Francis Lederer

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Francis Lederer November 6 1899 May 25 2000 was a Czechborn film and stage actor with a successful career first in Europe then in the United States His original name was František Lederer Lederers first American movies were Man of Two Worlds 1934 Romance in Manhattan 1934 with Ginger Rogers The Gay Deception 1935 with Frances Dee and One Rainy Afternoon 1936 He was cast as the lead with Katharine Hepburn in the 1935 film Break of Hearts but the producers replaced him with Charles Boyer It was Irving Thalbergs plan to make Lederer the biggest star in Hollywood but the death of Thalberg ended this possibility Although he continued to play leads occasionally notably when he was a playboy in Mitchell Leisens Midnight with Claudette Colbert and John Barrymore in 1939 in the late 1930s Lederer began to expand his character parts even playing villains Edward G Robinson praised Lederers performance as a German American Bundist in Confessions of a Nazi Spy in 1939 and he earned plaudits for his portrayal of a fascist in The Man I Married 1940 with Joan Bennett He also played Count Dracula for The Return of Dracula in 1958 Throughout his career Lederer who studied with Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio in New York City continued to take stage acting seriously and he performed often both in New York and elsewhere He appeared in stage productions of Golden Boy 1937 Seventh Heaven 1939 No Time for Comedy 1939 in which he replaced Laurence Olivier The Plays the Thing 1942 A Dolls House 1944 Arms and the Man 1950 The Sleeping Prince 1956 and The Diary of Anne Frank 1958 Although he took a break from making films in 1941 in order to concentrate on his stage work he returned to the silver screen in 1944 appearing in Voice in the Wind and The Bridge of San Luis Rey and in films such as Jean Renoirs The Diary of a Chambermaid 1946 and Million Dollar Weekend 1948 He took another break from Hollywood in 1950 after making Surrender 1950 and returned in 1956 with Lisbon and the light comedy The Ambassadors Daughter His final film appearance was in Terror Is a Man in 1959 During the 1950s he served as honorary mayor of Canoga Park He would continue to make television appearances for the next 10 years in such shows as Sally The Untouchables Ben Casey Blue Light Mission Impossible and That Girl His final television appearance occurred in a 1971 episode of Rod Serlings Night Gallery called The Devil Is Not Mocked In it he reprised his role as Dracula from The Return of Dracula