Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

yred Marches On Frederic March gives other screen lovers a fast run these days By Phillip Merton WITHOUT having much to say about it, Frederic March is being elevated by the fans to the rank, of a great lover. Such a sighing he creates among the ladies when he looks "that way" at Clara Bow or Ann Harding, Colleen Moore or Ruth Chatterton. He has been compared to John Gilbert by people who once mastered the old parlor trick of proving that black is white. Really, there isn't much basis for comparison. Gilbert is all fire and drama. He can tell a woman that he loves her in one breath, and with the next inform her that he hates her, without even shifting into second. March confines his acting to the stage and the screen. The one is a dynamo of emotions, the other is an intellectual. Not the kind of intellectual, however, that disdains to wash behind the ears. March admires Gilbert tremendously. He would like to do the Gilbert type of thing without heavy stress on the big time loving. He likes roles that savor of character, as do many of the Gilbert acting assignments. "If the audience gets tired of seeing a man always looking the same, and with his hair parted always in the same place, think how the actor feels about it," he said. "On the stage I liked roles like 'Liliom,' 'The Guardsman,' and 'Hell Bent for Heaven.' In ' Tommy' I even played an uncle who looked like Abraham Lincoln." During his college days at the University of Wisconsin he found time to go out for track, manage the football team, be president of his class, and win a scholarship. This wasn't quite enough to keep him busy. He also went out for dramatics. Strangely enough, nothing in college was to mean quite so much to him in the future as that scholarship in commerce. The scholarship took him to New York, and the nation's foremost theater mart. The president of the National City Bank of New York offered scholarships to one man each from twenty universities. 86 Fred March got a real baptism of fire in his first talkie. He played Clara Bow's professor -crush in "The Wild Party," and what she didn't do to his academic dignity just isn't in the curriculum! After college days were over they were to serve an apprenticeship in the New York banking house, and then be sent to posts in foreign countries. The idea of counting pesos in some South American bank sounded good to a young college boy. Heads of banking institutions change, and when the change came to the National City Bank the new president was not so hot about running a travel bureau for collegiates. The boys were put to work in the bank, per agreement, and they staved there. Freddy, looking the field over, saw men who had been there for three or four years, with the prospect of becoming assistant cashiers if they were good boys and kept away from Ziegfeld stage doors. "The chances seemed pretty slim of ever being sent to a foreign city," he explained, "so I told them at the bank I would like to try something entirely different. 1 asked for a year's leave, as I didn't want to burn my bridges completely. What I really wanted to do was have a try at the stage and to find out if I could make a go of it. "~K AY first job was as an assistant stage manager in the IVlBelasco production of 'Deburau,' starring Lionel Atwill. I played two minor roles in the show as well. In one act I was all made up to look like Victor Hugo. It was just a start, but I knew that it was the sort of thing I wanted to do." The most important engagement of his career was a summer season at the old Illitch Gardens in Denver. His leading lady was Florence Eldridge. Frederic thought that she was a particularly nice person. During the following summer at the same theater he saw no reason to change his original opinion. In fact, he thought a great deal more of her. They were married. Both Frederic and Florence gave up piomising New York engagements to try the Coast. Florence was the first to achieve a reputation in Los Angeles. [ please turn to page 151 ]