Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated stars of the 1930s and 1940s.

March gained popularity after establishing himself with leading man roles in films such as Honor Among Lovers (1931), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Design for Living (1933), Death Takes a Holiday, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (both 1934), Les Misérables, Anna Karenina, The Dark Angel (all 1935), Nothing Sacred (1937), and I Married a Witch (1942).

March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown Marcher (1863–1936), a schoolteacher from England,[3] and John F. Bickel (1859–1941), a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business.

The complete physical control which allows him convincingly to sag, stoop and collapse is assisted by a face suggesting at the same time both intelligence and sensitivity"—Australian-born film historian John Baxter.

[7] Like Laurence Olivier, March had a rare protean quality to his acting that allowed him to assume almost any persona convincingly, from Robert Browning to William Jennings Bryan to Dr Jekyll - or Mr. Hyde.

This led to roles in 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 Academy Award nomination.

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.

[10] On February 12, 1959, March appeared before a joint session of the 86th United States Congress, reading the Gettysburg Address as part of a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

[11] March co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the 1960 Stanley Kramer film Inherit the Wind, in which he played a dramatized version of famous orator and political figure William Jennings Bryan.

The recordings were narrated by Charles Collingwood, with March and his wife Florence Eldridge performing dramatic readings from historical documents and literature.

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

In July 1936, March co-founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL),[14] along with the writers Dorothy Parker[15] and Donald Ogden Stewart, the director Fritz Lang, and the composer Oscar Hammerstein.

In July 1940, he was among a number of individuals who were questioned by a HUAC subcommittee which was led by Representative Martin Dies Jr.[16] Later, in 1948, he and his wife sued the anti-communist publication Counterattack for defamation, seeking $250,000 in damages.

[1] Critic and Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz opined that "two actors from Hollywood’s golden age really stand in a tier above the rest ... Spencer Tracy and Fredric March".