Joseph Schildkraut

Biography: The son of celebrated Viennese stage star Rudolph Schildkraut, Joseph Schildkraut was groomed by his father for a musical career, and to that end he was enrolled in the Imperial Academy in Berlin. But the younger Schildkraut yearned for a life in the theater and signed for acting lessons with his father's principal rival, Albert Basserman. The boy made his screen debut in 1908's The Wandering Jew, six years before the elder Schildkraut deigned to appear before the cameras. When Rudolph Schildkraut inaugurated a tour of the U.S., Joseph went along, staying behind in New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included William Powell and Edward G. Robinson. He made his first stage appearance in Berlin, starring in Max Reinhardt's 1915 production of The Prodigal Son. Six years later he took Broadway by storm with his incisive portrayal of the titular anti-hero in Molnar's Liliom, co-starring with Eva Le Gallienne. His first American film wasThe son of celebrated Viennese stage star Rudolph Schildkraut, Joseph Schildkraut was groomed by his father for a musical career, and to that end he was enrolled in the Imperial Academy in Berlin. But the younger Schildkraut yearned for a life in the theater and signed for acting lessons with his father's principal rival, Albert Basserman. The boy made his screen debut in 1908's The Wandering Jew, six years before the elder Schildkraut deigned to appear before the cameras. When Rudolph Schildkraut inaugurated a tour of the U.S., Joseph went along, staying behind in New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included William Powell and Edward G. Robinson. He made his first stage appearance in Berlin, starring in Max Reinhardt's 1915 production of The Prodigal Son. Six years later he took Broadway by storm with his incisive portrayal of the titular anti-hero in Molnar's Liliom, co-starring with Eva Le Gallienne. His first American film was D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921), in which he played the first of many aristocratic dandies (albeit a sympathetic one). He went on to work in several Cecil B. DeMille productions, most memorably as Judas in The King of Kings (1927), and in 1926 co-starred with his father in the Bessie Love vehicle Young April. He made a smooth transition to talking pictures as gentleman gambler Gaylord Ravenal (Southern accent and all!) in the Universal part-talkie Show Boat (1929). Many of his Hollywood roles of the 1930s and 1940s were villainous in nature, with the spectacular exception of the persecuted Alfred Dreyfuss in The Life of Emile Zola, which won him an Academy Award. Throughout his film career he continued to take time off for Broadway appearances, the most successful of which was his interpretation of Otto Frank in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), a role he repeated in the 1959 film version. Also in 1959 he wrote his long-awaited autobiography, My Father and I. His dozens of television credits include his own 1954 anthology series and a brace of guest appearances on the Twilight Zone (1959). At the time of his death, Joseph Schildkraut was about to begin rehearsals for Café Crown, his first Broadway musical.… Expand