Manslaughter (1930)

Fredric March plays Dan O’Bannon a poor but honest district attorney who believes there should be but one law for the rich and poor. His beliefs are tested when he must prosecute the lady he loves, one Lydia Thorne (Claudette Colbert) who has committed vehicular manslaughter- a fate that could have been avoided had she obeyed the speed limit. Lydia lives in the fast lane both on and off the road. Easily bored she is always looking for thrills and thinks she’s found one in O’Bannon until he reprimands her for bribing her way out of speeding tickets. When Lydia’s maid Evans (Hilda Vaughn) is put on trial for stealing Lydia’s jewelry, Lydia is so adamant to avoid O’Bannon that she forgets to attend Evans trial and help her get a lesser sentence. After all, the jewelry didn’t mean that much and Evans was punished enough by stealing it for her beau who turned around and abandoned her. When Lydia realizes her mistake, she speeds off to town getting caught in a high-speed chase with the motorcycle cop she eventually kills.
O’Bannon has Lydia sent to prison for what rightly should be a lengthy sentence and immediately quits his job and goes on a bender. Lydia in turn, learns that hard work and humility can be just as rewarding as looking for cheap thrills. Through connections and family money she serves only two years but before she is out, she is visited by O’Bannon who can no longer stay away. Thinking him there to gloat over his victory of caging her, she vows to get even with him. She has a friend obtain a letter demanding O’Bannon’s resignation at the current firm he hope to become a partner with. His reaction is unexpected when she delivers the letter to him and she suddenly realizes that she loves O’Bannon as much as he loves her.




The first of four films they would make together, Manslaughter features March back in his element playing the gentleman and Colbert ably playing the spoiled brat who gradually becomes adjusted to prison life and even becomes popular amongst her cellmates. The accident, the courtroom, and the prison scenes are the most poignant in the film. The film itself helped to boost both Colbert and March’s career. Ironically, the part of Lydia was to go to Clara Bow who could have used the boost. However, her personal problems prompted Paramount to replace her with Colbert.

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True to the Navy (1930)

Taking a step back a couple of movies before the wonderfully executed The Royal Family of Broadway, we have Fredric March in True to the Navy. One definite criticism I can agree with is that Paramount was definitely not looking after either Clara Bow's or Fredric March's best interests. Bow was considered a talented dramatic actress in her silent films, and despite her worries about the quality of her speech (which honestly wasn't bad in this film), Paramount decided that her scandals outside the studio were not worth the bother despite the vast amount of money she had earned them. As for March, most likely to appease the his fan girls of the day (whom Paramount insisted pasted thousands of pictures of March all over their walls), he was taken out of the drawing room and put into a sailor suit to ably play rough neck sailor Bull's Eye McCoy. An ace shooter with both targets and the ladies, he like most of his shipmates has fallen for the charms of one Ruby Nolan (Clara Bow), a shop girl with a nice set up who charms money out of all her sailor beaus for her boss Harry (Solomon Bimberg).

Bow with soon-to-be husband Rex Bell.

When several of her beaus converge upon the shop all at once, chaos ensues. Ruby swears off sailors for good. That's until she meets McCoy. There is instant chemistry and they set up a time to meet later in the day. While McCoy passes the time until their date, his shipmates, knowing he's quite the ladies man, ask him if he will pursue Ruby and then drop her cold. McCoy says he hasn't the time, unaware that his date is the girl they speak of. When the shipmates find out, they assume he has agreed to help them and follow him on the date. When McCoy realizes who Ruby is, he manages, in their one and only date, to abandon Ruby at the altar after they agreed to get married. Ruby learns that her past actions have cost her a real chance at love and eventually McCoy realizes that Ruby really did love him and wasn't playing games as she did with his shipmates.


True to the Navy is proof positive that no matter how talented a star was, the almighty dollar reined supreme. However, seeing a distinguished actor such as Frederic March in sailor togs, chewing gum profusely while dispensing wise guy dialogue, is actually worth sitting through this mediocre film. Call me a fan girl. ;)

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S&G: Fredric March on What's My Line?

