Oscar Profile #464: Joseph Schildkraut

Born March 22, 1896 in Vienna, Austria, Joseph Schildkraut was the son of famed stage actor Rudolph Schildkraut and his wife. On stage in Hamburg and later, Berlin with his father from the age of 6, he studied the piano and violin, graduating from Berlin’s Royal Academy of Music in 1911. The family moved to New York in 1912, where Rudolph was a star in the Yiddish theatre and Joseph was enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The family then returned to Europe where Joseph became a star under the guidance of mentor, of Albert Bassemann (Foreign Correspondent). He made his film debut in German films in 1915.

Returning to the States in 1920, Joseph became a Broadway star opposite Eve Le Gallienne in the title role of Liliom in 1921, the play that was later the basis for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel. That same year he made his Hollywood debut opposite Lillian and Dorothy Gish in D.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm. He married his first wife, actress Elise Bartlett in 1922. He then starred opposite Lillian Tashman in 1923’s The Song of Love,

Alternating between theatre and film with ease, Joseph was acclaimed for his portrayal of Judas Iscariot in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 epic, The King of Kings in which his father played Caiaphas, the High Priest of Israel. Rudolph Schildkraut, who died in 1930 at the age of 68, had his biggest screen role as the star of 1928’s A Ship Comes In for which his co-star Louise Dresser was one of the first Academy Award nominees for Best Actress. Joseph had his biggest role to date as the star of 1929’s Show Boat opposite Laura La Plante.

Schildkraut divorced Bartlett in 1930 and married second wife Lillian McKay in 1932. They would remain married until her death in 1962.

The actor gave memorable performances in such mid-1930s films as Viva Villa! , Cleopatra, The Crusades, The Garden of Allah, Souls at Sea and The Life of Emile Zola for which he won an Oscar.

Post-Oscar, Schildkraut continued to give memorable performances in such films as Marie Antoinette, Suez, Idiot’s Delight, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Rains Came, The Shop Around the Corner, Flame of Barbary Coast, The Cheaters and Monsieur Beaucaire. With his film career on the downslide, he became one of the first major stars to tackle television in 1949 where he was a familiar face for the next six years.

Schildkraut returned to Broadway as the sole marquee name in 1955’s The Diary of Anne Frank but was forced to share billing with Susan Strasberg who played the title role after she was nominated for a Tony. He made his return to film in the 1959 screen version in which he was second-billed to star Millie Perkins. He made one more film, 1960’s King of the Roaring Twenties, then returned to TV work, making just one more film, 1965’s The Greatest Story Ever Told which was released after his death.

Joseph Schildkraut died of a heart attack in his New York apartment on January 21, 1964 ten months after marrying third wife Leonora Rogers. He was 67.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

SHOW BOAT (1929), directed by Harry A. Pollard

Schildkraut was the screen’s first Gaylord Ravenal in the first film version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s immortal musical made less than two years after the show’s December 1927 opening. Filmed as a silent with the film’s score on the soundtrack, a prologue featuring several of the show’s original stars was added in which several songs were sung. Several scenes within the film were then given singing and dialogue. Schildkraut does not sing, but co-star Lura La Plante’s character does. The actress herself, though, is dubbed. Last seen on Laser Disc in the 1990s, this has been requested on DVD since its inception but remains unavailable.

THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937), directed by William Dieterle

The 1937 Oscar winner for Best Picture was an old-fashioned biopic of the kind they don’t make anymore. That’s not to say it wasn’t good. It was, with Paul Muni giving perhaps his best performance ever as the muckraking writer. The highlight of the film, though, isn’t on the author’s legendary writings but his defense of the falsely accused Alfred Dreyfus sympathetically played by Schildkraut who at this point in his career was better known for playing villains. Nominated for an Oscar, Schildkraut planned not to the attend the awards ceremony until it was revealed that he was the dark horse winner for Best Supporting Actor.

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940), directed by Ernst Lubitsch

In one of his best villainous roles, Schildkraut is properly odious as the junior clerk in the perfumery who is secretly seeing owner Frank Morgan’s wife while Morgan suspects that the culprit is head clerk James Stewart, firing him and promoting Schildkraut to his position. Margaret Sullavan is the new hire who unbeknownst to them both is Stewart’s secret pen-pal and true love. Remade as In the Good Old Summertime and You’ve Got Mail, this was also the basis for the Broadway musical She Loves Me for which Jack Cassidy won a Tony reprising Schildkraut’s role.

THE CHEATERS (1945), directed by Joseph Kane

One of the lesser known Christmas movies, this gem of a film should be shown every year along with It’s a Wonderful Life and the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol. Schildkraut,in a rare starring role, is a won on his luck actor who is taken in as a charity case for the holidays by wealthy connivers Billie Burke and Eugene Pallette who are out to cheat a long-forgotten actress out of an inheritance they feel should rightly have been left to their son. It is he who teaches them the real meaning of Christmas. Ona Munson as the actress, Raymond Walburn as an onerous relative and David Holt as the son co-star.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (1959), directed by George Stevens

Schildkraut’s best remembered performance was his portrayal of Otto Frank in both the 1955 Broadway version and Stevens’ meticulous 1959 film adaptation of the reenactment of his family’s hiding and eventual capture by the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Shelley Winters won an Oscar and Ed Wynn received an Oscar nomination for their portrayals of friends who hid with the family, but it is Schildkraut’s assured performance that is the film’s strength. His failure to secure a nomination was one of Oscar’s biggest mistakes. Perhaps if had been considered in support rather than lead he would have had a better chance.