Actress Florence Eldridge Dies

SANTA BARBARA — Florence Eldridge, a Broadway and film star and the widow of Oscar-winning actor Fredric March, has died at age 86, it was learned today.

Eldridge, of Montecito, died Monday in the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital, a nursing supervisor said. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Eldridge played the role of Daisy in the Broadway version of “The Great Gatsby.” She married March in 1927, and appeared with him in such movies as “Studio Murder Mystery,” “Les Miserables” and “Another Part of the Forest” as well as on stage in “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Arthur Miller’s “An Enemy of the People” and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” March died of cancer in 1975 at the age of 77.