Joseph Schildkraut

Joseph Schildkraut (March 22, 1896 – January 21, 1964) was an Austrian-American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than four decades. Born in Vienna, Austria, he was the son of Erna (née Weinstein) and Rudolph Schildkraut, a stage and motion picture actor. His family was Jewish. In 1910, Schildkraut accompanied his father on a tour to the United States, returning to Europe in 1913, where he undertook stage training under Max Reinhardt in Berlin and began performing on the stages of Germany and Austria. He relocated permanently to the United States in 1920.

Schildkraut made his mark on Broadway beginning in 1921, when he played the title role in the first American stage production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, the play that would later serve as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. His Broadway career extended through 1955 and included appearances in Love's Labor Lost, The Cherry Orchard, The Green Bay Tree, and Uncle Harry. He also starred in a notable production of Peer Gynt. Among his most significant stage achievements was originating the role of Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank, a drama he performed on Broadway.

His film career began in the silent era, with an early notable role as the Chevalier de Vaudrey in D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm alongside Lillian Gish. He subsequently appeared as Judas Iscariot in Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 epic The King of Kings, in which his father Rudolph also appeared. In 1929, he portrayed a Viennese-accented, non-singing Gaylord Ravenal in the part-talkie film adaptation of Edna Ferber's Show Boat. Schildkraut received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola in 1937. Further film roles of note included the duc d'Orléans in Marie Antoinette (1938), the villainous Nicolas Fouquet in The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), and a villainous turn in Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940). He reprised the role of Otto Frank in the 1959 film version of The Diary of Anne Frank, earning a Golden Globe nomination for that performance.

Schildkraut was also active in early television. He played Claudius opposite Maurice Evans in a 1953 Hallmark Hall of Fame production of Hamlet and hosted and starred in Joseph Schildkraut Presents, a short-lived series on the DuMont Television Network that ran from October 1953 to January 1954. He appeared twice on The Twilight Zone during its third season, first in the episode "Deaths-Head Revisited" in 1961 and later in "The Trade-Ins." In 1962, he guest-starred as Rabbi Gottlieb in an episode of Sam Benedict, a performance for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Schildkraut was married three times. His first marriage, to actress Elise Bartlett in 1923, ended in divorce in 1931. He was married to Mary McKay from 1932 until her death on February 17, 1962. In 1963, he married Leonora Rogers, who survived him. He died of a heart attack at his home in New York City on January 21, 1964. For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Schildkraut has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6780 Hollywood Boulevard, and he is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.