Franz Schulz (born 22 March 1897 in Prague, Austria-Hungary, died 4 May 1971, in Muralto, Tessin, Switzerland) was a playwright and screenwriter who worked from 1920 through 1956.

Biography

Schulz was born into a wealthy family, and although the Jewish faith, religion played no role in the family. His father was a lawyer and a college friend of the writer Friedrich Adler. Lucia, one of his sisters, was the first wife of the painter László Moholy-Nagy.

As a high school student Schultz studied the works of Max Brod, Egon Erwin Kisch, Franz Kafka, Paul Leppin, and Franz Werfel. Schulz graduated in 1915 from the Charles University in Prague and entered the army shorty thereafter. After release from service, he went to Berlin where he worked from 1918 to 1920 as a journalist, until writing for film. His early screenplays were for crime and drama films, before he turned his attention to comedy. His first "talkie" was the 1930 film Die Drei von der Tankstelle, followed in 1931 by feature film screenplays for Die Privatsekretärin and Bomben auf Monte Carlo.

In 1933 Schulz emigrated to Prague. Forced out of the Germany film industry by the rise of The Third Reich, Schultz emigrated to England. In 1939, Schulz co-founded the 'Austrian Exile Theatre Laterndl' that attempted to preserve Viennese culture through performances of cabaret and stage plays until August 1945. The Laterndl became one of the "outstanding cultural achievements of German-speaking exile in London". In 1938-39 he worked with Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett to create the Mitchell Leisen comedy film Midnight. From 1940 on, and later as a naturalized US citizen, Shultz was officially Francis George Spencer. Upon the end of World War II emigrated to the United States where he continued work in film (and later television) as a screenwriter. Schulz later settled in Ascona, Switzerland and worked primarily as a playwright. His last feature film was the 1956 Fuhrmann Henschel, for which he adapted the 1898 Gerhart Hauptmann stage play of the same name for director Josef von Báky.

On May 4, 1971, six weeks after his 74th birthday, Shchulz died at Muralto, Tessin, Switzerland. He is interred at the Pambio-Naranco Jewish cemetery in Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland.