FREDRIC MARCH

(Redirected from Frederic March)

'Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel' (August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actor. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, he attended the Winslow Elementary School (established in 1855), Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi. He began a career as a banker, but an emergency appendectomy caused him to reevaluate his life, and in 1920 he began working as an extra in movies made in New York City, using a shortened form of his mother's maiden name, Marcher. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures.
March won an Oscar nomination in 1930 for ''The Royal Family of Broadway'', in which he played a role based upon John Barrymore. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1932 for ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'', and again in 1946 for ''The Best Years of Our Lives''. In 1954, March hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards.

March was one of the few actors to resist signing long-term contracts with the studios, and was able to freelance and pick and choose his roles, in the process also avoiding typecasting. By this time, he was working on Broadway as often as in Hollywood, and his screen career was not as prolific as it had been.
March, however, won two Best Actor Tony Awards: in 1947 for the play ''Years Ago'', written by Ruth Gordon; and in 1957 for a Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's ''Long Day's Journey Into Night''.
A friend of playwright Arthur Miller, he was favored by the writer to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning ''Death of a Salesman'' (1949). Director Elia Kazan cast Lee J. Cobb, however, as Willy Loman, and Arthur Kennedy as his son Biff Loman, two men that the director had worked with in the film ''Boomerang!'' (1947). March later played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures's 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek. Perhaps March's greatest late-in-life role was in ''Inherit the Wind'' (1960), opposite Spencer Tracy.
When March underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1972, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last great performance in ''The Iceman Cometh'' (1973), as the complicated Irish bartender, Harry Hope. Ironically, co-star Robert Ryan was entering the final stages of lung cancer, so the film was the last for both March and Ryan.
Fredric March died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 77 from cancer. He was married to actress Florence Eldridge from 1927 until his death; they had 2 adopted children.
Throughout his life, he and his wife were supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal political causes. His support for the Republican (Second Spanish Republic) side during the Spanish Civil War was particularly controversial.

Contents

Academy Awards and nominations

Partial filmography

External links

Academy Awards and nominations

★ 1952 Nominated ''Death of a Salesman''

★ 1947 Won ''The Best Years of Our Lives''

★ 1938 Nominated ''A Star Is Born''

★ 1932 Won ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde''

★ 1931 Nominated ''The Royal Family of Broadway''

Partial filmography

★ ''The Great Adventure'' (1921)

★ ''Paying the Piper'' (1921)

★ ''The Education of Elizabeth'' (1921)

★ ''The Devil'' (1921)

★ ''The Dummy'' (1929)

★ ''The Wild Party'' (1929)

★ ''The Studio Murder Mystery'' (1929)

★ ''Paris Bound'' (1929)

★ ''Jealousy'' (1929)

★ ''Footlights and Fools'' (1929)

★ ''The Marriage Playground'' (1929)

★ ''Sarah and Son'' (1930)

★ ''Paramount on Parade'' (1930)

★ ''Ladies Love Brutes'' (1930)

★ ''True to the Navy'' (1930)

★ ''Manslaughter'' (1930)

★ ''Laughter'' (1930)

★ ''The Royal Family of Broadway'' (1930)

★ ''Honor Among Lovers'' (1931)

★ ''Night Angel'' (1931)

★ ''My Sin'' (1931)

★ ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' (1931)

★ ''Strangers in Love'' (1932)

★ ''Merrily We Go to Hell'' (1932)

★ ''Make Me a Star'' (1932) (Cameo)

★ ''Smilin' Through'' (1932)

★ ''The Sign of the Cross'' (1932)

★ ''Tonight Is Ours'' (1933)

★ ''The Eagle and the Hawk'' (1933)

★ ''Design for Living'' (1933)

★ ''All of Me'' (1934)

★ ''Death Takes a Holiday'' (1934)

★ ''Good Dame'' (1934)

★ ''The Affairs of Cellini'' (1934)

★ ''The Barretts of Wimpole Street'' (1934)

★ ''Les Misérables'' (1935)

★ ''Anna Karenina'' (1935)

★ ''We Live Again'' (1935)

★ ''The Dark Angel'' (1935)

★ ''Mary of Scotland'' (1936)

★ ''Anthony Adverse'' (1936)

★ ''A Star Is Born'' (1937)

★ ''Nothing Sacred'' (1937)

★ ''The Buccaneer'' (1938)

★ ''I Married a Witch'' (1942)

★ ''The Adventures of Mark Twain'' (1944)

★ ''The Best Years of Our Lives'' (1946)

★ ''Christopher Columbus'' (1949)

★ ''Death of a Salesman'' (1951)

★ ''Man on a Tightrope'' (1953)

★ ''Executive Suite'' (1954)

★ ''The Desperate Hours'' (1955)

★ ''The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit'' (1956)

★ ''Middle of the Night'' (1959)

★ ''Inherit the Wind'' (1960)

★ ''The Young Doctors'' (1961)

★ ''Seven Days in May'' (1964)

★ ''Hombre'' (1967)

★ ''...tick...tick...tick...'' (1970)

★ ''The Iceman Cometh'' (1973)
March has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1616 Vine Street.

External links

★

★ Fredric March Archive [1]

★ Photographs of Fredric March