Rudolph Schildkraut

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Rudolph Schildkraut
Rudolph Schildkraut in 1901
Born	(1862-04-27)27 April 1862 Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey)
Died	15 July 1930(1930-07-15) (aged 68) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Burial place	Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1885–1930 (his death)
Children	Joseph Schildkraut

Rudolph Schildkraut (27 April 1862 – 15 July 1930) was an Austrian film and theatre actor.

Life and career[]

Schildkraut was born in Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire to a Jewish family. His parents ran a hotel.^[1] He grew up in Brăila, Romania. In Vienna, he received acting lessons from Friedrich Mitterwurzer. He debuted in the early 1880s in Sopron; his first solid role came in 1885 in Krems.

In 1893, he moved to Vienna to an engagement at the newly opened Raimund Theater. In 1898, he moved to the Carl Theatre. Among other things, he played the character Wurm in Love and Intrigue. In 1900 he, came to the German Theatre in Hamburg, 1905 to the German Theatre in Berlin. There he became one of the most important actors in the theatre company of Max Reinhardt.^[2] His Shylock, which he played in 1905 and 1913, in Reinhardt's productions of The Merchant of Venice, was praised by Fritz Kortner as a "monument to the art of acting." Other major roles were the title role in King Lear (1908), Mephisto in Faust I (1909), Muley Hassan in Friedrich Schiller's Fiesco (1909), the grave-digger in Hamlet (1909), and Peter Bast in Knut Hamsun's From the Devil Fetched (1914). Schildkraut performed for the first time in the United States in 1910–1911.

Schildkraut was known as a film actor in the German Empire in the early silent era. He starred in several film dramas. His last European-made film was a biography of the German Zionism founder Theodor Herzl, in which he played Herb Schildt "The Struggling Israel." In 1920, he moved permanently to the United States and made his debut the same year in New York City in the play Silent Forces. From 1922, he also played in the English language. In 1925, he founded his own Jewish theatre in the Bronx.^[3]

In his last five years, he appeared in several Hollywood productions. His most notable film, which raised his profile in America, was The King of Kings by Cecil B. DeMille (1927), in which he played the High Priest Caiaphas.

He was married to Erna (Weinstein), with whom he had a son, Joseph Schildkraut (1896–1964), who also was an actor.^[3]

Schildkraut died at the age of 68 years of a heart attack^[4] while working at a film studio in Los Angeles. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. His son died at the same age, also of a heart attack.

Partial filmography[]

References[]

Further reading[]

• Joseph Schildkraut, My Father and I, as told to Leo Lania, New York 1959.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rudolph Schildkraut.

• Rudolph Schildkraut at IMDb