British postcard in the Real Photogravure Portrait series. Photo: Fredric March in Anthony Adverse (Mervyn LeRoy, 1936).

Fredric March (1897-1975) played for a few years in stock, and, when talkies came in 1928, he was offered a part in The Dummy (Robert Milton, 1929). His performances grew steadily in dramatic appeal, and with his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor, Cyril Gardner, 1930), he became a star. He won the Oscar for Best Actor twice: for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946).

Fredric March was born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in 1897 in Racine, Wisconsin, USA. he was the son of Cora Brown Marcher, a schoolteacher from England, and John F. Bickel, a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business. March attended the Winslow Elementary School, Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant. After the war, he began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. In 1924, he shortened Frederick to Fredric, shortened his mother's maiden name from Marcher to March, and his stage name was born. Fredric March starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on. He won plaudits and an Academy Award nomination for his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (George Cukor, Cyril Gardner, 1930) opposite Ina Claire. March would win the Oscar for Best Actor for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) and three more Academy Award nominations would come his way. Wikipedia: "Like Laurence Olivier, March had a rare protean quality to his acting that allowed him to assume almost any persona convincingly, from Robert Browning to William Jennings Bryan to Dr. Jekyll - or Mr. Hyde." He starred in a series of classic films based on stage hits and classic novels like Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch, 1933) with Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins, Death Takes a Holiday (Mitchell Leisen, 1934), Les Misérables (Richard Boleslawski, 1935) with Charles Laughton, Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown, 1935) with Greta Garbo; Anthony Adverse (Mervyn LeRoy, 1936) with Olivia de Havilland; and as the original Norman Maine in A Star is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) with Janet Gaynor, for which he received his third Academy Award nomination. In 1936, March co-founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL), along with writers Dorothy Parker and Donald Ogden Stewart, director Fritz Lang, and composer Oscar Hammerstein. In 1938, March was one of many Hollywood personalities investigated by the House of Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the hunt for Communists in the film community. In July 1940, he was again questioned by a HUAC subcommittee led by Representative Martin Dies.

In 1947, Fredric March won the highest awards for giving the best performances of the year in two distinct mediums: an Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946) and a Tony for 'Years Ago'. Two years later, he was targeted for blacklisting by the House Un-American Activities Committee because of his supposed "leftist" politics. March continued to play varying roles from heavy drama to light comedy and often portrayed men in anguish, such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (Laslo Benedek, 1951). As his career advanced he progressed from leading man to character actor. After 1958, he worked mostly on stage. On stage, he won two Tony Awards as Best Actor (Dramatic), the first in 1947 for his performance in Ruth Gordon's 'Years Ago', an award shared with José Ferrer for 'Cyrano de Bergerac', and the second, ten years later, in 1957, for his landmark performance in Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. He was also nominated in the same category in 1962 for Paddy Chayefsky's 'Gideon'. On-screen, March co-starred with Spencer Tracy in the film Inherit the Wind (Stanley Kramer, 1960), in which he played a dramatised version of famous orator and political figure William Jennings Bryan. In the 1960s, March played President Jordan Lyman in the political thriller Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer, 1964), in which he co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Edmond O'Brien. The part earned March a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor. For a while after undergoing major surgery for prostate cancer in 1970, it seemed March's acting career was finished. However, he was able to give one final great performance in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Lee Marvin and Robert Ryan. In 1975, Fredric March died of prostate cancer in Los Angeles. He was married twice. From 1925 till 1927, he was married to Ellis Baker. In 1927 he married actress Florence Eldridge with whom he adopted two children, Penelope ("Penny", 1932) and Anthony (1934). The couple remained together till his death.

Sources: Bill Takacs (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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British Real Photogravure Portrait. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935).

American screen legend Gary Cooper (1901-1961) is well remembered for his stoic, understated acting style in more than one hundred Westerns, comedies and dramas. He received five Oscar nominations and won twice for his roles as Alvin York in Sergeant York (1941) and as Will Kane in High Noon (1952).

