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Francis Lederer (November 6, 1899 – May 25, 2000) was a Czech-born film and stage actor with a successful career, first in Europe, then in the United States. His original name was FrantiÅ¡ek Lederer. Lederer’s 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 Thalberg’s 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 Leisen’s 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 Lederer’s 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 Play’s the Thing (1942), A Doll’s 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 Renoir’s 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 Ambassador’s 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 Serling’s Night Gallery called “The Devil Is Not Mocked”. In it, he reprised his role as Dracula from The Return of Dracula.
Francis Lederer Biography / Wiki
| Name | Francis Lederer |
| Also Know | Franz Lederer, František Lederer |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic] |
| Date of Birth | 1899-11-06 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 100 |
| Deathday | 2000-05-25 |
Francis Lederer Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Voice in the Wind | Jan Volny / El Hombre | 1944-03-03 | Former concert pianist, victim of Nazi torture, pursues a confused, melancholic existence on the island of Guadalupe…. |
| The Madonna’s Secret | James Harlan Corbin | 1946-02-16 | This drama is an updated version of Ulmer’s 1944 film Bluebeard. It is set in New York and follows the exploits of an eccentric Parisian painter who h… |
| The Return of Dracula | Count Dracula | 1958-04-01 | After a vampire leaves his native Balkans, he murders a Czech artist, assumes his identity, and moves in with the dead man’s American cousins…. |
| The Gay Deception | Sandro | 1935-09-13 | Mirabel wins a $5,000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she… |
| Terror Is a Man | Dr. Charles Girard | 1959-11-01 | A mad scientist transforms a panther into a man-like creature that escapes and goes on a murderous rampage…. |
| The Lone Wolf in Paris | Michael Lanyard | 1938-05-25 | Former jewel thief Michael Lanyard (Francis Lederer) toys with a princess (Frances Drake) and a grand duke (Walter Kingsford)…. |
| The Pursuit of Happiness | Max Christmann | 1934-09-27 | Lederer is a Hessian soldier who defects to the Americans during the Revolutionary War.He falls in love with a Yankee girl, but a thuggish local milit… |
| My American Wife | Count Ferdinand von und zu Reidenach | 1936-08-06 | Ann Sothern essays the title role in My American Wife. The story opens in Smelter City, Arizona, where the richest man in town is grizzled old Indian … |
| One Rainy Afternoon | Philippe Martin | 1936-05-13 | Suave French actor Philippe Martin provokes a scandal when, in a darkened theater, he mistakes young Monique for his mistress, Yvonne, and tries to ki… |
| Romance in Manhattan | Karel Novak | 1935-01-11 | Karel Novak is an incredibly naive Czech immigrant who is taken under the wing of streetwise New York chorus girl Sylvia. With the help of lovable cop… |
| Man of Two Worlds | Aigo | 1934-01-13 | A British explorer brings an Eskimo hunter to London, where he misreads a woman…. |
| Confessions of a Nazi Spy | Kurt Schneider | 1939-05-06 | FBI agent Ed Renard investigates the pre-War espionage activities of the German-American Bund…. |
| Mother Hummingbird | Georges de Chambry | 1929-10-23 | A neglected Baroness falls in love with her oldest son’s military officer friend, their adulterous romance leading the two to flee to Algeria…. |
| The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna | Lt. Michael Rostof | 1929-04-15 | This silent-screen classic, like many others produced near the end of the silent era, was both a theatrical extravaganza boasting an original orchestr… |
| The Man I Married | Eric Hoffman | 1940-08-09 | An American (Joan Bennett) vacations in Europe with her husband (Francis Lederer) and watches him turn into a Nazi…. |
| It’s All Yours | Jimmy Barnes | 1937-09-01 | Jimmy Barnes arrives from Europe to be educated by his multi-millionaire uncle, Edward J. Barnes and in five years the extravagant escapes of Jimmy, n… |
| Her Majesty Love | Fred von Wellingen | 1933-02-06 | Fred von Wellingen is a wealthy industrialist, part of a large family-owned corporation. Fred has fallen for Lia, a comely bartender in the Berlin Cab… |
