Frank De Kova
Birth : 1910-03-17, New York, USA
Death : 1981-10-15
History
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.
Old Vinnie (voice)
An outrageous, affectionate look at coming of age in the Eisenhower era in Brooklyn.
Crisco (voice)
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
Rupolo
A Mafia don concocts a scheme to convince several Mobsters to meet abroad a bomb strapped yacht. There, they encounter a crew of gay men (including a man (played by Jackie Gayle) who's seizures make him believe he's the Captain) and an eager female crew member who mistaken them for movie producers.
Rachid Khan
A young man returns to his rich family's estate after a stay in a mental hospital. He finds that his father has married his deceased wife's nurse, who is secretly plotting with her lover
Managan (voice) / Ruby (voice)
Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox rise to the top of the crime ranks in Harlem by going up against a con-man, a racist cop, and the Mafia.
White Eagle
An American Indian war veteran avenges the hanging of his grandfather by local thugs.
Big Tony (as Frank deKova)
In 1950s Harlem a vicious Italian gangster (Frank deKova) tries to muscle in on a black racketeer's (Paul Harris) numbers game.
Giunta
After his mistress is murdered, a Mafia leader goes after the killer with a bloody vengeance. Soon after the hunt begins, a gang war ensues.
Capiello
Rival prison factions surround a Los Angeles convict who has $1.5 million stashed on the outside.
Angelo "Angie" Corleone
An "underground" cartoonist contends with life in the inner city, where various unsavory characters serve as inspiration for his artwork.
The Man
Arthur Bishop is a veteran hit man who, owing to his penchant for making his targets' deaths seem like accidents, thinks himself an artist. It's made him very rich, but as he hits middle age, he's so depressed and lonely that he takes on one of his victim's sons, Steve McKenna, as his apprentice. Arthur puts him through a rigorous training period and brings him on several hits. As Steven improves, Arthur worries that he'll discover who killed his father.
Two Dog
Uprooted from their comfortable home in Pennsylvania, James and Kate Tanner, along with their sons, Virgil and Andy, journey to the wild country of 1890s Wyoming to become farmers. Soon, they come face-to-face with tornadoes, bears and wolves. But through the hardships their love for each other endures, even when a local rancher sees the newcomers as "squatters" on his land, and will stop at nothing – including murder – to drive them out.
Narrator (voice)
Eagles are the channel to the spirit world for a Hopi Indian boy who defies tribal law and frees a sacred, sacrificial eagle. He is banished from his village to the wilderness, but the eagle teaches him hunting skills and cares for him. He eventually returns, only to be bullied and taunted by the other village boys.
The tormentor
From his birth in Bethlehem to his death and eventual resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ is given the all-star treatment in this epic retelling. Major aspects of Christ's life are touched upon, including the execution of all the newborn males in Egypt by King Herod; Christ's baptism by John the Baptist; and the betrayal by Judas after the Last Supper that eventually leads to Christ's crucifixion and miraculous return.
Nigosh
Story of Cam Calloway and his family, who live in a densely wooded area in New England. Cam dreams of building a sanctuary for the geese that fly over the area each year, and he tries several schemes to buy a nearby lake for this santuary. He is thwarted at every attempt, it seems; he and his son try to get enough furs from their trapping venture to get the money, but the bottom falls out of the fur market. He uses the little money they get for a down payment on the lake, thereby losing their house when he can't make the mortgage payment. They move to the lake, where their friends help them build a cabin. A salesman stops in town, and tries to get the people to sell their land for a tourist venture; Cam is outraged at his tactics and takes desperate measures after he himself is tricked.
Jack (as Frank de Kova)
When the Kwimper family car runs out of fuel on a new Florida highway and an officious state supervisor tries to run them off, Pop Kwimper digs in his heels and decides to do a little homesteading. He and his son Toby and their 'adopted' children—Holly, Ariadne, and the twins—start their own little community along a strip of the roadside.
Sonoy the Astrologer
A Greek Fisherman brings an Atlantean Princess back to her homeland which is the mythical city of Atlantis. He is enslaved for his trouble. The King is being manipulated by an evil sorcerer who is bent on using a natural resource of Atlantis to take over the world. The Atlanteans, or rather the slaves of Atlantis, are forced to mine a crystalline material which absorbs the suns rays. These crystals can then be used for warmth. The misuse of science has created weapons out of the crystals that can fire a heat ray to destroy whatever it touches.
