Frank De Kova
Acting
Born 1910-03-17
Died 1981-10-15
New York City, New York, USA
116 credits
Read biography
Frank DeKova parlayed a sinister scowl, piercing eyes and an all-around menacing attitude into a long career of playing cold-blooded trigger-men, rampaging Indian chiefs, brutal Mexican army officers and the like. So it would probably come as a shock to those who know his work to discover that, before he became an actor, he was--of all things--a schoolteacher.
Born in New York in 1910, DeKova gave up teaching for the stage, and played in many Shakespearean productions before getting work on Broadway. One of his first starring roles was in the classic detective play "Detective Story", which got him noticed and brought to Hollywood. He debuted in Viva Zapata! (1952) as the devious Mexican colonel who sets up Zapata's assassination. For the next several years he played an assortment of gangsters, killers, gunfighters and Indians--with time out to play a prehistoric patriarch in Roger Corman's campy Teenage Cave Man (1958)--and did much television work, including a standout job as a Mafia hit-man assigned to kill Elliot Ness in Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse: The Untouchables: Part 1 (1959). The role for which he will be most remembered, however, is probably the one that was his most atypical: the scheming, somewhat untrustworthy but very funny Hekawi Chief Wild Eagle, the partner to Forrest Tucker's Sgt. O'Rourke in O'Rourke's various schemes to make money, in the western comedy series F Troop (1965). He showed a previously unknown talent for comedy and managed to steal most of the scenes he was in from such veterans as Tucker and Larry Storch. He died in his sleep in 1981.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 116
Acting
40 credits
Little House on the Prairie
The Rifleman
Hawaii Five-O
Wagon Train
The Rockford Files
Cheyenne
Daniel Boone
Rawhide
Lawman
The Untouchables
Thriller
The F.B.I.
Police Woman
Gunsmoke
The High Chaparral
Hawaiian Eye
Laramie
77 Sunset Strip
Surfside 6
Kraft Suspense Theatre
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
The Rebel
The Detectives
The Deputy
F Troop
The Ten Commandments
Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse
It Takes a Thief
The Third Man
Black Saddle
Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Islanders
American Pop
The Walter Winchell File
Gunslinger
The Mechanic
The Californians
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Troubleshooters
Other credits
20 credits
Maverick
Love, American Style
The Incredible Hulk
Cannon
Peter Gunn
Ben Casey
Route 66
Baretta
Police Story
The Tall Man
Outlaws
The Alaskans
The Roaring 20's
Toma
Johnny Staccato
The Dakotas
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
The Lawless Years
The Gallant Men
Run, Joe, Run
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