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The Royal Family of Broadway (1930)

Julie Cavendish (Ina Claire) comes from a family of great Broadway actors who have been on stage for centuries. Her mother Fanny (Henrietta Crosman) continues to act, her daughter Gwen (Mary Brian) is just starting out, and her over zealous brother Tony (Fredric March) has practically disgraced the Cavendish name by leaving the stage and going Hollywood.
Tony breezes into town to flee a breach of promise suit as well as charges for punching his director just as Julie is considering retirement. She wants to get married and start living a normal life. However, her daughter’s sudden determination to go domestic and quit the stage and the reemergence of Gilmore Marshal (Frank Conroy), Julie’s past love, is punctuated by her mother’s admittance that being on stage is the only thing that has kept her going since her husband passed and the warning from her manager that her life would be miserable without the theater.

Come next season and Julie is getting prepared to marry Gilmore and head to South America, Gwen has married her stockbroker but is considering going on stage while he is away on a long business trip and Tony is back in town with a new play he’s bought. When they all come together, Julie realizes that she is meant only for the stage. This is further proven when they are all called back stage to Fanny’s latest play. Having collapsed during acts and determined to finish the play- Fanny’s only worry is that a Cavendish will have to close a play early. She is appeased and dies peacefully when Julie says that she will take her place. Julie then says goodbye to Gil and readies herself to finish the play for her mother.


The Royal Family of Broadway is the clever and truly polished satire of the Barrymore acting dynasty and, without a doubt, my new favorite Fredric March movie. His impersonation of John Barrymore is hilariously spot on and rightly garnered him his first Oscar nomination! The famous Barrymore hunch, the stroking of the chin while deeply pondering, the twisting flair of the hands and waggling of the eyebrows accompany a voice that might as well be Barrymore’s own. I was extremely impressed with March’s energy; he explodes on the screen. You’d expect the other players to fall flat in comparison however I was equally impressed with them all, especially Ina Claire. Her show of independence and strength with her underlying wistfulness for a different kind of life was played with such natural ease and grace that one simply must comment on it.

Trivia:

March first played Tony Cavendish in the stage version called The Royal Family. He did it so well that the Paramount executives offered him a five year contract thus beginning his screen career beyond just playing an extra for $7.50 a day. At one performance John Barrymore reportedly showed up and after watching the play, went backstage and “walked into March’s dressing room with a glowering look, then suddenly relaxed, waxed charming and agreeable, and congratulated the jittery actor on a fine performance” Lawrence Quirk from The Films of Fredric March.

Ethel Barrymore disliked the play and criticized it roundly.

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Babes In Arms: Guess Who!

Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel to Cora Brown, a schoolteacher, and John F. Bickel, a wholesale hardware businessman, little did they know their youngest son would grow up to be not only one of the foremost stars of classic cinema but a man who's artistic achievements and shining example of Democracy did not go unnoticed.

--In 1934, was selected Hollywood's best speaker by the Executive Committee of the Atlantic League for the Rehabilitation of Speech.

--On May 27, 1939, March and his wife were presented the Badge of Tolerance by the National Conference of Jews and Christians. (This, on the basis of their play, "The American Way," as well as for their radio work.)

--The same year he won an Oscar and a Tony, March was given the One World Award for "international-mindedness and public-spirited attitude." (This citation was given to recipients in the motion picture industry.)

--In 1959, was given the honor of reading Lincoln's Gettysburg address to a joint session of Congress on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.

--October, 1964: Asked to read William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech because, in the words of author Deborah Peterson [Fredric March: Craftsman First, Star Second] , "no other artist of that time had been more identified with the bridge between the arts and society than had Fredric March."

--In 1965, recruited by the State Department to tour eight Near Eastern countries with the goal of (in the words of former secretary of state, Dean Rusk) "building respect for our artistic achievements and thereby to the cause of improved international understanding." The tour began with "An Evening with Fredric March and Florence Eldridge" on April 4 in Cairo, Egypt.

* Trivia provided by Fredric March Society.

