Joseph Wiseman was born on May 15, 1918 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He came to Broadway in the 1930s, where he was critically hailed for performances in Shakespeare's "King Lear", Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya". Motion pictures in which Wiseman has been seen include Detective Story, starring Kirk Douglas, Viva Zapata! with Marlon Brando, The Garment Jungle, The Night They Raided Minsky's, The Valachi Papers and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz which brought him back to his native Canada for a co-starring role with Richard Dreyfuss.
He and actor Roger De Koven both appeared in the same two Broadway plays about "Joan of Arc" - Maxwell Anderson's "Joan of Lorraine" and Jean Anouilh's "The Lark" - but neither actor played the same role in the two plays.