Joseph Schildkraut was born in Austria to a Jewish family and moved to the USA in 1920 where he started to appear in silent films. He then continued to work in sound films as well as on the Broadway stage. He won an Oscar for his role in The Life of Emile Zola. The bulk of his film career was in the 1930's and 1940's. In the 1950's and 1960's he appeared in a number of television episodes.
