For those whose first exposure to Fred MacMurray was as tweedy widower Steve Douglas in the popular sitcom MY THREE SONS (1960-1972), seeing him as a cold-eyed killer in Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1945) can be quite a shock… but the role was atypical for the actor even at the time.  MacMurray had played men of action and cunning before but this film noir classic really showed the depth behind the blandly pleasant face, while the cruelty to which the initially righteous Walter Neff resorts for the love of bad girl Barbara Stanwyck brought out his (for some) hidden handsomeness.  Yet even though his insurance investigator turned murderer made people see Fred MacMurray in a new light, he never really capitalized on the success of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, which should have urged him on to more conflicted, damaged characters.  And that was partially (and perhaps even entirely) his own doing.

When Montgomery Cliff turned down the role of Joe Gillis in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), Billy Wilder offered it to MacMurray.  In his 40s, MacMurray was arguably too old for the part (Cliff was only two years younger) but there was also an essential hunger missing from his mien that would have queered the casting.  Luckily for William Holden (ten years’ younger and the perfect fit in that role), MacMurray turned the part down, finding Joe Gillis, the flop screenwriter who winds up the boytoy of faded Hollywood star Gloria Swanson, “too morally repelent.”  MacMurray had also turned down the Frederic March role in THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), not wanting to play “third banana” to Dana Andrews and debuting actor Harold Russell.  Of course, March won the 1947 Academy Award as “Best Actor” in that part while MacMurray threw himself into one potboiler after another and loaned his mug for ads hawking Auto-Lite spark plugs and Blatz beer.

BORDERLINE (1950) is one of a more than a dozen films Fred MacMurray made in the immediate non-aftermath of DOUBLE INDEMNITY.  While a few of these productions are noteworthy (MURDER, HE SAYS and THE EGG AND I with Claudette Colbert), others are downright stinkers (THE MIRACLE OF THE BELLS) and the rest… well, they’re somewhere in the middle.  Among the most middling is BORDERLINE, which the actor made for Universal-International after his departure from home studio Paramount.  A noir-ish tale of undercover cops going after heroin traffickers in Mexico, the property was assigned to William A. Seiter (best known for SONS OF THE DESERT), directing a script by Devery Freeman.  Let me tell you right now, this is weak tea… and Fred MacMurray doesn’t even step into the thing for nearly 20 minutes!

After a title sequence (which plays over an illustration of a stereotyped dozing Mexican peon) underscored with a bland Hans J. Salter march, BORDERLINE begins as the story of Madeline Haley (RAW DEAL‘s Claire Trevor), a former OSS agent turned undercover cop for the LAPD.  There’s a funny scene as Haley’s superior (Morris Ankrum, playing a rare non-general) and his subordinates run through a list of possible female candidates to infiltrate the inner circle of drug trafficker Pete Richey (who “goes for tawdry, cheap-looking dames”), discounting those too ugly or married or otherwise unavailable, before settling on our game but decidely matronly heroine.  And then she’s off south of the border to pose as a cantina dancer and catch Richey’s eye.  Unfortunately for her, Pete Richey happens to be played by Raymond Burr, dressed by some sadist in the Wardrobe Department in a double breasted white suit that makes him look like the sourest of Good Humor men (which is funny, as Devery Freeman wrote THE GOOD HUMOR MAN).  In an agonizingly inept scene that will bring your knees up to your chin in embarrassment for everyone involved (the singing chorusgirls sound like an assembly line of cats being spayed without anesthetic), agent Hadley (posing as “Gladys LaRue”) dances seductively up to Richey while he does business.  Playing disinterest (which would have been no problem for him), Burr keeps one eyebrow arched so high it seems in danger of being clipped by the ceiling fan.

But for some inexplicable reason, Richey softens and seems about to make a proposal to “Gladys” when his inner sanctum is raided by Johnny Macklin (MacMurray), the right hand man of Richey’s rival in the dope trade, Harvey Gumbin (HE WALKED BY NIGHT‘s Roy Roberts).  After threatening to torture Richey’s gunsel (Don Diamond, who later played the timorous Crazy Cat of the sitcom F-TROOP), Macklin is able to intercept Richey’s newest shipment of smack and, taking “Gladys” hostage, bribes her into accompanying him to Los Angeles, where posing as tourists they’ll turn the goods over to Richey’s buyer.

If you’re relishing seeing Fred MacMurray play another bad boy, I’ve got some bad news for you… it is revealed not so very long after his introduction that “Johnny Macklin” is really undercover US Customs agent John McEvoy, whose plan is to use Richey’s own shipment (and “Gladys”) to shut down the Mexico-to-North America drug trade.  And it’s here that BORDERLINE gets weird, losing its nerve and becoming a kind of half-assed remake of IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), as the mismatched pair hits the road with a shipment of skag hidden in the base of a bird cage.  Checking into a hotel as man and wife, there’s even a comical scene of our heroine’s discomfort at the notion of sharing a bed with this stranger… and later on the pair even hitchhikes (getting a ride with Nacho Galindo, the Mexican Alan Hale), all the while falling in mutual but unspoken love, each dreading the inevitability of having to turn the other over to the authorities once they cross the borderline.

Okay, it’s a cute idea but BORDERLINE never really catches fire.  MacMurray is fine but it’s Claire Trevor’s character who really drags the thing down.  Even though the character is said to have served in both the US secret service and on the Los Angeles police force, she’s depicted as a marmy amateur sleuth who can’t hold a gun without looking queasy.  Trevor was more convincingly slutty as the reformed prostitute of STAGECOACH (1939) than she is here.  And even though he’s the ostensible villain of the piece, Raymond Burr is wasted in a nothing role that sees him bow out of the picture well before the final fadeout.  (He does get a few good lines, among them telling MacMurray, on whom he holds a gun, “I hope you haven’t got a good reason to live.”)  It’s fun to see Greg Martell (the Neanderthal of DINOSAURUS!) and THE HITCH-HIKER‘s José Torvay but what’s the sense of casting the inimitable Charles Lane if you’re not going to have him yellat anybody?  The dialogue scenes in which our protagonists fabricate their true crime pasts for one another are funny but they undercut what little tension the film has; the banter feels informed by, but ruinously beholden to DOUBLE INDEMNITY and the script has the temerity to steal the final line of BODY AND SOUL (1947)!

BORDERLINE never really picks up enough speed to be called run of the mill but, on the other hand, Fred does look damned handsome.  And there are, I suppose, worse ways to kill 88 minutes.