney family in 1951 as the Mad Hatter of Alice in Wonderland. Full of wonderfully quotable lines ("Mustard? Don't let's be silly."), Ed's Hatter is a delightful island of fun in a totally surreal film. Ten years later, he would become the Toymaker opposite Annette Funicello in Babes in Toyland. My favorite Disney role of Ed's, though, has to be Uncle Albert in 1964's Mary Poppins. As a child I couldn't help but wish that a fit of laughter would make me flit around the ceiling. Ed would also appear in That Darn Cat!, The Absent Minded Professor (another production with his son Keenan), Son of Flubber and, his final film appearance, The Gnome-mobile, which was released posthumously.

Ed passed away on June 19, 1966 at the age of 79 from throat cancer. Reportedly, Walt Disney, who once referred to Ed as "our good luck charm," was one of his pall bearers. He was made an official Disney Legend in 2013.