Eduard Franz

Eduard Franz was an American actor born Eduard Franz Schmidt on October 31, 1902, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He died on February 10, 1983. Over the course of his career he worked extensively in theatre, film, and television, with a Broadway presence spanning from 1928 to 1969.

Franz's path to acting began at the University of Wisconsin, where he enrolled with the intention of becoming a commercial artist. There he joined the Wisconsin Players Theater, a student group, and participated in its 1922–1923 season. That experience redirected his ambitions toward acting. He subsequently appeared in Chicago productions with the Coffee-Miller Players, then dropped his surname Schmidt and joined the Provincetown Players in New York's Greenwich Village, a company that had previously introduced the work of Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to audiences. During this period he appeared alongside Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones and with Walter Huston in Desire Under the Elms.

The Great Depression interrupted his stage career. He and his wife Margaret attempted to sustain themselves by raising chickens in Texas before returning to Wisconsin, where Franz taught art while continuing to act in regional theatre. By 1936 he was performing on a national scale, and he went on to become a leading Broadway actor for close to three decades. His Broadway credits include The Big Two, The Egghead, Those That Play the Clowns, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Conversation at Midnight, among other productions. The last of these, Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetic drama, had its world premiere in Los Angeles in 1961, with Franz co-starring alongside James Coburn and Jack Albertson in a production by Worley Thorne in association with Susan Davis. Franz reprised his role in that same play at Broadway's Billy Rose Theatre in 1964, in a production mounted by the same producers.

Franz made his film debut in a small part in the 1947 picture Killer at Large, then took a more substantial role the following year in The Scar, also released as Hollow Triumph. Also in 1948, he appeared with John Wayne in Wake of the Red Witch. His film work encompassed a range of genres and character types. He portrayed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in The Magnificent Yankee in 1950, a role he returned to in a 1965 television adaptation. He played Dr. Stern in The Thing from Another World in 1951 and opera impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza in The Great Caruso. In biblical films he took the role of King Ahab in the 1953 production Sins of Jezebel, Jethro in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments in 1956, and Jehoam in Henry Koster's The Story of Ruth in 1960. He also appeared as Chief Broken Hand in White Feather and as a university professor in The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake in 1959.

Franz played the role of the aging synagogue cantor in two separate remakes of the 1927 Al Jolson film The Jazz Singer. The first was the 1952 version starring Danny Thomas, and the second was the 1959 television adaptation starring Jerry Lewis. In both productions the cantor is a father distressed by his son's choice to pursue a secular entertainment career rather than carry on the family's religious tradition.

His television work was extensive. In 1956 he appeared in the Gunsmoke episode "Indian Scout," playing a cavalry scout named Amos Cartwight who leads troops into a Comanche ambush, and that same year he guest-starred with Joan Fontaine in "The De Santre Story" on the NBC anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show. In 1957 he appeared in a television adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel Beyond This Place, directed by Sidney Lumet. Beginning in 1958 he was cast in the second season of Zorro as Señor Gregorio Verdugo. In 1960 he guest-starred as Jules Silberg in the episode "The Test" on CBS's The DuPont Show with June Allyson. The following year he appeared in the Have Gun – Will Travel episode "The Duke of Texas" and guest-starred as Gustave Helmer in an episode of the ABC legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones, which starred James Whitmore. He also appeared on NBC's The Barbara Stanwyck Show and on the NBC Western Cimarron City. From 1963 into 1964 he was cast as psychiatric clinic director Dr. Edward Raymer in 30 episodes of the ABC medical drama Breaking Point, opposite co-star Paul Richards.

Franz's final film appearance came in a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1983. He died in February of that year, five months before the film was released.