Frank James Cooper was born in Helena, Montana in 1901. His parents were English immigrants, Alice Cooper-Brazier and Charles Henry Cooper, a prominent lawyer, rancher, and eventually a state supreme court judge. Frank left school in 1918 and returned to the family ranch to help raise their five hundred head of cattle and work full-time as a cowboy. In 1919, his father arranged for his son to complete his high school education at Gallatin County High School in Bozeman, Montana. His English teacher, Ida W. Davis, played an important role in encouraging him to focus on academics, join the school's debating team, and become involved in dramatics. He was in a car accident as a teenager that caused him to walk with a limp the rest of his life. In the fall of 1924, Cooper's parents moved to Los Angeles to administer the estates of two relatives. Cooper joined them and there he met some cowboys from Montana who were working as film extras and stuntmen in low-budget Western films. Cooper decided to try his hand working as a film extra for five dollars a day, and as a stuntman for twice that amount. In early 1925, Cooper began his film career working as an extra and stuntman on Poverty Row in such silent Westerns as Riders of the Purple Sage (Lynn Reynolds, 1925) with Tom Mix, and The Trail Rider (W.S. Van Dyke, 1925) with Buck Jones. Cooper paid for a screen test and hired casting director Nan Collins to work as his agent. Collins changed his first name to ‘Gary’ after her hometown of Gary, Indiana. Cooper also worked in non-Western films. He appeared as a masked Cossack in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925) with Rudolph Valentino, as a Roman guard in Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925) with Ramón Novarro, and as a flood survivor in The Johnstown Flood (Irving Cummings, 1926) with George O'Brien. Gradually he began to land credited roles that offered him more screen time, such as Tricks (Bruce M. Mitchell, 1925), in which he played the film's antagonist. As a featured player, he began to attract the attention of major film studios and in June 1926, Cooper signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions. His first important film role was in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926) with Ronald Colman and Vilma Bánky. The film was a major success, and critics called Cooper a "dynamic new personality" and future star. Cooper signed a five-year contract with Jesse L. Lasky at Paramount Pictures for $175 per week. In 1927, with help from established silent film star Clara Bow, Cooper landed high-profile roles opposite her in Children of Divorce (Frank Lloyd, 1927) and Wings (William A. Wellman, 1927), the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. With each new film, Cooper's acting skills improved and his popularity continued to grow, especially among female movie-goers. He received a thousand fan letters per week. The studio placed him opposite popular leading ladies in films such as Beau Sabreur (John Waters, 1928) with Evelyn Brent, Half a Bride (Gregory La Cava, 1928) with Esther Ralston, and Lilac Time (George Fitzmaurice, 1928) with Colleen Moore. The latter introduced synchronized music and sound effects, and became one of the biggest box office hits of the year.

In 1929, Gary Cooper became a major film star with his first sound picture, The Virginian, (Victor Fleming, 1929). The Virginian was one of the first sound films to define the Western code of honour and helped establish many of the conventions of the Western genre. The romantic image of the tall, handsome, and shy cowboy hero that embodied male freedom, courage, and honour was created in large part by Cooper's performance in the film. Cooper transitioned naturally to the sound medium, with his deep, clear, and pleasantly drawling voice. One of the high points of Cooper's early career was his portrayal of a sullen legionnaire in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) with Marlene Dietrich in her American debut. Cooper produced one of his finest performances to that point in his career. In the Dashiell Hammett crime drama City Streets (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931) he played a misplaced cowboy in a big city who gets involved with gangsters to save the woman (Sylvia Sidney) he loves. After making ten films in two years Cooper was exhausted and had lost thirty pounds. In May 1931, he sailed to Algiers and then Italy, where he lived for the next year. During his time abroad, Cooper stayed with the Countess Dorothy di Frasso who taught him about good food and vintage wines, how to read Italian and French menus in the finest restaurants, and how to socialize among Europe's nobility and upper classes. In 1932, a healthy Cooper returned to Hollywood and negotiated a new contract with Paramount for two films per year, a salary of $4,000 per week, and director and script approval. He appeared opposite Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932), the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. Critics praised his highly intense and at times emotional performance, and the film went on to become one of the year's most commercially successful films. The following year, Cooper appeared in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Design for Living (1933) with Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March, and based loosely on the successful Noël Coward play. Wikipedia: “The film received mixed reviews and did not do well at the box office, but Cooper's performance was singled out for its versatility and revealed his genuine ability to do light comedy”. Then, he appeared in his first of seven films by director Henry Hathaway, Now and Forever (1934), with Carole Lombard and Shirley Temple. The film was a box-office success. His next two Henry Hathaway films were the melodrama Peter Ibbetson (1935) with Ann Harding, about a man caught up in a dream world created by his love for a childhood sweetheart, and the romantic adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), about a daring British officer and his men who defend their stronghold at Bengal against rebellious local tribes. The latter was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Cooper's most popular and successful adventure films.

