Fredric March

Fredric March, born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel on August 31, 1897, in Racine, Wisconsin, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, screen, and television across more than five decades. The son of Cora Brown Marcher, a schoolteacher originally from England, and John F. Bickel, a Presbyterian Church elder who worked in wholesale hardware, March attended Winslow Elementary School and Racine High School before enrolling at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he joined Alpha Delta Phi. He served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant. After the war he pursued a career in banking, but an emergency appendectomy prompted him to reconsider his path, and in 1920 he began working as a film extra in New York City, adopting a shortened form of his mother's maiden name as his professional name.

March made his Broadway debut in 1926 in The Melody Man, appearing at the age of 29. That same year he worked as a leading man in summer stock at Elitch Theatre, where he met actress Florence Eldridge; the two married in 1927 and remained together until his death. They had two adopted children and appeared together in seven films, the last of which was Inherit the Wind. By the end of the 1920s, March had signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures and made seven pictures in 1929 alone.

His film career brought him widespread recognition and a reputation for versatility. He received an Academy Award nomination for The Royal Family of Broadway at the 4th Academy Awards in 1930, in which he played a role modeled on John Barrymore. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 5th Academy Awards for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, tying with Wallace Beery, though March received one more vote. Further Oscar nominations followed for A Star is Born, in which he originated the role of Norman Maine opposite Janet Gaynor, and for Death of a Salesman, the 1951 Columbia Pictures film directed by Laslo Benedek, for which he also received a Golden Globe Award. March had initially turned down the stage role of Willy Loman — his neighbor in Connecticut, playwright Arthur Miller, had considered him for the part — a decision he later regretted. His second Academy Award came in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives. Among his other notable films were Design for Living with Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins, Les Misérables opposite Charles Laughton, Anna Karenina with Greta Garbo, Anthony Adverse with Olivia de Havilland, I Married a Witch, The Desperate Hours opposite Humphrey Bogart, Inherit the Wind alongside Spencer Tracy, Seven Days in May, in which he played President Jordan Lyman opposite Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and his final film appearance in The Iceman Cometh in 1973, made after surgery for prostate cancer in 1970.

March's Broadway career ran from 1924 to 1961 and earned him two Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Play. The first came in 1947 for Years Ago, written by Ruth Gordon. The second came in 1957 for his portrayal of James Tyrone in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. He and Helen Hayes are the only performers to have each won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice. His other Broadway credits include Gideon, The Autumn Garden, An Enemy of the People, and Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. He also appeared in A Bell for Adano in 1944 and returned to Broadway after a ten-year absence in 1937 with Yr. Obedient Husband before finding renewed stage success following Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth.

Beyond film and stage, March received Emmy nominations for television performances as Samuel Dodsworth, Ebenezer Scrooge, and for a production of The Royal Family on the series The Best of Broadway. On March 25, 1954, he co-hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards ceremony from New York City. On February 12, 1959, he appeared before a joint session of the 86th United States Congress to read the Gettysburg Address as part of a commemoration marking the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. In 1957, he received the George Eastman Award from George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. He also made spoken word recordings, including a 1945 narration of Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant and dramatic readings for The Sounds of History, a twelve-volume LP set accompanying Time-Life's The Life History of the United States, performed alongside his wife Florence Eldridge. March died on April 14, 1975.