In late 1950, March permanently left Mobile and purchased a Creole cottage on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was here that he composed his last two novels, "October Island" (1952) and "The Bad Seed" (1954). March viewed the latter novel as a meager accomplishment, but it gained the most praise and success of any of his novels, selling more than a million copies in one year, launching a long-running Broadway hit penned by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Maxwell Anderson and an eponymous 1956 movie directed by Mervyn LeRoy.