Fredric March - Career

Career

March received an Oscar nomination in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway, in which he played a role based upon John Barrymore (which he had first played on stage in Los Angeles). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor 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, Death Takes a Holiday (1934), Les Misérables (1935) with Charles Laughton, 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 was one of the few leading actors of his era 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. He returned to Broadway after a ten year absence in 1937 with a notable flop Yr. Obedient Husband, but after the huge success of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth he focused his work as much on Broadway theatre as often as on Hollywood film, and his screen career was not as prolific as it had been. 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. He also starred in such films as I Married a Witch (1942) and Another Part of the Forest (1948) during this period, 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.

In 1957, March was awarded The George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.

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 the two leads in The Desperate Hours (1955) with Humphrey Bogart when Bogart and Spencer Tracy both insisted upon top billing and Tracy withdrew, leaving the part available for March. Perhaps March's greatest later career role was in Inherit the Wind (1960), this time working opposite Spencer Tracy. In the 1960s, March's film career proceeded apace with a notable 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 Edmund O'Brien; the part earned March a nomination as Best Actor by Golden Globes.

March also 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. The set was originally issued between 1962 and 1964, but has never been reissued, perhaps due to what some today might term its "political incorrectness" (included in the Civil War section was a reading from Uncle Tom's Cabin, performed in somewhat melodramatic fashion by Ms. Eldridge).

When March underwent major surgery for prostate cancer in 1970, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last great performance in The Iceman Cometh (1973), as the complicated Irish saloon keeper, Harry Hope.

March has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1616 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.