Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was a “distinguished stage actor and one of Hollywood’s most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 40s.” He won the Academy Award for Best Actor
for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), as well as the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Years Ago (1947) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956). March is the only actor to have won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice.
March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown Marcher (1863-1936), a schoolteacher, and John F. Bickel (1859-1941), a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business. March 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 re-evaluate 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. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade, signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures. March served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant.
March received an Oscar nomination for the 4th Academy Awards in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway, in which he played a role modeled on John Barrymore. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 6th Academy Awards in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ, although March accrued one more vote than Beery). This led to roles in a series of classic films based on stage hits and classic novels like Design for Living (1933) with Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins; Death Takes a Holiday (1934); Les Misrables (1935) with Charles Laughton; Anna Karenina (1935) with Greta Garbo; Anthony Adverse (1936) with Olivia de Havilland; and as the original Norman Maine in A Star is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor, for which he received his third Oscar nomination. March resisted signing long-term contracts with the studios, enabling him to play roles in films from a variety of studios. He returned to Broadway after a ten-year absence in 1937 with a notable flop, Yr. Obedient Husband, but after the success of Thornton Wilder‘s The Skin of Our Teeth he focused as much on Broadway as on Hollywood. He won two Best Actor Tony Awards: in 1947 for the play Years Ago, written by Ruth Gordon; and in 1957 for his performance as James Tyrone in the original Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill‘s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He also had major successes in A Bell for Adano in 1944 and Gideon in 1961, and played Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People on Broadway in 1951. During this period he also starred in films, including I Married a Witch (1942) and Another Part of the Forest (1948), and won his second Oscar in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives. March also branched out into television, winning Emmy nominations for his third attempt at The Royal Family for the series The Best of Broadway as well as for television performances as Samuel Dodsworth and Ebenezer Scrooge. On March 25, 1954, March co-hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards ceremony from New York City, with co-host Donald O’Connor in Los Angeles. March’s neighbor in Connecticut, playwright Arthur Miller, was thought to favor March to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman (1949). However, March read the play and turned down the role, whereupon director Elia Kazan cast Lee J. Cobb as Willy, and Arthur Kennedy as one of Willy’s sons, Biff Loman, two men that the director had worked with in the film Boomerang (1947). March later regretted turning down the role and finally played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures‘s 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek, receiving his fifth and final Oscar nomination as well as a Golden Globe Award. March also played one of two leads in The Desperate Hours (1955) with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Spencer Tracy had both insisted upon top billing and Tracy withdrew, leaving the part available for March. In 1957, March was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for “distinguished contribution to the art of film.” On February 12, 1959, March appeared before a joint session of the 86th United States Congress, reading of the Gettysburg Address as part of a commemorations of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln‘s birth. March co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the 1960 Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind, in which he played a dramatized version of famous orator and political figure William Jennings Bryan. March’s Bible-thumping character provided a rival for Tracy’s Clarence Darrow-inspired character. In the 1960s, March’s film career proceeded with a performance as President Jordan Lyman in the political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) in which he co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Edmond O’Brien; the part earned March a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor. March made several spoken word recordings, including a version of Oscar Wilde‘s The Selfish Giant issued in 1945, in which he narrated and played the title role, and The Sounds of History, a twelve volume LP set accompanying the twelve volume set of books The Life History of the United States, published by Time-Life. The recordings were narrated by Charles Collingwood, with March and his wife Florence Eldridge performing dramatic readings from historical documents and literature. Following surgery for prostate cancer in 1970, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last performance in The Iceman Cometh (1973), as the complicated Irish saloon keeper, Harry Hope.
March was married to actress Florence Eldridge from 1927 until his death in 1975, and they had two adopted children. He died from prostate cancer, at age 77, in Los Angeles, California; he was buried at his estate in New Milford, Connecticut. Throughout his life, he and his wife were supporters of the Democratic Party.
