Fred MacMurray spent most of his career in light comedy and became a Disney fixture with The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog, alongside a long television run on My Three Sons.
Billy Wilder cast him against that twice, in Double Indemnity as a murderer and in The Apartment as an adulterous executive, and both work precisely because of the persona.
He was reportedly reluctant to take Double Indemnity, and it is the best thing he did.
Barbara StanwyckA prosecutor takes a shoplifter home to Indiana for Christmas after her trial is delayed, and they fall in love. Remember the Night is Mitchell Leisen's 1940 American romantic drama about a Manhattan prosecutor who postpones a shoplifter's trial until…
Fred MacMurrayAn ambitious insurance clerk lends his apartment to executives for their affairs, until he falls for the boss's mistress at Christmas. The Apartment is Billy Wilder's 1960 American comedy-drama about an ambitious insurance company clerk who lends his Manhattan apartment…
Fred MacMurray1954 Edward Dmytryk courtroom drama with Humphrey Bogart as paranoid Captain Queeg. The strawberries, the ball bearings, the mutiny.
Barbara StanwyckChandler co-wrote with Wilder. Double Indemnity is the Billy Wilder-directed Paramount Pictures noir that became the canonical template for the genre's mature middle period.
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