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Filmography
1921
The Great Adventure
Paying the Piper
The Education of Elizabeth
The Devil
1929
The Dummy
The Wild Party
The Studio Murder Mystery
Paris Bound
Jealousy
Footlights and Fools
The Marriage Playground
1930
Sarah and Son
Paramount on Parade
Ladies Love Brutes
True to the Navy
Manslaughter
Laughter
The Royal Family of Broadway
1931
Honor Among Lovers
The Night Angel
My Sin
1932
Strangers in Love
Merrily We Go to Hell
Make Me a Star
The Sign of the Cross
Hollywood on Parade No. A-1
1933
Tonight Is Ours
The Eagle and the Hawk
Design for Living
1934
All of Me
Death Takes a Holiday
Good Dame
The Affairs of Cellini
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
We Live Again
Hollywood on Parade No. B-6
1935
Les Misérables
The Dark Angel
Screen Snapshots Series 14, No. 11
1936
The Road to Glory
Mary of Scotland
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 3
1937
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 5
1938
There Goes My Heart
Trade Winds
1939
The 400 Million
1940
Susan and God
Victory
Lights Out in Europe
1941
So Ends Our Night
One Foot in Heaven
Bedtime Story
1942
I Married a Witch
Lake Carrier
1944
Valley of the Tennessee
The Adventures of Mark Twain
Tomorrow, the World!
1946
1948
Another Part of the Forest
An Act of Murder
1949
Christopher Columbus
1950
The Titan: Story of Michelangelo
1951
It’s a Big Country
Death of a Salesman
1953
Man on a Tightrope
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
1954
1955
The Desperate Hours
1956
Alexander the Great
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Island of Allah
1959
Middle of the Night
1960
1961
The Young Doctors
1962
I Sequestrati di Altona (The Condemned of Altona)
1964
Seven Days in May
1967
Hombre
1970
…tick…tick…tick…
1973
The Iceman Cometh
Awards
Fredric March was nominated for five Academy Award for Best Actor for The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) (Tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ (1931)), A Star Is Born (1937), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Death of a Salesman (1951).
He won for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Keep interested in others; keep interested in the wide and wonderful world. Then in a spiritual sense, you will always be young. ~ Fredric March
Fredric March: Learn more about him, review his filmography and more
Fredric March was born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel on August 31, 1897 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, Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
March served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant.
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 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 . 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 Misérables (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. He continued in other Broadway productions for many years and 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. 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.
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. He later regretted turning down the role and finally played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures’ 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek, receiving his fifth and final Oscar nomination.
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.
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.
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