KLAN MARCH

The two sides of Fredric March.

When it comes to the great actors of the past, few compare with Fredric March. Star of stage, movies, radio, and television.  A long list of great screen performances -- Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Best Years of Our Lives, Death of a Salesman, Inherit the Wind, to name a few. The only person to have won two Oscars and two Tonys. Member of the Ku Klux Klan... Wait, what?

According to a University of Wisconsin "task force" assigned to "investigate" the school's past transgressions, Fredric March -- UW graduate, class of 1921 -- was indeed a member of a campus fraternal organization called Ku Klux Klan. Well, give them credit for being easy to understand. None of that Phi Gamma Gooma stuff for them.

Naturally, the faculty is going into overdrive putting things "in context" -- not so much to defend March but the school itself for allowing a Klan offshoot on campus.  UW archivist Joshua Ranger reminds us that Fredric March and his fellow fratbotys "weren't the same as the ones you hear about in the South that would terrorize people." I believe the phrase used in relation to such parsing is "cold comfort."

March and his wife Florence review their plans
to overthrow the government.

It should be noted that there's no evidence whatsoever that March continued to hold Klan beliefs after graduation. He was, in fact, a pro-Civil Rights political progressive who campaigned for Socialist writer Upton Sinclair in his 1934 run for governor of California. A decade later, March was one of many show business personalities who signed a petition condemning the House Un-American Activities Committee. By 1949, he and his wife really hit the political big time when the FBI officially declared them Communists. (Take a number.)

Walter Brennan shares some good
assassination news with John Wayne.

Compare March's CV to a 14-karat showbiz right-winger like three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan, who often made anti-Semitic remarks on the set of The Real McCoys, and was delighted by the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Or John Wayne, who said in a Playboy interview, "I believe in white supremacy, until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility." That was in 1971, three years after King's death.

But forget those guys. You want to know what a real racist anti-Semite is? Only months after the end of World War II, Broadway star Frank Fay was celebrated at Madison Square Garden by the Klan and the American Nazi Party, an honor Mel Gibson yearns for today.

The University of Wisconsin says
aloha to Fredric March.

So what gives with Fredric March's frat years? Well, what everybody seems to forget is that college isn't just where you go to get some smarts. It's also where you can get away with stupid things for four years, or try out some outré opinions for size before waking up on graduation day. I wish I had a buck for every white college kid today who says something like, Black conservatives -- they shouldn't be allowed on campus, ever. 

Or, perhaps in Fredric March's case, I believe in white supremacy, until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. Because in 1921, the Klan was more popular than Facebook is right now. And within a few years of graduating, March was more "woke" than a millennial jacked-up on Red Bull.  

But due to a stupid thing he did almost a century ago, students want to rename UW's Fredric March Theater. Considering that nobody attending the school in the last 40 years ever heard of him, they wouldn't consider it a loss. Who cares about a racist who was in black & white movies? Let's watch Braveheart again. Mel Gibson's such a badass!     

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