March has a star for motion pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street. In addition, the 500-seat theater at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is named after March, as well as the 168-seat Fredric March Play Circle Theater at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union. Biographies of March include Fredric March: Craftsman First, Star Second by Deborah C. Peterson (1996), and Fredric March: A Consummate Actor (2013) by Charles Tranberg.
Overview
Early Life
Career
Personal Life
Tributes
Filmography and Awards
Films
Year
Title
Role
Notes
1921
The Great Adventure
uncredited
extra
Paying the Piper
uncredited
extra
The Education of Elizabeth
uncredited
extra
The Devil
uncredited
extra
1929
The Dummy
Trumbull Meredith
The Wild Party
James ‘Gil’ Gilmore
The Studio Murder Mystery
Richard Hardell
Paris Bound
Jim Hutton
Jealousy
Pierre
Footlights and Fools
Gregory Pyne
lost film; the soundtrack survives
The Marriage Playground
Martin Boyne
1930
Sarah and Son
Howard Vanning
Paramount on Parade
Doughboy (cameo)
Ladies Love Brutes
Dwight Howell
True to the Navy
Bull’s Eye McCoy
Manslaughter
Dan O’Bannon
Laughter
Paul Lockridge
The Royal Family of Broadway
Tony Cavendish
Nominated Academy Award for Best Actor
1931
Honor Among Lovers
Jerry Stafford
The Night Angel
Rudek Berken
My Sin
Dick Grady
1932
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Dr. Henry Jekyll / Mr Edward Hyde
Academy Award for Best Actor (tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ)
Strangers in Love
Buddy Drake/Arthur Drake
Merrily We Go to Hell
Jerry Corbett
Make Me a Star
himself
behind-the-scenes drama
Smilin’ Through
Kenneth Wayne
The Sign of the Cross
Marcus Superbus
Hollywood on Parade No. A-1
himself
short film
1933
Tonight Is Ours
Sabien Pastal
The Eagle and the Hawk
Jerry H. Young
With Cary Grant and Carole Lombard
Design for Living
Thomas B. ‘Tom’ Chambers
With Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins
1934
All of Me
Don Ellis
With Miriam Hopkins and George Raft
Death Takes a Holiday
Prince Sirki/Death
Good Dame
Mace Townsley
The Affairs of Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Robert Browning
With Norma Shearer and Charles Laughton
We Live Again
Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov
Hollywood on Parade No. B-6
himself
short film
1935
Les Misrables
Jean Valjean/Champmathieu
Anna Karenina
Count Vronsky
With Greta Garbo
The Dark Angel
Alan Trent
Screen Snapshots Series 14, No. 11
himself
short film
1936
The Road to Glory
Lieutenant Michel Denet
Mary of Scotland
Bothwell
With Katharine Hepburn
Directed by John Ford
Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse
With Olivia de Havilland
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 3
himself
short film
1937
A Star Is Born
Norman Maine
Nominated Academy Award for Best Actor
With Janet Gaynor
Nothing Sacred
Wallace ‘Wally’ Cook
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 5
himself
short film
1938
The Buccaneer
Jean Lafitte
There Goes My Heart
Bill Spencer
Trade Winds
Sam Wye
1939
The 400 Million
Narrator
Documentary of Chinese history
1940
Susan and God
Barrie Trexel
Victory
Hendrik Heyst
Lights Out in Europe
Narrator
War documentary about the outbreak of World War II in Europe
1941
So Ends Our Night
Josef Steiner
One Foot in Heaven
William Spence
Bedtime Story
Lucius ‘Luke’ Drake
With Loretta Young and Robert Benchley
1942
I Married a Witch
Jonathan Wooley/Nathaniel Wooley/Samuel Wooley
With Veronica Lake and Robert Benchley
Lake Carrier
Narrator
Documentary short
1944
Valley of the Tennessee
Narrator
voice only
The Adventures of Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Tomorrow, the World!
