Francis Lederer Dies at 100
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Francis Lederer Dies at 100; Actor Known for Suave Roles
By TODD S. PURDUM
HOLLYWOOD, May 26 -- Francis Lederer, a Czech-born actor
whose dark good looks made him a suave, continental character in
films from the silent era through the 1950's and who continued to teach
weekly acting classes in Los Angeles until just a few weeks ago, died on
Thursday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 100.
Mr. Lederer's career spanned the century from "Pandora's Box," the
1929 German silent film in which Louise Brooks made a scandalous
splash as Lulu the prostitute, to the television series "Mission
Impossible"
and "Night Gallery," in which he played guest roles four decades later.
He also played assorted rogues, charmers, horror villains and a Nazi spy
opposing Edward G. Robinson in the 1939 Warner Brothers drama,
"Confessions of a Nazi Spy."
In "Midnight," Billy Wilder's 1939 comedy that starred Don Ameche and
Claudette Colbert, Mr. Lederer played a typical part: Jacques Picot, a
gigolo attached to Mary Astor. In its review at the time, Variety said
Mr.
Lederer was "aptly cast as the love pirate." With a slight accent and
silken air, he played a philandering actor who accidentally kisses Ida
Lupino in a darkened theater in "One Rainy Afternoon" (1936) and a
sinister valet who stalks Paulette Goddard in Jean Renoir's "Diary of a
Chambermaid" (1946).
Frantisek Lederer was born in Prague, which was then part of
Austria-Hungary.
He was an established stage actor in Europe by the 1920's, in
Shakespeare to Sir Noël Coward, in German, making his first big hit in
Berlin as Romeo opposite Elisabeth
Bergner's Juliet. He began making films, including "Pandora's Box,"
directed by G. W. Pabst, in which he was billed as Franz Lederer, and
played the son of a prominent man seduced by the doomed, amoral Lulu,
who is himself seduced by her as well.
"I absolutely adored her, she was a mysterious person, perfectly cast
for
that part," Mr. Lederer once said of Miss Brooks, who became a Jazz
Age icon of sexuality. "We couldn't talk. She didn't speak a word of
German. I didn't speak a word of English. We just looked at each other."
Mr. Lederer came to Broadway in 1932, to repeat his London stage
success in a play called "Autumn Crocus," and was soon being billed by
R.K.O Pictures as the "newest and most popular New York matinee
idol." He told reporters at the time that he was a confirmed bachelor
and
that "domesticity would kill me, yes kill me."
But in fact, as Louella Parsons reported some time later, he was already
married to Ada Nejedly, a European opera singer he later divorced. He
was then married to María Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado
Castilla y O'Donnell, the actress known as Margo, for three years,
before finally settling down in 1941 with the former Marion Irvine of
Toronto, who survives him.
The Lederers, who had no children, lived on a ranch in the San Fernando
Valley community Canoga Park, of which Mr. Lederer was honorary
mayor for more than 20 years before moving to Palm Springs after their
home was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. After his movie
career dwindled to forgettable roles like a vampire in "The Return of
Dracula" in 1958, he began an acting workshop that became the
American National Academy of Performing Arts in Los Angeles and
continued to teach a Tuesday night class there until a few weeks ago,
driving in from the desert.
"Francis always kept his hand in the theater," Mrs. Lederer said in a
telephone interview. In later years, he played the father in the
national
tour of "The Diary of Anne Frank," and appeared in other plays.
In 1998 he was featured in a television documentary about Brooks,
"Looking for Lulu."
A lifelong pacifist since his elder brother was killed in World War I,
Mr.
Lederer once told The Desert Sun of Palm Springs that he was most
proud of having formed an antiwar group, the World Peace Federation,
in 1934, to urge nations to "outlaw war by nationwide vote."
© 2000 The New York Times
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