Fredric March (Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel)

He was born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine on August 31, 1897, attended Winslow Elementary and Racine High School (class of 1915), and lived at 1635 College Avenue. He was class president at Winslow, at Racine High, and later as a senior at Wisconsin. After a bank-teller job at Manufacturers National on the northwest corner of Fifth and Main, meant to cover tuition after his father John's setback, he made Wisconsin, served as an artillery lieutenant, and tried to be the banker his family understood. An emergency appendectomy in New York ended the experiment. On New Year's Day 1924 he took a shortened form of his mother Cora Brown Marcher's maiden name and became March, one d, on purpose.

Hollywood got a freelancer who would not stay under contract long enough to be owned. He won Best Actor for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 film, awarded in 1932), still the only Best Actor Oscar for playing a monster, in a tie with Wallace Beery, and again for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946 film, awarded in 1947). He won the first Tony for Best Actor in a Play for Years Ago in 1947, the same season as the second Oscar, then another Tony as James Tyrone in the original Long Day's Journey into Night. He singled out Best Years as his favorite film role and O'Neill's Tyrone as his favorite stage part.

The July 14, 1934, Racine Journal Times advertised Death Takes a Holiday as if the boy from College Avenue might still buy a ticket. He died in Los Angeles on April 14, 1975. Racine kept the directory listing and the house on College Avenue.