ACTOR · BORN 1897 · DIED 1975
Fredric March
- Born
- 31 August 1897, Racine, Wisconsin, USA
- Died
- 14 April 1975
- Known for
- The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Inherit the Wind (1960), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), Hombre (1967)
53 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
All facts (53)
- #001
The final Hyde makeup for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) was so extreme that it nearly disfigured him permanently. After filming was completed, he spent three weeks in the hospital. His co-star Rose Hobart said, "Fredric March was lucky he wasn't ruined for life."
- #002
During World War I, he served as an artillery lieutenant in the United States Army.
- #003
He named The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) as his favorite film role and "Long Day's Journey into Night" as his favorite stage play. He considered working in television "an awful experience."
- #004
He entered the banking business in New York in 1920, and while working at what was then known as First National City Bank (now Citibank), a ruptured appendix nearly killed him. During his recovery, his landlady (a former actress) told anecdotes from her days in the theater, and he was so captivated that he decided to pursue his real dream and become an actor.
- #005
After undergoing major surgery for prostate cancer in 1970, March's acting career seemed to be over for a time. However, he managed one final magnificent performance in The Iceman Cometh (1973).
- #006
He entered the University of Wisconsin to study economics and graduated with honors.
- #007
In 1959, on the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, he was honored with reading the Gettysburg Address at a joint session of Congress.
- #008
He and Humphrey Bogart played chess every day during the filming of The Desperate Hours (1955).
- #009
March kept in shape by swimming, playing tennis and riding horses. He also enjoyed golf, reading, photography and traveling.
- #010
Apparently no one but Jesse L. Lasky wanted to make The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). He struggled for years to convince Warner Bros. to back a screen biography of the famous writer. Director Irving Rapper was not interested in making the film until he learned that his friend March was the first choice for the lead role. March had been suggested by Twain's only surviving daughter, Clara Clemens Gabrilowitch, who told Lasky she would not help with the picture unless March played her father. Yet despite such exciting approval, March had his doubts. He accepted the role only after the makeup department shot a test of him as the 65-year-old Twain. When a photo of March in makeup first appeared in the newspapers, Twain's daughter thought someone had discovered another archive photo of her father.
- #011
March smoked moderately, going through a pack of cigarettes a day; he allowed himself one cigar a day after dinner and was a light drinker. He was an avid letter writer and maintained a large correspondence. Whenever a newspaper or magazine asked him for an article, he would never let any publicist ghostwrite it in his name — he wrote the article himself.
- #012
Although it was not used, he suggested the following epitaph for his gravestone: "This is just my lot."
- #013
March's daughter Penny remembered her father as fun, charming and very kind during her growing-up years, and wrote in 1990: "I remember so well how handsome he looked in the days when people really dressed for the evening and he would put on tails and a night cloak to go out and I would have to take off his beautiful top hat" (Letter, Penelope March Fantacci, September 12, 1990).
- #014
He adopted two children with his wife Florence Eldridge: Penelope ("Penny," born 1932) and Anthony (born 1934).
- #015
He was the first actor to win an Oscar in a horror film category (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)). The next would not come until Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
- #016
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy invited him to give a dramatic reading at a dinner at the White House and to be "at home" for the past 30 Nobel Prize winners.
- #017
He was elected class president in his final year of elementary school, his senior year of high school and his senior year of college. At university, March was the manager of the football team and a member of the track team.
- #018
William Holden reportedly said that Spencer Tracy and Fredric March were his acting ideals.
- #019
Fredric March and Basil Rathbone appeared together in two television adaptations of "A Christmas Carol" broadcast in the 1950s. In the first, A Christmas Carol (1954), March played Scrooge and Rathbone played Marley's Ghost. In the second, A Christmas Carol (1959), March was the narrator and Rathbone played Scrooge.
- #020
His wife, actress Florence Eldridge, appeared with him in the films The Studio Murder Mystery (1929), Les Misérables (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), Another Part of the Forest (1948), An Act of Murder (1948), Christopher Columbus (1949) and Inherit the Wind (1960). On television she appeared with him in Dodsworth (1956).
- #021
In 1937 he earned $500,000, making him the fifth highest-paid person in America.
- #022
Asked whether he preferred making films or live theatre, he said: "Pictures are physically exhausting, theatre is mentally exhausting. Pictures are finished, theatre is built on sand. But I am grateful for my theatre experience."