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The Marriage Playground (1929)

The seventh picture that Fredric March did under his five year contract with Paramount and his best received as of 1929, The Marriage Playground was based on Edith Wharton's novel, The Children.

Divorced and remarried American couple Joyce and Cliff Wheater (Lilyan Tashman and Huntley Gordon) who are more concerned with jetsetting than raising a family, leave their seven children to fend for themselves in Europe under the care of their eldest daughter Judy (Mary Brian). When Martin Boyne (Fredric March) an old family friend runs into Judy and her brood, he puts aside his visit to his fiancee, Rose (Seena Owens) and dedicates himself to helping Judy keep her parents from getting another divorce and seperating the children. Though Judy is considered a child herself by Martin, they eventually fall in love and decide to keep the children themselves.

Though my copy is not the best, March's eloquent speaking voice stands out most of all. "Judy!" I found The Marriage Playground a warm if predictable story that reflects the social mores and attitudes of the time. Though most of the acting is stilted, as to be expected in the early talkies, March seems relaxed and comfortable in his role. In comparison, he outshines Mary Brian's over-reacting (most likely a remanent from her silent film career).

The Marriage Playground garnered March's best reviews up to that point in his career, by the end of 1929 he was a much sought after leading man.

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Fredric March: Model, Actor, Bank Clerk

Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine, WI, he aspired to a career in business as a young man, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in economics after serving in the First World War as an artillery lieutenant. He entered the banking business in New York in 1920, working at what was then known as First National City Bank (now Citibank), but while recovering from an attack of appendicitis, he decided to give up banking and to try for a career on the stage. March made his debut that same year in Deburau, produced by David Belasco in Baltimore, and also began appearing as an extra in movies being shot in New York City.

In 1926, while working in a stock company in Denver, he met an actress named Florence Eldridge. At the very end of that same year, March got his first Broadway leading role, in The Devil in the Cheese (the cast of which also included Dwight Frye and Bela Lugosi). March and Eldridge were married in 1927 and, in lieu of a honeymoon, the two joined the first national tour of the Theatre Guild. Over the next four decades, the two appeared together in numerous theatrical productions and several films.

March came along as a leading man just as Hollywood was switching to sound and scrambling for stage actors. In addition to being incredibly handsome, he could read lines and had an imposing (and burgeoning) talent. His work in a West Coast production of Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's satirical stage work The Royal Family in 1929, in which he parodied John Barrymore, got him a five-year contract with Paramount Pictures. March repeated the role to great acclaim (and his first Oscar nomination) in George Cukor's and Cyril Gardner's 1930 screen adaptation, entitled The Royal Family of Broadway.

Over the next few years, March established himself as the top leading man in Hollywood, and in 1932, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), became the first (and only) performer ever to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a portrayal of a monster in a horror film. He excelled in movies such as Design for Living (1933), The Sign of the Cross (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934).

With the end of his Paramount contract, March was literally able to write his own ticket for the remainder of his career, never again signing a long term contract with a studio or needing to. In the wake of films such as Les Miserables (1935), Anna Karenina (1935, as Vronsky to Greta Garbo's Anna), and Anthony Adverse (1936), he chose his films and roles on a picture-by-picture basis, only for the highest fees of any actor of his day -- and producers were happy to pay them.

He showed off his skills to immense advantage in a pair of color productions in 1937, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred. In A Star Is Born, March was essentially reprising his Barrymore-based portrayal from The Royal Family of Broadway, but here he added more, most especially a sense of personal tragedy that made this film version of the story the most artistically successful of the four done to date. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award. In the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, by contrast, March played a brash, slightly larcenous reporter who cons, and is conned by, Carole Lombard, and who ends up running a public relations scam on the entire country. He also did an unexpectedly bold, dashing turn as the pirate Jean Lafitte in Cecil B. DeMille's The Buccaneer (1939).

