Joseph Schildkraut

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Actor Born March 22, 1896 in Vienna, Austria

Joseph Schildkraut had a 60-year career that included hundreds of roles on screen and stage in both America and Europe.

His motion picture career began in director D. W. Griffith's "Orphans in the Storm," and he later won an Academy Award for his performance as Capt. Dreyfus in "The Life of Emile Zola."

The son of itinerant Romanian actor Rudolf Schildkraut, young Joseph learned his craft in front of European audiences.

Schildkraut also studied in the German theater under Max Reinhardt, in the Jewish theater of New York and on Broadway before joining the rush to Hollywood in 1923.

He scored triumphs in such New York plays as "Liliom," "The Firebrand," "Peer Gynt" and "Uncle Harry." He was rehearsing as a lead in the musical "Cafe Crown" at the time of his death.

Schildkraut created the role of Otto Frank in "The Diary of Anne Frank," which opened on Broadway, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the Critics Circle Award. The actor called this role the culmination and fulfillment of his years as an actor in his autobiography, "My Father and I."

— Los Angeles Times Jan. 22, 1964

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