- #023
On 8 February 1960 he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
- #024
Because he considered 12 his lucky number, he shortened Frederick to Fredric and shortened his mother's maiden name from Marcher to March, and from New Year 1924 Fredric March was born.
- #025
After 1958 he worked mostly on the stage.
- #026
He appeared in seven Oscar Best Picture nominees: Smilin' Through (1932), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Les Misérables (1935), Anthony Adverse (1936), A Star Is Born (1937), One Foot in Heaven (1941) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Only the last of these won.
- #027
In 1947 the highest award for the year's best performances in two different media went to the same actor: Fredric March, who won an Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and a Tony for "Years Ago".
- #028
When the annual event was established in 1947, he shared the distinction of being among the first winners of the acting Tony Awards with the actors José Ferrer, Helen Hayes and Ingrid Bergman.
- #029
On 15 October 1971 a 500-seat theatre at the University of Wisconsin branch in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was named after him.
- #030
Although he made the film adaptation, March turned down the role of Willy Loman in the original theatrical version of "Death of a Salesman".
- #031
After he and his wife Florence Eldridge appeared in the 1938 play "Yr. Obedient Husband", which was heavily panned, they placed an advertisement in New York newspapers; a cartoon borrowed from The New Yorker showed a trapeze artist missing his partner. The headline read: "Oops! Sorry!".
- #032
In 1965 both Marches were commissioned by the State Department to tour eight Near East countries, where they gave poetry readings and excerpts from plays they had performed in American theatre. They were the first husband-and-wife acting team to travel abroad under the auspices of the State Department's cultural presentations division.
- #033
Marlon Brando praised March as his favorite actor in his youth.
- #034
Director John Frankenheimer called March "the finest human being I've ever known, as well as the best actor I ever worked with," referring to March's celebrated turns in The Iceman Cometh (1973) and Seven Days in May (1964).
- #035
Unwilling to overlook any way of keeping some money in his pocket, March did some modeling while continuing his acting career. He immortalized shoes, shaving creams and ties, posing for famous artists such as Charles Dana Gibson and Howard Chandler Christy and for Arrow shirt advertisements.
- #036
The Beverly Hills mansion built for Fredric March in 1931 was the first home of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. It is now owned by Madonna.
- #037
Early in Fredric March's career, director John Cromwell persuaded him to change his surname. His first wife wanted him to use his middle name and first name: McIntyre Ellis. However, he was so used to Fred that he could not tolerate such a name. They eventually settled on his idea of Fredric March.
- #038
His stage name was a shortened form of his mother's maiden name (Marcher).
- #039
Before becoming an actor, Fredric March worked as a model for Physical Culture magazine.
- #040
His lead performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) was an inspiration for the Marvel comic book character Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk.
- #041
In 1975, Marjorie Main, Larry Parks and Richard Conte died a few days after Fredric March. March died on April 14, 1975, and was cremated and buried under his favorite tree on his Connecticut farm.
- #042
In 2019, Fredric March was honored as Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month.
- #043
Fredric March and his second wife were active supporters of the Democratic Party.
- #044
He was of English, German and Scottish descent.
- #045
In honor of his 114th birthday on August 31, 2021, Turner Classic Movies devoted a day to his filmography as part of its Summer Under the Stars programming.
- #046
Fredric March also appeared with his wife Florence Eldridge in Mary of Scotland (1936).
- #047
He was the first male actor to receive consecutive Oscar nominations for Best Actor. He was nominated for Broadway's Royal Family (1930) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), winning for the latter.
- #048
In July 1936, he was a founding member of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, a Communist front organization. Like many Communist front groups, it immediately halted all anti-Nazi activities after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939.
- #049
He was chosen for the role of Christopher Columbus in Christopher Columbus (1949) as compensation to its backer J. Arthur Rank, who had failed to borrow an American star for The Blue Lagoon (1949) or The Red Shoes (1948).
- #050
He and Wallace Beery won the Best Actor Oscar in 1931/2.
- #051
According to the 1924 University of Wisconsin Badger yearbook, the members of an organization titled "Ku Klux Klan" included the actor Fredric March, for whom the Fredric March Play Circle at the UW-Madison Union is named. Despite its unfortunate name, this organization was an interfraternity society of prominent students with no connection to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
- #052
Along with Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, Olivia de Haviland, Vivien Leigh, Glenda Jackson, Marlon Brando, Luise Rainer, Elizabeth Taylor and Spencer Tracy, he won two Oscars each.
- #053
In 1932, he was the only actor to win the Best Actor Oscar for a horror role, for his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Sources & editorial notes
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