Bloodline to Star Power (i)

My father’s birth certificate reads “Milton Shildcrout.” His military record says “Milton P. Schildcrout” (he had no middle name; he made it up). When he changed his name in 1946 to “Shields,” the petition listed both “Shildkrout” and “Shildkraut.” His brother Abe used “Shildkrout” his sister Fay’s maiden name was “Schildkraut.” Who cares? I do. I want to know whether I’m related to Joseph Schildkraut, who played Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank and won an Academy Award in 1938 for his portrayal of Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola.

I grew up under the distinct impression that it was simply true—the actor was my father’s cousin—but now my father is considerably more equivocal: “There is the possibility that we’re related,” he’ll say, “but I wouldn’t know how to establish it.” Or: “Do I have definite proof that he was a cousin of ours? No.” Or: “My brother Jack bore a strong resemblance to him; he really did.” From a letter: “Are we really related, the two families? Can’t say for certain. What’s the legend I’ve fashioned over the years and what’s solid, indisputable fact? I don’t know.” “We could be related to the Rudolph/Joseph Schildkraut family—I honestly believe that.”

In 1923, when my father was 13, his father, Samuel, took him to a Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side to see Rudolph Schildkraut substitute for the legendary Jacob Adler in the lead role of a play called Der Vilder Mensch (The Wild Man). Rudolph was such a wild man: he hurtled himself, gripping a rope, from one side of the stage to the other. After the play, which was a benefit performance for my grandfather’s union—the International Ladies Garment Workers—my grandfather convinced the guard that he was related to Rudolph Schildkraut, and he and my father went backstage.

In a tiny dressing room, Rudolph removed his makeup and stage costume, and he and Samuel talked. According to my father, Rudolph said he was born in Romania, and later in his acting career he went to Vienna and Berlin. (“Schildkraut” is of German-Russian derivation. “Schild” means “shield” “kraut” means “cabbage.” We’re protectors and defenders of cabbage.) He and his wife and son, Joseph, came to New York around 1910, went back to Berlin a few years later, and then returned to the United States permanently in 1920. (Joseph Schildkraut’s 1959 memoir, My Father and I, confirms that these dates are correct, which only proves that my father probably consulted the book before telling me the story.) Samuel asked Rudolph whether he knew anything about his family’s antecedents—how and when they came to Austria. Rudolph said he knew little or nothing. His life as an actor took him to many places, and his life and interest were the theater and its people. The two men spoke in Yiddish for about 10 minutes; my father and grandfather left. What little my father couldn’t understand, my grandfather explained to him later.

“For weeks,” my father told me, “I regaled my friends and anybody who would listen that my father and I had visited the great star of the Austrian, German, and Yiddish theater in America—Rudolph Schildkraut. What’s more, I said, he was probably our cousin. Nothing in the conversation between my father and Rudolph Schildkraut would lead me or anybody else to come to that conclusion for a certainty, but I wanted to impress friends and neighbors and quickly added Rudolph and Joseph Schildkraut to our family. I said, ‘They’re probably second cousins.’ Some days I made them ‘first cousins.’ Rudolph Schildkraut—as you know, Dave—went on to Hollywood and had a brief but successful motion picture career. I told everybody he was a much better actor than his countryman Emil Jannings.”