Scope and Content Note
The four scrapbooks that comprise this collection document the personal and professional lives of Rudolph Schildkraut (1862-1930) and his son, Joseph (1895-1964). Joseph Schildkraut’s third wife, Leonora, compiled the volumes as a gift for her husband. The scrapbooks are numbered II-V; there is no volume I. The volumes contain photographs, clippings, programs, iconography, and sheet music.
Photographic material comprises the bulk of the contents. There are many family portraits of Rudolph alone and with his wife, Erna Weinstein, and Joseph as a child; the Weinstein and Schildkraut families; and the adult Joseph and his wives Elise Bartlett, Mary McKay Schildkraut and Leonora Rogers Schildkraut, as well as a succession of family chihuahuas. Friends and colleagues represented include: David Belasco, Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, Bob Hope, Gyula Hegedus, Al Jolson, Eva Le Gallienne, Peter Lorre, Alexander Moissi, Ferenc Molnár, Fritz Reiner, Edward Sloman, and Erich von Stroheim. Other figures represented are Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), Otto Frank, Carl Sandburg, and Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria. Most of these images are inscribed to either Rudolph or Joseph.
Publicity photographs and production stills document Rudolph and Joseph’s acting careers. Scenes from stage productions, including King Lear, (Rudolph) and Liliom, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Young Fritz, (Joseph), and films His People, (Rudolph), and The Diary of Anne Frank, King of Kings, The Life of Emile Zola, Marie Antoinette, Orphans of the Storm, and Show Boat, (Joseph) are depicted. There are also images created during make-up and costume tests.
The photographic materials are supplemented by newspaper clippings containing performance reviews and publicity pieces; programs from The Diary of Anne Frank, Liliom, Marie Antoinette, Orphans of the Storm, and Show Boat; sheet music for the Thieves’ Song fromLiliom and Down South from Show Boat; and iconography of both men in the form of pencil sketches, silhouettes, and caricatures, as well as a charcoal drawing and a lithograph.