| Die seltsame Nacht der Helga Wangen | Werner Hilsoe | 1928-10-15 | … |
| Das Schicksal der Renate Langen | Gerd | 1931-02-11 | … |
| Refuge | Martin Falkhagen | 1928-08-03 | After eight years in exile Martin returns to Berlin. He was involved in the German Revolution of 1918/1919 and had to leave the country as a result. I… |
| Pandora’s Box | Alwa Schön | 1929-01-30 | Lulu is a young woman so beautiful and alluring that few can resist her siren charms. The men drawn into her web include respectable newspaper publish… |
| Stolen Identity | Claude Manelli | 1953-01-01 | A jealous musician kills his wife and frames a cab driver…. |
| Million Dollar Weekend | Alan Marker | 1948-10-29 | A stock broker embezzles a million bucks and plans to take off to Shanghai. A number of obstacles stands in his path, however…. |
| The Bridge of San Luis Rey | Esteban / Manuel | 1944-02-11 | A rope bridge over a gorge in the Peruvian Andes snaps, sending five people plunging to their deaths. A priest sets out to find out more about the lif… |
| Captain Carey, U.S.A. | Baron Rocco de Greffi | 1950-02-21 | Near the end of World War II, a secret American raid on an enemy transportation hub goes very wrong when a turncoat warns the enemy. Led by Capt. Webs… |
| Puddin’ Head | Prince Karl | 1941-06-25 | On the day that United Broadcasting System’s new building is dedicated, bumbling vice-president Harold L. Montgomery, Sr. discovers that he gave the w… |
| Midnight | Jacques Picot | 1939-03-24 | An unemployed showgirl poses as Hungarian royalty to infiltrate Parisian society…. |
| The Diary of a Chambermaid | Joseph | 1946-02-15 | Celestine, the chamber-maid, has a new job in the country, at the Lanlaires. She has decided to use her beauty to seduce a wealthy man, but Mr. Lanlai… |
| Maracaibo | Miguel Orlando | 1958-05-21 | A firefighter is sent to Venezuela to battle a blazing oil well but still finds time for romance…. |
| Lisbon | Seraphim | 1956-08-17 | For Capt. Robert John Evans, smuggling black-market goods is nothing out of the ordinary. But one day he’s hired by Aristides Mavros for a more involv… |
| Surrender | Henry Vaan | 1950-09-15 | Violet Barton, a femme-fatale goal-setter, fascinates men and readily returns their affection to obtain the wealth she desires, even to the point of b… |
| Meineid | 1929-04-26 | … | |
| A Woman of Distinction | Paul Simone | 1950-03-16 | Ice-cold college dean Susan Middlecott feels there’s no room in her life for romance. Enter Prof. Alec Stevenson, British lecturer on astronomy, touri… |
| The Ambassador’s Daughter | Prince Nicholas Obelski | 1956-07-26 | While on leave in Paris, a G.I. pursues an ambassador’s daughter. Meanwhile she’s out to prove to her father that soldiers can be gentlemen, too…. |
| Der Detektiv des Kaisers | Dr. Wolfgang Crusius | 1930-04-22 | … |
| The Other Eye | Self | 1991-09-25 | This film essay explores the strange case of G.W. Pabst, the Austrian filmmaker who was considered a giant of early cinema before his reputation went … |
| A Century of Science Fiction | 1996-01-01 | American Documentary, narrated by Christopher Lee… | |
| Adventures in Vienna | Claude Manelli | 1952-08-20 | Taking place over 12 hours on New Years Eve, a concert pianist murders his wife’s lover, then frames an innocent man…. |
| Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture | 1976-10-07 | The film tells the cultural story of Berlin during the Weimar Republic through interviews with a number of persons who were involved in literature, fi… | |
| 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year | 2009-07-02 | This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood’s greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special…. | |
| The Great Longing | Himself | 1930-08-24 | During lunch break at the movie studio, the extras rush to the canteen Hans Adalbert Schlettow, Maria Paudler and Luis Trenker are chatting. Eva von L… |
| Starlit Days at the Lido | Self | 1935-09-28 | Basically this is a commercial for Hollywood’s Lido Lounge and for MGM contract players. The Lido is a large watering hole; we visit one afternoon wit… |
Francis Lederer Directing Movies
| Movie Name | Job | Release Date | Overview |
| Director | 77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, … | ||
Credit: TMDB
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