FREDRIC MARCH was born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel on 31st August 1897, in Racine, Wisconsin. He was the youngest child of John Frederick Bickel and the former Cora Brown Marcher, who were married on January 23, 1886. Fred’s siblings were Harold Leroy (born April 11 1887), Jack M. (b. February 21, 1892) and Rosina Elizabeth (b. April 2 1889). His father was president and treasurer of Racine Hardware Manufacturing Company, which produced wagon hardware and office supplies. Fred had a happy middle-class childhood, and was adept at performing from an early age, mimicking passers-by on the street, and giving recitations for his family. He attended the Winslow Grammar school, and was class president in his final year there.
Fred graduated from the Racine High School (where he was also class president) in 1915, then went to the University of Wisconsin, where he remained for two years, majoring in finance and economics. He enjoyed at the University the same popularity he had known at Winslow Grammar and Racine High. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, young Bickel, then twenty, enlisted in the Army, went to Officers Candidate School, and was eventually commissioned a Lieutenant in the Artillery. After the war ended Fred returned to the University where he was senior class president, a track star, manager of the football team, and active in dramatics and Union Vodvil.
Upon graduation, Freddie worked as a bank teller at the First National City Bank of New York in Racine and New York. A brush with death (necessitating an emergency appendectomy) caused young Bickel to rethink his priorities, and he decided to give up banking and become an actor. In 1924 Fredric March married actress Ellis Baker- but the union was short lived, and they divorced in 1927. In 1926 Fred was contracted as a player in a Denver touring company, and it was on this tour that he met Florence Eldridge, an actress who had worked her way up from the chorus to become a Broadway star in such plays as “The Cat and The Canary” and “The Great Gatsby”. They were married on May 30, 1927. Fredric March’s last Broadway play until 1938, was “The Devil in the Cheese” which closed early in 1927.
In 1927-28 Freddie and Florence toured with the Theatre Guild. March’s breakthrough came in 1928 when he played the role of Tony Cavendish in “The Royal Family” in Los Angeles. This brought the young actor to the attention of film executives, who signed March to a Paramount Contract. Ill-health dogged his later years, but Freddie and Florence spent the years travelling, visiting daughter Penny, who lived with her family in Italy. He was present at the University of Wisconsin for the dedication of the Fredric March Theater in 1971. He passed away, with Florence by his side, at 10:30am on April 14 1975, aged 77.