Frank De Kova

Known for ActingBorn 1910-03-17Died 1981-10-15New 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.Read more

Movies & web series

The Troubleshooters

Crossfire

Little House on the Prairie

The Gallant Men

The Islanders

The Untouchables

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

The Ten Commandments

The Rockford Files

The Greatest Show on Earth

The Walter Winchell File

Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers

The Incredible Hulk

It Takes a Thief

Hawaii Five-O

The Sword of Ali Baba

Martin Kane, Private Eye

Rawhide

The Third Man

The Man from Laramie

Police Story

American Pop

The Rifleman

77 Sunset Strip

Daniel Boone

The Lawless Years

Kiss of Death

Toma

The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin

Maverick

Day of the Outlaw

The Tall Man

Run, Joe, Run

Reprisal!

The Mechanic

The High Chaparral

The White Squaw

Cannon

The Desert Song

Route 66

The Detectives

Laramie

The Slams

Thriller

Outlaws

The Alaskans

Baretta

Gunsmoke