At the dawn of sound, Hollywood was inundated with East Coast stage actors who were carried west on the strength of their vowels. These were men of illusion, men whose tongues and teeth neither gnashed nor squabbled, men who wrapped their creative egos in cigarette ads and stark white ties, men who would disembowel themselves on Bernhardt’s grave before honking out the broad Bronx squawks of their youth—men consumed by the artifice of their profession and inflamed the inferiority of the screen. Fredric March, in my estimation, was the only one who emerged from the Vitaphone fury of 1929 with his dignity intact and the foundation of his legend laid.

He was a movie star built for the churning of the Thirties. He was trim, wicked, well-read, slick and beautiful and strong. He retained the deathless enthusiasm of the callow Midwestern college boy, circumspect in dress and self-consciously caddish in speech, who, having edged around the flu and the Front, plays at erudition with the bright boyish valor of a Sunday school savior. Art was gravely serious, as was love, and politics, and living, and—this Wisconsin upstart conveyed that devotion with a smile that, should we exhume them today, we would still find carved where the hearts of widows and shopgirls and ministers’ wives once were. In a time of upheaval and shelved ambitions, women—for it was always the women—offered loving bouquets in the pages of Photoplay, strained to catch him in candid footage, hovered over the curious elegant “F” scrawled on the autographed portraits sent courtesy Paramount Studios, far-off, mystical, vividly dreamed Hollywood, California. Why? He was honest. He was forthright. He was in on the joke. There was no one like him, they asserted, because, in the vernacular of the fan magazines, they saw the fog lights of the Hudson and the porch lights of Racine and the accessible intangible magic midnight livewire of the downtown movie marquee gleaming in his eyes—his, and his alone.

Fredric March has been forgotten. In the grand narrative of the movies, of the American screen tradition which he helped forge, he is regarded as little more than a footnote in the champagne days of Depression Hollywood. He lacks the iconic masculinity that shields the legacies of men who were once less renowned than he. It was not until twelve years after his death that the Academy paid tribute to a man whose talent and tenacity enriched the art of film acting for over four decades. When he first appeared, critics hailed him as the brightest of his generation, but by the nothing-but-now Seventies, he was about as chic as a ragged mink stole he might have draped around Norma Shearer’s shoulders at the Trocadero forty years before.

His work is hard to come by. The copyrights have been scattered and his leading ladies are reduced to crossed-out headshots in the production annals of our collective memory. Two thirds of his films have not been made available for home viewing since the heyday of the Laserdisc, and many of them—including the early pictures that made him a star—may never leave the studio vaults. He has no champions, no protectors, amongst the guardians of film history. We do not have much to justify a continued examination of his impact on our culture. But with what we do have, we can reconstruct in our imagination the creative arc of one of the most brilliant craftsmen to ever pose—as I like to think he did—beneath the baking lights of a patched-together sound stage, smoke whirling above him, illuminated in profile, stoic, sophisticated, sacred, only to snap out of the scene with a sudden grin and shout—“Oh, God damn it, I dropped the pipe! Do we have the shot? Or must we do it again?”

He began as the Depression ideal: a gilded leading man, booze-soaked and brilliantined, with the sort of profile that seems like it was carved by the movie gods just to be photographed against an art deco movie set. He was suave, with a voice that managed to be both melodious and gritty; he was wry, able to communicate a kind of furtive, perceptive humour with little more than an eyebrow raised just so. He was the Rake, the Reporter, the Drunkard, the Monster, the Playwright, the Everyman — languishing in expensive penthouses for the entertainment of audiences languishing on breadlines, and doing it very, very well.

Over the course of a prolific career spanning decades, he went on to become a distinguished character actor with two Academy Awards under his belt and a long resume rich with diverse performances. Here is a man who could take almost any role and weave into it a depth of feeling that’s fascinating to watch. He played his characters with respect and humanity, instilling in them a sense of realism that could elevate even the most potentially generic tropes into another stratosphere of authenticity — the fallen movie idol, the veteran readapting to civilian life — vibrant and alive on screen.

I scoured the internet for a quote that could convey the importance of this man and his work in a manner befitting that importance, but I found nothing. The disappointing truth is that he’s not remembered the way he deserves to be; if the word “underrated” applies to anyone, it’s Fredric March. He was outrageously talented, a true master of his craft — if you haven’t seen him act, change that. There’s a March film for everyone: the provocative pre-code comedy Design for Living, the cautionary Hollywood fairy-tale-gone-wrong A Star Is Born, the wacky screwball hijinks of Nothing Sacred, the gaslit horror of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the heartrending (and heartwarming) The Best Years of Our Lives, the still-relevant courtroom drama Inherit the Wind…some of the best movies you’ll ever see, starring one of the greatest actors you’ll ever have the pleasure to adore.

“March’s power to lose himself in a characterization, and yet retain the distinctive March personality magic, was characteristic of the acting gift he brought to the screen. March stamped his screen performances with naturalness of interpretation and effortlessness in character delineation, acting so artful and subtle, so skillfully underplayed, that it hardly seemed like acting at all. In other words, March was not just an actor; he was too good an actor, submerging himself so into the various characters, that he was not recognizable, or remembered - only the portrayals, those wonderful portrayals. And what better praise for an actor, than that of creating for his audience so perfect a characterization that they remember only, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Death, Count Vronsky, Anthony Adverse, Jean Valjean, Bothwell, Norman Maine, Dr. Spence, Mark Twain, Al Stephenson, Willy Loman, Dan Hilliard, James Tyrone, Matthew Harrison Brady, and, finally, Harry Hope”. Deborah C. Peterson

“He took the road less travelled by. He could have settled for super stardom, but instead he sought to become the consummate actor. He knew to achieve one would negate the other.” (с) “The Baltimore Sun”, 1975

“I should like to bring to the screen the sort of thing Alfred Lunt has brought to the stage. I think that is the best – and most ambitious –comparison I can make. The best illustration of what I hope to do and be.” (с) Fredric March in the late 1920s

“The finest human being I’ve ever known, as well as the best actor I ever worked with. He inspired everyone. I have seen very hard-boiled technicians break into applause at the end of a scene by Freddie March. He exemplified the word ‘excellence’. He really was what you would hope any great actor would be.” (с) John Frankenheimer

“If I told you that there was an actor who was Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Robert Taylor all rolled into one, with a pinch of Paul Muni thrown in for good measure you’d probably think I’m nuts. But such an actor did exist, and his name was Fredric March.” (с) painter and blogger Kate Gabrielle

"His career was spectacular and long; he produced an uninterrupted stream of comedic, fantastic, and tragic characters over forty years … he feels forgotten by film history—or if not exactly forgotten, for we know and love many of his films, then unknown as a person.” -Guy Maddin

"He is normally quietly excellent … he did go through a spell of being a romantic leading man but for most of his career he had been a dedicated no-nonsense actor, authoritative and reliable; if you look at publicity stills of March you will find them less affected than those of any other star: he does not pose. He is direct, he is an actor who cries out to be rediscovered.” -David Shipman