Syndicate Chairman
Jack Diamond and his sickly brother arrive in prohibition New York as jewelry thieves. After a spell in jail, the coldly ambitious Diamond hits on the idea of stealing from thieves himself and sets about getting close to gangster boss Arnold Rothstein to move in on his booze, girls, gambling, and drugs operations.
Evans
Before the U.S. Civil War rebel leader Luke Darcy sees himself as leader of a new independent Republic of Kansas but the military governor sends an ex-raider to capture Darcy.
Denver, Bruhn's Gang
Blaise Starrett is a rancher at odds with homesteaders when outlaws hold up the small town. The outlaws are held in check only by their notorious leader, but he is diagnosed with a fatal wound and the town is a powder keg waiting to blow.
Lugo (as Frank deKova)
Logan Cates sets out to rescue a white woman captured by Apache Indians and prevent a war. On the way he is joined by a few civilians and a small band of soldiers at a water hole. They are ambushed and laid siege to by Apache. As their food and water supplies dwindle a storm arrives which enables Cates to put an escape plan into action.
The Black-Bearded One
Roger Corman's post-holocaust quickie about an adolescent tribesman who dares to explore the feared "forbidden zone."
Harry
George Kelly is angry at the world and scared to death of dying. A career bank robber, Kelly gets his confidence from his Thompson SMG and his girl Flo. After a botched robbery, Flo, Kelly and his gang try their hand at a more lucrative job: kidnapping.
Capt. Vrublevski
Ryevsk, Russia, 1870. Tensions abound in the Karamazov family. Fyodor is a wealthy libertine who holds his purse strings tightly. His four grown sons include Dmitri, the eldest, an elegant officer, always broke and at odds with his father, betrothed to Katya, herself lovely and rich. The other brothers include a sterile aesthete, a factotum who is a bastard, and a monk. Family tensions erupt when Dmitri falls in love with one of his father's mistresses, the coquette Grushenka. Two brothers see Dmitri's jealousy of their father as an opportunity to inherit sooner. Acts of violence lead to the story's conclusion: trials of honor, conscience, forgiveness, and redemption.
Alcaide
Chicago hotel clerk Frank Harris dreams of life as a cowboy, and he gets his chance when, jilted by the father of the woman he loves, he joins Tom Reece and his cattle-driving outfit. Soon, though, the tenderfoot finds out life on the range is neither what he expected nor what he's been looking for...
Chief Yellow Wolf
When an Indian chief is murdered in a hateful town, a sympathizing ex marshal tries to stop the Indians from attacking for revenge.
Red Cloud (as Frank De Kova)
When the South loses the war, Confederate veteran O'Meara goes West, joins the Sioux, takes a wife and refuses to be an American but he must choose a side when the Sioux go to war against the U.S. Army.
Dutch Hayden
George Nader plays a reporter whose career is ruined by liquor. A comeback opportunity presents itself when Nader is a bystander at the arrest of a well-known criminal.
Egyptian Official
A short film by the United Jewish Appeal, directed by David Lowell Rich and starring Guy Madison, Felicia Farr and Agnes Moorehead, made by the core crew of many Columbia noirs, including cinematographer Burnett Guffey, art director Cary Odell, editor Al Clark, set decorator Frank Tuttle, and composer Morris Stoloff.
Charlie Washackle
New ranch owner Frank Madden, half Indian but posing as white, arrives just as an all white jury finds the three white Shipley brothers who lynched three Indians innocent. There is soon trouble between Frank and the Shipleys who are using Frank's land to graze their cattle. When the brother of one of the Indian victims kills a Shipley, Frank is accused and put in jail. The Shipleys then organize a lynch mob and head for the jail.
Yellow Elk
A Swedish settler (David Brian) starts a war when he tries to drive Dakotas off their Wyoming reservation.
Abiram
Escaping death, a Hebrew infant is raised in a royal household to become a prince. Upon discovery of his true heritage, Moses embarks on a personal quest to reclaim his destiny as the leader and liberator of the Hebrew people.
Zachariah
First Sergeant Emmett Bell faces off with Apache chieftain Kamiakin in this nuanced portrayal of racial tensions between Native Americans and white settlers in 1860s Oregon Country.
Jingo
Two American gun runners at odds with each other and looking to sell guns to the rebels during the Cuban War of Independence navigate a boat to Cuba. Along for the ride is a beautiful Cuban rebel in who both men are interested.
Chief Red Hawk
The territorial governor asks the Lone Ranger to investigate mysterious raids on settlers by Indians who ride with saddles. Wealthy rancher Reese Kilgore wants to mine silver on Spirit Mountain which is sacred to the Indians.
