Fredric March

A 1937 American Technicolor drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, starring Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress and Fredric March as a fading movie star who helps launch her career. The screenplay was written by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell. At the 10th Academy Awards, it became the very first color film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it received an honorary award for cinematographer W. Howard Greene. The film was remade in 1954 (with Judy Garland) and 1976 (with Barbra Streisand) and 2018 (with Lady Gaga). The supporting cast features Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Lionel Stander, and Owen Moore. The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Drama · Romance

A Pre-Code social comedy directed by Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast for Paramount. Peggy (Nancy Carroll) is a cabaret dancer who marries a wealthy industrialist for security, only to find herself trapped in a loveless marriage. When she reconnects with Paul (Fredric March), a carefree old flame, she must choose between respectability and happiness. The film was a deliberate attempt to capture the spirit of Ernst Lubitsch's sophisticated comedies, and d'Arrast—who had worked with Chaplin on A Woman of Paris—brings a similar visual elegance and wry observation of class manners. Though less well-known than the films it emulated, Laughter is a sharp, stylish look at the tension between wealth and freedom in the Jazz Age. The film is in the public domain.

Comedy · Romance · Pre-Code

A small-town Vermont woman, Hazel Flagg, is mistakenly told she has fatal radium poisoning. A New York newspaper reporter desperate for a human-interest story brings her to the city and turns her into a celebrity, only to discover she was never sick at all. Carole Lombard and Fredric March spar through one of the great screwball comedies of the 1930s, shot in early three-strip Technicolor. The film fell into the public domain when its copyright was not renewed.

Comedy · Romance

An early sound comedy adapted from Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's 1927 play The Royal Family, a thinly veiled portrait of the Barrymore acting dynasty. Ina Claire plays Julie Cavendish, the grande dame of a Broadway acting family modeled on Ethel Barrymore, and Fredric March plays her brother Tony, a swashbuckling matinee idol in the John Barrymore mold, fleeing a breach-of-promise suit in Hollywood. The film follows the family as each member must choose between the stage and a private life. George Cukor, who would become one of Hollywood's great directors of actors, co-directed with Cyril Gardner. The film was shot at Paramount's Astoria Studios in New York. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.

Comedy · Drama

A 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy directed by Frank Tuttle for Paramount, starring Clara Bow and Fredric March. Ruby Nolan (Bow) is a counter girl at a San Diego drugstore with a sailor boyfriend on every ship. When the competing sailors try to set her up with ace gunner "Bull's-Eye" McCoy (March), the inevitable happens — but misunderstandings and pride threaten their romance. The screenplay was written by Herman J. Mankiewicz, who later co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941). The film entered the public domain due to non-renewal of its copyright.

Comedy · Romance