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Frank De Kova

Frank De Kova

Actor · 1910 – 1981 · New York City, New York, USA

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.

Movies24

  • Movie7.8

    The Ten Commandments

    1956 · 1.9K votes

  • Movie6.4
  • Movie6.7

    The Mechanic

    1972 · 361 votes

  • Movie7.2

    The Man from Laramie

    1955 · 270 votes

  • Movie6.5

    The Brothers Karamazov

    1958 · 52 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Day of the Outlaw

    1959 · 114 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Those Calloways

    1964 · 32 votes

  • Movie5.9

    The Don Is Dead

    1973 · 32 votes

  • Movie6.6

    The Big Sky

    1952 · 104 votes

  • Movie7.1

    Kiss of Death

    1947 · 172 votes

  • Movie6.2

    The Lone Ranger

    1956 · 26 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Cowboy

    1958 · 74 votes

  • Movie6.9

    American Pop

    1981 · 129 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Follow That Dream

    1962 · 48 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Coonskin

    1975 · 151 votes

  • Movie6.0

    Machine-Gun Kelly

    1958 · 50 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Arrowhead

    1953 · 27 votes

  • Movie4.9

    Strange Lady in Town

    1955 · 9 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Run of the Arrow

    1957 · 58 votes

  • Movie5.1
  • Movie5.5

    Pillars of the Sky

    1956 · 17 votes

  • Movie6.1
  • Movie6.5

    Heavy Traffic

    1973 · 89 votes

  • Movie4.9

    Valley of the Kings

    1954 · 23 votes

Series24

  • TV7.0

    Maverick

    1957 · 43 votes

  • TV8.0
  • TV7.1

    The Rifleman

    1958 · 54 votes

  • TV7.6

    The Rockford Files

    1974 · 133 votes

  • TV6.2

    Love, American Style

    1969 · 21 votes

  • TV6.6

    Wagon Train

    1957 · 31 votes

  • TV7.2

    Hawaii Five-O

    1969 · 164 votes

  • TV7.0

    Daniel Boone

    1964 · 34 votes

  • TV7.8

    Alfred Hitchcock Presents

    1955 · 265 votes

  • TV6.7

    Cannon

    1971 · 41 votes

  • TV5.6

    The F.B.I.

    1965 · 25 votes

  • TV6.4

    Police Woman

    1974 · 33 votes

  • TV8.0

    The Untouchables

    1959 · 139 votes

  • TV7.2

    Rawhide

    1959 · 49 votes

  • TV7.2

    The Incredible Hulk

    1977 · 514 votes

  • TV6.2

    Cheyenne

    1955 · 26 votes

  • TV5.9

    Ben Casey

    1961 · 15 votes

  • TV6.7

    Route 66

    1960 · 20 votes

  • TV6.7

    Gunsmoke

    1955 · 119 votes

  • TV5.6

    Hawaiian Eye

    1959 · 10 votes

  • TV6.0

    Lawman

    1958 · 13 votes

  • TV6.5

    Baretta

    1975 · 42 votes

  • TV6.6

    Peter Gunn

    1958 · 26 votes

  • TV6.7

    Outlaws

    1960 · 3 votes