From Wikipedia:
March was born in Racine, Wisconsin, the son of Cora Brown Marcher (1863–1936), a schoolteacher from England,^[3] and John F. Bickel (1859–1941), a devout Presbyterian Church elder who worked in the wholesale hardware business.^[4] March attended the Winslow Elementary School (established in 1855), Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison,^{[citation needed]} where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi.^[5]

March served in the United States Army during World War I as an artillery lieutenant.

He began a career as a banker, but an emergency appendectomy caused him to re-evaluate his life, and in 1920, he began working as an “extra” in movies made in New York City, using a shortened form of his mother’s maiden name. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade, he signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures.^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredric_March

---