Mike Frame
1946
The Best Years of Our Lives
Al Stephenson
Academy Award for Best Actor
Nominated New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor
With Myrna Loy
1948
Another Part of the Forest
Marcus Hubbard
An Act of Murder
Judge Calvin Cooke
1949
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
The Ford Theatre Hour
Television
Episode: “The Twentieth Century”
1950
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
Narrator
documentary about the life and works of Michelangelo Buonarroti
The Nash Airflyte Theater
Television
Episode: “The Boor”
1951
It’s a Big Country
Joe Esposito
Death of a Salesman
Willy Loman
Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Motion Picture Drama
Volpi Cup for Best Actor
Nominated Academy Award for Best Actor
Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor
Lux Video Theatre
Television
Episode: “The Speech”
1952
Lux Video Theatre
Television
Episode: “Ferry Crisis at Friday Point”
Toast of the Town
himself
later known as The Ed Sullivan Show
1953
25th Academy Awards
himself
presenter Academy Award for Best Actress to Shirley Booth for Come Back, Little Sheba
Omnibus
Television
Episode: “The Last Night of Don Juan”
Man on a Tightrope
Karel Cernik
With Terry Moore and Gloria Grahame
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Rear Admiral George Tarrant
1954
26th Academy Awards
himself
Co-hosted from New York, with Donald O’Connor in Hollywood
Executive Suite
Loren Phineas Shaw
Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting (shared with the principal cast)
Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor
The Best of Broadway
Tony Cavendish
Television
Episode: “The Royal Family” (based on March’s Broadway play and film of the same name)
Nominated Emmy Award for Best Single Performance by an Actor
Shower of Stars
Ebenezer Scrooge
Television
Episode: “A Christmas Carol”
Nominated Emmy Award for Best Single Performance by an Actor
What’s My Line?
himself
1955
The Desperate Hours
Dan C. Hilliard
With Humphrey Bogart
1956
Alexander the Great
Philip II of Macedon
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Ralph Hopkins
Producers’ Showcase
Sam Dodsworth
Television
Episode: “Dodsworth”
Nominated Emmy Award for Best Single Performance by an Actor
Shower of Stars
Eugene Tesh
Television
Episode: “The Flattering World”
Island of Allah
Narrator
1957
Toast of the Town
himself
later known as The Ed Sullivan Show
Albert Schweitzer
Narrator
documentary
1958
The DuPont Show of the Month
Arthur Winslow
Television
Episode: “The Winslow Boy”
Tales from Dickens
Host
also known as Fredric March Presents Tales From Dickens, March hosted seven episodes during 1958 and 1959.
Episodes: “Bardell Versus Pickwick”, “Uriah Heep”, “A Christmas Carol”, “David and Betsy Trotwood”, “David and His Mother”, “Christmas at Dingley Dell” and “The Runaways”
1959
Middle of the Night
Jerry Kingsley
Nominated Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Motion Picture Drama
Written by Paddy Chayevsky
1960
Inherit the Wind
Matthew Harrison Brady
Won Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin Film Festival)
Nominated BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor
With Spencer Tracy
1961
The Young Doctors
Dr. Joseph Pearson
1962
I Sequestrati di Altona
(The Condemned of Altona)Albrecht von Gerlach
1963
A Tribute to John F. Kennedy from the Arts
Host
broadcast on November 24, 1963, two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy
1964
Seven Days in May
President Jordan Lyman
David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Actor
Nominated Golden Globe Award for Best Actor Motion Picture Drama
With Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas
The Presidency: A Splendid Mystery
Narrator
Television
Pieta
Narrator
documentary
1967
Hombre
Dr. Alex Favor
Nominated Laurel Award for Top Male Supporting Performance
With Paul Newman
1970
tickticktick
Mayor Jeff Parks
1973
The Iceman Cometh
Harry Hope
With Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan
Radio appearances
Year
Program
Episode/source
1946
Academy Award
A Star Is Born
1953
Theatre Guild on the Air
Cass Timberlane
1953
Star Playhouse
A Bell for Adano
1953
Star Playhouse
There Shall Be No Night