Fredric March was one of the most accomplished and lauded actors of the twentieth century. His complex, carefully prepared performances usually elevated the quality of even problematic films, and he consistently brought a unique humanity to his roles regardless of genre. The three very different movies in this TCM tribute illustrate March’s talents and versatility from different stages of his career.
By the time he made the first of these films, Design for Living (1933), March had been in Hollywood for about four years, but he had already appeared in 25 pictures, two of which had garnered him Oscar nominations as Best Actor—and one of which, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), had won him the award. Signed by Paramount in 1928, it was after Jekyll that March went freelance and never signed another long-term studio contract, opting to blend film and stage work as he desired.
He was not the first choice for his role in Design for Living. Based on Noël Coward’s 1932 stage hit, the film is a supremely sophisticated comedy about a menage a trois. The subject matter presented a challenge even in these years before enforcement of the Production Code, but it was right up the alley of director Ernst Lubitsch, whose ability to suggest unmentionables on the screen was unrivaled in Hollywood.
Lubitsch wanted Miriam Hopkins as his leading lady after having worked so well with her on The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) and Trouble in Paradise (1932), and he sought Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard for the male leads. But Howard declined the film, and Lubitsch began working with screenwriter Ben Hecht to turn the two English characters into Americans, so that two American actors could play them. Hecht, one of the best writers in Hollywood, drastically altered the play but made it work for the cinema, while throwing many deliciously suggestive pre-Code zingers into the dialogue. Lubitsch cast Gary Cooper and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but after Fairbanks came down with pneumonia, Lubitsch replaced him Fredric March.
Design for Living is full of instances of the “Lubitsch touch,” visual moments that blend naughty innuendo and witty suggestion, with meaning implied rather than directly spelled out. A potted plant and a typewriter, for instance, take on major suggestive significance from the way Lubitsch presents them at certain moments.
Some critics have questioned the casting of Cooper and March. Andrew Sarris wrote that “the trouble with [them] was that they were too masculine for the effete implications of the plot. Where Coward took the sex lightly for laughs, Lubitsch took it seriously for pathos.” But critics of the time had praise for the cast, especially March. Variety deemed him “an arresting romantic lead,” and The New York Times’s Mordaunt Hall called him “excellent. He gives an amusing conception of a dramatist at work and later he makes the most of the author in a theatre listening to laughter at his own lines.” Hall added, “Mr. Lubitsch, who knows his motion pictures as few others do, has in this offering fashioned a most entertaining and highly sophisticated subject, wherein his own sly humor is constantly in evidence... No scene is too short not to deserve the utmost care and thought from Mr. Lubitsch.”
After Design for Living, March made 19 more films before starring in the second title of this tribute, a TCM premiere of the United Artists release So Ends Our Night (1941). Based on the 1939 novel “Flotsam” by Erich Maria Remarque and set in 1938, it follows the plight of German refugees who have been kicked out of their country by the Nazi regime but have no passports. Consequently, they live in constant fear of being found out and deported as they make their way from country to country across Europe, never more than one jump ahead of the encroaching Nazi empire.
March plays Josef Steiner, a conscientious former German officer who does not accept Nazi ideology, and whose endangered wife (Frances Dee) is still in Berlin. In one of his first important roles after a run of B movies, 24-year-old Glenn Ford plays the other male lead, Ludwig Kern, who is being persecuted because his wealthy German family has “Jewish blood.” Margaret Sullavan plays Jewish refugee Ruth Holland, who meets Kern in Prague and eventually falls in love with him.
The New York Times praised the “large and uniformly excellent cast,” calling March “properly defiant and ruggedly idealistic,” but added, “although John Cromwell has drawn much pathos and affecting tenderness from individual scenes, his direction of the picture as a whole has been too slow, too solemn.” Other critics echoed this view, finding the film overlong and episodic despite the strong acting.
Frances Dee and especially Glenn Ford actually drew more critical attention than did the other, bigger stars. Variety called Dee “excellent in two brief appearances as March’s wife” and found Ford’s performance to be “sterling... one of the best juvenile finds of the year... Displaying plenty of ability and sincerity in his first major part, Ford indicates he can run in the fastest company and generate widespread public following.” The New York Times echoed this view: “Glenn Ford, a most promising newcomer, draws more substance and appealing simplicity from his role than anyone else in the cast.” Under contract to Columbia, Ford was loaned out after drawing interest from director John Cromwell, but only after a nerve-wracking audition at producer David Loew’s beach house. March and Sullavan were also there to watch, since they each had casting approval.
Another man behind the scenes of So Ends Our Night, as a production assistant receiving his first screen credit, was Stanley Kramer. Twenty years later, he would be directing Fredric March himself in one of his most famous films, Inherit the Wind (1960), the third title in this TCM tribute. (Kramer also produced Death of a Salesman [1951], which starred March and garnered him his fifth Oscar nomination.)
Adapted from the 1955 Broadway hit by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind is based on the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” in which a biology teacher at a small-town southern school was accused of teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, thereby breaking a state law that forbade teaching anything that contradicted creationism. In the real-life case, famed Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow offered to represent Scopes for free, which prompted William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate, former secretary of state, and Bible-thumping fundamentalist orator, to step in as prosecutor. In the play and film, the names were altered. Darrow became “Henry Drummond,” played by Spencer Tracy in an Oscar-nominated turn, and Bryan became “Matthew Harrison Brady,” played by Fredric March. Gene Kelly took the small but important part of a cynical journalist based on H. L. Mencken—a rare straight dramatic role for the musical star.
But the main show is really Tracy and March, two powerhouse titans of acting (and fellow Wisconsinites) who dominate the story as they lock horns and clash mightily. Stanley Kramer was thrilled to be directing them. “I was rolling the dice with the best,” he said. “Fred [would remark]: ‘Take the job seriously and yourself not at all.’ He tended to over-worry and be moody at times. But he wanted it to be right and I respected that... He played William Jennings Bryan brilliantly. Bryan’s political character and personal values were grabbed by March and flaunted as Bryan flaunted them.”
March biographer Larry Swindell noted that March knew Tracy was the master of underplaying, so rather than compete on that level, he went big and showy in order to create greater contrast. March said, “It was grand... a real joy... We were so diametrically opposed in our methods. I was so flamboyant. And Tracy—so good, so quiet. Actually, I went overboard a bit. I was determined to make a buffoon out of Bryan, but I couldn’t stop clowning. I’d get going in a scene and get a few laughs from the crew and keep at it.”
There were more people watching than just the crew. As Kramer recounted, “The stage was filled with people from every office and company on the lot. And how these two luxuriated in the applause of the audience. Every take brought down the house, and their escapades were something to see. March would fan himself vigorously with a large straw fan each time Tracy launched into an oration. Tracy had no props, but he got even. He sat behind March and picked his nose during a three-and-one-half minute summation.”
Inherit the Wind opened to poor box office but excellent reviews. “One of the most brilliant and engrossing displays of acting ever witnessed on the screen,” declared The New York Times. “Since the clash of Mr. March and Mr. Tracy is not only the crux of the film but is also brilliantly, unsurpassably and fascinatingly played, it is the triumph of the picture.”
