Frederic March
| Fredric March | |
|---|---|
Circa 1940
|
|
| Born |
Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel August 31, 1897 Racine, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Died | April 14, 1975 (aged 77) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Prostate cancer |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1921–1973 |
| Spouse(s) |
Ellis Baker (m. 1921–27) (divorced) Florence Eldridge (m. 1927–75) (his death) 2 children |
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 based upon 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), leading to 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.
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