In 1937, March was listed as the fifth highest paid individual in America, earning a half-million dollars. Unfortunately for his later reputation, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and The Buccaneer, along with his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Les Miserables, and Smilin' Through, were all the subjects of remakes in the 1940s and '50s that came to supplant the versions in which he had starred in distribution to television; most were out of circulation for decades. Further complicating matters, Nothing Sacred and A Star Is Born have been most easily available in degraded editions, and even his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (which became the property of MGM when that company did the Spencer Tracy remake) wasn't properly restored until the 1980s. In more recent times, however, in one case, the remake of one of his movies --Meet Joe Black, an over-inflated updating of Death Takes a Holiday -- resulted in the DVD reissue of March's original (on the Special Edition of the newer movie).

March successfully juggled careers in movies and on the New York stage for more than 30 years, and never compromised on his choices of screen roles. He moved between big studio productions and independent producers, with impressive results in Victory (1940), So Ends Our Night (1941), I Married a Witch (1942), The Adventures of Mark Twain, and Tomorrow the World (both 1944). March's performances were the best parts of many of these movies; he was a particularly haunting presence in So Ends Our Night, as an anti-Nazi German aristocrat being hounded across Europe by theHitler government.

Although well-liked by most of his peers, he did have some tempestuous moments off-screen. March didn't suffer fools easily, and had an especially hard time working with neophyte Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. His relationship with Tallulah Bankhead, with whom he worked in The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942, was also best described in language that -- based on a 1973 interview -- was best left unprinted. In both cases, however, the respective productions were very successful.
March's appeal as a romantic lead waned after the Second World War, with a generational change in the filmgoing audience. This seemed only to free March -- then nearing 50 -- to take on more challenging roles and films, starting with Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won his second Academy Award, playing a middle-aged World War II veteran coping with the changes in his family and the world that have taken place since he went off to war. His next movie, An Act of Murder (1948), was years ahead of its time, dealing with a judge who euthanizes his terminally ill wife rather than allow her to suffer. March was chosen to play Willy Loman in the 1951 screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman. The movie was critically acclaimed, and he got an Oscar nomination and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, but the film was too downbeat to attract an audience large enough to generate a profit, and it has since been withdrawn from distribution with the lapsing of the rights to the underlying play. He excelled in dramas such as Executive Suite (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), and in costume dramas like Alexander the Great (1956).

During this post-World War II period, March achieved the highest honor of his Broadway career, winning Tony awards for his work in Years Ago (1947) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956), the latter marking the peak of his stage work. March entered the 1960s with a brilliant performance as Matthew Garrison Brady, the dramatic stand-in for the historical William Jennings Bryan, in Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind, earning an award at the Berlin Film Festival, although he was denied an Oscar nomination.

March's own favorite directors were William Wellman and William Wyler, but late in his career, he became a favorite of John Frankenheimer, a top member of a new generation of directors. (Frankenheimer was born the year that March did The Royal Family of Broadway in Hollywood.) In Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964), he turned in a superb performance as an ailing president of the United States who is forced to confront an attempted military coup, and easily held his own working with such younger, more dynamic screen actors as Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and veteran scene-stealers like George Macready and Edmond O'Brien.
March was equally impressive in Martin Ritt's revisionist Western Hombre (1967), and was one of the best things in Ralph Nelson's racial drama Tick, Tick, Tick (1970), playing the elderly, frightened but well-meaning mayor of a small Southern town in a county that has just elected its first black sheriff. March intended to retire after that film, and surgery for prostate cancer only seemed to confirm the wisdom of that decision. In 1972, however, he was persuaded by Frankenheimer to come out of retirement for one more movie, The Iceman Cometh (1973), playing the role of Harry Hope. The 240-minute film proved to be the capstone of March's long and distinguished career, earning him one more round of glowing reviews. He died of cancer two years later, his acting legacy secure and undiminished across more than 60 movies made over a period of more than 40 years.

- Bruce Eder of The New York Times

Photos courtesy of the Fredric March Film Society Facebook page. I am grateful to Matthew C. Hoffman for the use of the photos and the creation of this wonderful tribute! A must see for any Fredric March fan, please stop by and check out all the wonderful photos, trivia, and discussions the FM Society has to offer!

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