MacMurray began his career while in high school as a saxophonist and big band vocalist. He appeared on Broadway in the revue "Three's a Crowd" (1930) and the Jerome Kern musical "Roberta" (1934) before signing with Paramount in 1934. Mostly cast as decent, amiable characters in a succession of light comedies, dramas ("The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" 1936), melodramas ("Above Suspicion" 1943) and musicals ("Where Do We Go From Here?" 1945), MacMurray had become one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors by 1943, when his salary reached $420,000. He gave his finest dramatic performances, though, when cast against type as counterfeit nice-guys or hard-boiled heels: first when Billy Wilder chose him (after numerous other actors had turned the role down) to play a huckster insurance agent easily seduced to murder by Barbara Stanwyck in the film noir classic, "Double Indemnity" (1944); then as a deceitful and cowardly Navy lieutenant in "The Caine Mutiny"; a crooked cop in "Pushover" (both 1954); and a caddish, philandering executive in Wilder's "The Apartment" (1960).
MacMurray revived his career in the 60s, starring as good-natured father figures in the Disney comedies "The Shaggy Dog" (1959), "The Absent-Minded Professor" (1961) and "Son of Flubber" (1963). He also starred as a pipe-smoking, widowed father raising his children single-handedly in the long-running TV sitcom, "My Three Sons" (1960-1971). MacMurray married actress June Haver in 1954, after the death of his first wife, Lillian Lamont.