Prof. Claude Dillon
A greasy spoon diner provides a base for a spy smuggling nuclear secrets.
Priest
Suicidal hooker Cleo Moore agrees to spend the night with condemned prisoner John Agar in this Hugo Haas film noir.
Padre
Will Lockhart arrives in Coronado, an isolated town in New Mexico, in search of someone who sells rifles to the Apache tribe, finding himself unwillingly drawn into the convoluted life of a local ranching family whose members seem to have a lot to hide.
Anse Hatlo
There's a new doctor in old Santa Fe, and it's Greer Garson. Director Mervyn LeRoy's 1955 western also stars Dana Andrews, Cameron Mitchell, Lois Smith, Walter Hampden, Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Earl Holliman, Adele Jergens, Robert Wilke, Frank DeKova, Nick Adams, Douglas Kennedy, Ralph Moody and Louise Lorimer.
Isatai
Dr. Allen Seward is assigned to a western cavalry post where his predecessors had been drunks and slackers. The post doesn't take kindly to him either, especially after he disregards regulations and tends to sick Indians on the malaria-infested reservation. The Indians break away from the reservation to move to a healthier higher ground, and when they join with the Comanches to besiege the fort, Seward is branded as a "woodhawk", the bird that turns against its own. Donna Reed is present as the niece of the post commander; Phil Carey is a cavalry captain that believes the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and May Wynn is the white girl raised by the Indians and married to the chief's son.
Modoc Jim
President Grant orders Indian fighter MacKay to negotiate with the Modocs of northern California and southern Oregon. On the way he must escort Nancy Meek to the home of her aunt and uncle. After Modoc renegade Captain Jack engages in ambush and other atrocities, MacKay must fight him one-on-one with guns, knives and fists.
Martinez (as Frank de Kova)
In old Spanish California, dashing cattleman Juan Obregon returns to the rancho of his friend Gaspar Melo, to find he's fathered a son on Rosa, one of Gaspar's identical twin daughters. Overjoyed, he plans to formalize his "unofficial" marriage. But trouble brews; Melo's land is of unclear title and the new Don Domingo hopes to grab it for his own profit. Violence results. Without even knowing who survived, Juan (accompanied by Rosa's tomboy sister Tonya) rides for revenge, through spectacular pastoral and wilderness scenery.
Ali Nur
Freshly arrived Sandhurst-trained Captain Alan King, better versed in Pashtun then any of the veterans and born locally as army brat, survives an attack on his escort to his Northwest Frontier province garrison near the Khyber pass because of Ahmed, a native Afridi deserter from the Muslim fanatic rebel Karram Khan's forces. As soon as his fellow officers learn his mother was a native Muslim which got his parents disowned even by their own families, he falls prey to stubborn prejudiced discrimination, Lieutenant Geoffrey Heath even moves out of their quarters, except from half-Irish Lt. Ben Baird.
Benedetto
World War II film set in German occupied Italy. A US fighter pilot is shot down in enemy territory during a raid against a German supply depot. He receives from Italian partisans in laying the groundwork for a new attack by his squadron.
Chief Chattez
Director Charles Marquis Warren's 1953 western stars Charlton Heston and Jack Palance.
Mindar
Shiek Yousseff, poses as a friend of the French while secretly plotting to overthrow them. Apposing Yousseff are the Riffs, whose secret leader, The Red Shadow, is Paul Bonnard, a professor who is studying the desert, and whose attacks on the supply trains intended for Yousseff keep the Riff villages in food. Foreign Legion General Birabeau arrives to conduct an investigation, accompanied by his daughter, Margot. Birabeau hires Bonnard to tutor her, and she is attracted to a Legionaire captain, Claud Fontaine. While the general, Bonnard and Fontaine pay a visit to Yousseff, an American newspaper man, Benji Kidd, discovers a secret way in and out of Yousseff's palace, with the aid of Azuri, a dancing girl in love with Bonnard. The latter is forced to resume his role as the Riffs leader, and kidnap Margot until he can convince her of Yousseff's treachery. But Yousseff's men attack the Riff camp and take Margot prisoner.
Dummy
Escaped convicts hold hostages in a ghost town targeted for a nuclear bomb test.
The Wiry Man
Three old friends reunite during Mardi Gras and try to forget their problems.
Col. Guarjarado
The story of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, who led a rebellion against the corrupt, oppressive dictatorship of president Porfirio Díaz in the early 20th century.
Con Library (uncredited)
An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.
