Eduard Franz (born as Eduard Franz Schmidt, (October 31 1902, Milwaukee, Wisconsin - February 10 1983, Los Angeles, California) was an American actor of theater, film and television. Franz portrayed Ahab in the 1953 biblical film Sins of Jezebel.
He was a leading Broadway actor for nearly 20 years, in such plays as First Stop to Heaven and Embezzled Heaven, before making his film debut opposite John Wayne in Wake of the Red Witch in 1948. He played such intellectuals as Dr. Stern in The Thing (From Another Planet) or Justice Louis Brandeis in The Magnificent Yankee. In 1963, Franz was cast as psychiatric clinic director Dr. Edward Raymer on the weekly ABC TV drama Breaking Point.
Born in Milwaukee as Eduard Franz Schmidt, this stern-faced character actor had originally planned to be a commercial artist, but a stint with a local theatrical troupe set him on the road to an acting career. In 1925 he moved to New York City and joined up with a Greenwich Village theatrical group. He returned to Wisconsin in the early 1930s and rejoined his old theatrical company, The Wisconsin Players. He accepted a position with the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1944 and performed in many different operettas until 1947, when he headed to Hollywood. It didn't take him long to find work, and he was soon appearing in such films as Magnificent Yankee, The (1950) and Ten Commandments, The (1956), and even did a turn in an interesting low-budget horror flick, _Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, The (1960)_. All through his film career, however, he kept his hand in the theater, and also had an extensive list of television credits.
