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Seated before someone else s l\icl(ard c<ir.
liud MacMurray, Carroll College freshman
and pledge of lleta I’t Epsilon m iijiv, was
famous hi a small way as a sweet saxophone
fi/avcr ami a regular ball carrier mi the frosh
lind squad who grinned do ten at the world
from six feet, three inches of Irish reticence.
I.il^e Rudy Vallee and Wayne King, Fred
MacMurray hoped to get ahead by concentrat
ing on the saxophone. To his utter surprise
this miid ambition made him a movie .star,
leading man to Claudette Colbert in “Gilded
Lily,” hero of “Car <;y and “Grand Old
Girl ' with May Robson,
IN 1925, Bud MacMurray w<js graduated from
I the Beaver Dam (Wis ) high school with the
American Legion medal given yearly to the most
rounded scholar and athlete among the graduates.
He was also the best saxophone player in the
school and the boy who had made most of the
drawings (or the yearbook.
Looking over these accomplishments, he de
cided he could be of some use to Carroll Col
lege (NX/aukesha, Wis ) as a football star The
saxophone would earn his keep while he at
tempted to discover whether he could really
draw pictures By November, 1925, the horn
and freshman football were interfering with his
education Beta Pi Lpsilon had pledged him.
He was thinking of buying some textbooks.
O N fRIDAY and Saturday nights he played
in dance pavilions with an orchestra
called Joy's Gloom Chasers Carroll College
had a dramatics club from which Alfred Lunt,
the noted Broadway actor, had graduated To
Fred MacMurray this was an unexciting fact;
he had decided against acting when he failed to
make the cast of his high school class play
In June 1926, Fred gave up Carroll College
and art to be a musician, an occupation promising
the money the MacMurrays had seen little of in
Beaver Dam, where his divorced mother had
worked hard in offices to keep up a two-room
flat He went to Hollywood with his mother,
where they hoped to find sunshine and many
dance bands. His mother "broke her hip in a fall.
For five years she was confined to a hospital,
and her son, to pay the bills, worked his sax,
when he could, in and about Los Angeles.
A T THE studios Fred applied as a saxophone
player, and met, therefore, a saxophonist s
cold reception. A band, the California Collegians,
MacMurray with it, played a successful way east
ward In New York the orchestra was hired for
Three s a Crowd Fred came from the orchestra
pit nightly to be the man to whom Libby Holman,
the star, sang her flaming torch, Body and Soul.
In Roberta, Fred had some lines and a song on
the stage. A Paramount scout saw him and
brought him home to Hollywood from Libby
Holman to Claudette Colbert and a seven-year
contract.
These were swift and strange happenings to
Bud MacMurray who had given no second
thought to being an actor as long as he could
still play the saxophone.
I'll' YiM T K < *AMPl’S produce .1 personality who is now prominent in the radio, motion picture, *t.i|*c. art. busmens,
or |x>lith.il wor111* It vou want to see that personality the subtree of t “Spotlighter" thumbnail sketch, write The
Spot lighter. ( ollegiate 1'iuest. I’ O IV>x 472. Madison, Wis One dollar will lx* paiJ for each acceptable picture sub
mitted. in addition to imk‘ dollar for acceptable authentic anecdotes about the famed of today.
m
ANOTHER RECORD FALLS » Glenn Cunningham, great
University of Kansas (Lawrence) miler, forges ahead of
Hornbostel, of Indiana, to set a new world s record in the
1,000 yard event with a time of 2:10.1. He ran the mile
during the same meet in 4:14.8.
KEYSTONE PHOTO
BETA'S COMPOSER » James Golseth, former University of
Minnesota (Minneapolis) student, has composed two songs
which will appear in the forthcoming songbook of Beta
fheta Pi fraternity