Gary Cooper returned to Poverty Row for the first time since his early silent film days to make Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936) with Jean Arthur for Columbia Pictures. Cooper plays the character of Longfellow Deeds, an innocent, sweet-natured writer of greeting cards who inherits a fortune, leaves behind his idyllic life in Vermont, and travels to New York where he faces a world of corruption and deceit. For his performance in Mr. Deeds, Cooper received his first Oscar nomination. In the adventure film The General Died at Dawn (Lewis Milestone, 1936) with Madeleine Carroll, he plays an American soldier of fortune in China who helps the peasants defend themselves against the oppression of a cruel warlord. Written by playwright Clifford Odets, the film was a critical and commercial success. In Cecil B. DeMille's sprawling frontier epic The Plainsman (1936) with Jean Arthur—his first of four films with the director—Cooper portrays Wild Bill Hickok in a highly-fictionalized version of the opening of the American western frontier. That year, Cooper appeared for the first time on the Motion Picture Herald exhibitor's poll of top ten film personalities, where he would remain for the next twenty-two years. In Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) with Claudette Colbert, Cooper plays a wealthy American businessman in France who falls in love with an impoverished aristocrat's daughter and persuades her to become his eighth wife. In the adventure film Beau Geste (William A. Wellman, 1939) with Ray Milland, he joined the French Foreign Legion to find adventure in the Sahara fighting local tribes. Wikipedia: “Beau Geste provided Cooper with magnificent sets, exotic settings, high-spirited action, and a role tailored to his personality and screen persona.” Cooper cemented his cowboy credentials in The Westerner (William Wyler, 1940). He won his first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1942 for his performance as Alvin York, the most decorated U.S. soldier from the Great War, in Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941). Cooper worked with Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943) which earned him his third Oscar nomination. The film was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway, with whom Cooper developed a strong friendship. On 23 October 1947, he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington, not under subpoena but responding to an invitation to give testimony on the alleged infiltration of Hollywood by communists. Although he never said he regretted having been a friendly witness, as an independent producer, he hired blacklisted actors and technicians. He did say he had never wanted to see anyone lose the right to work, regardless of what he had done. Cooper won his second Oscar for his performance as Marshal Will Kane in High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952), one of his finest roles and a kind of come-back after a series of flops. He continued to play the lead in films almost to the end of his life. His later box office hits included the influential Western Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954) in which he guns down villain Burt Lancaster in a showdown, William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956), in which he portrays a Quaker farmer during the American Civil War, Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Audrey Hepburn, and the hard-edged action Western Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958), with Lee J. Cobb. Cooper's final film was the British-American co-production The Naked Edge (Michael Anderson, 1961). In April 1960, Cooper underwent surgery for prostate cancer after it had metastasized to his colon. But by the end of the year the cancer had spread to his lungs and bones. On 13 May 1961, six days after his sixtieth birthday, Gary Cooper died. The young and handsome Cooper had affairs with Clara Bow, Lupe Velez, Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah Bankhead. In 1933, he married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. They had an ‘open’ marriage and Cooper also had relationships with the actresses Grace Kelly, Anita Ekberg, and Patricia Neal. Sir Cecil Beaton also claimed to have had an affair with him.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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British postcard by Photogravure. Photo: ATP Studios, London.

Lusty and loudmouthed Gracie Fields (1898-1979) was a British comedienne on stage and in films, and a singer in music halls. In the 1930s her working-class girl character was a top box office draw and Fields was the best paid actress in Britain, and later in America too.

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British postcard by Real Photogravure. Photo: Gaumont British.

Saucer-eyed, long-legged Jessie Matthews (1907-1981) was a gamine, graceful dancer, with a sweet, pure-toned singing voice, and waif-like sex appeal, who embodied 1930’s style. For most of the decade, she was the most popular musical star in England, and ranked on a par with Fred Astaire, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers. She was a favourite of Irving Berlin and Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, all of whom gave her some of their very best work. Her personal life was blighted by relationship breakdowns and her struggles against ill-health and insecurity.

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British postcard by Real Photogravure, London, no. 64. Photo: Warner Brothers / First National. Publicity still for The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934).

English stage and film actor, director, and producer Leslie Howard (1893 – 1943) is best-known for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939) . Other popular films were The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), and Intermezzo (1939). During the Second World War he was active in anti-Nazi propaganda. In 1943 his airliner was shot down, and this sparked modern conspiracy theories regarding his death.

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