
Acting
Frank De Kova
Born 1910-03-17 · 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.
Acting credits
7.8Escaping 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.
The Ten Commandments
1956
6.4From 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.
The Greatest Story Ever Told
1965
6.7Arthur 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.
The Mechanic
1972
6.9New 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.
Reprisal!
1956
5.5First 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.
Pillars of the Sky
1956
6.1A multi-layered satire of race relations in America. Live-action sequences of a prison break bracket the animated tale of Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox, who rise to the top of the crime ranks in Harlem by going up against a con-man, a racist cop, and the Mafia.
Coonskin
1975
6.0Uprooted 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.
The Wild Country
1970
6.9The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
American Pop
1981
6.5A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
Heavy Traffic
1973
6.5Ryevsk, 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.
The Brothers Karamazov
1958
6.2The 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.
The Lone Ranger
1956
7.2Will 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.
The Man from Laramie
1955
4.9Hard-boiled archeologist Mark Brandon is searching for ancient tombs in Egypt when he is approached by beautiful Ann Mercedes, who convinces him to help her fulfill her deceased father's life's ambition - to provide solid proof of the biblical Joseph's travels in ancient Egypt. As an ex-pupil of Ann's father, Mark accepts and the two embark on a search for the tomb of the Pharoah Ra Hotep, said to have had some connection with Joseph. The trail to the tomb is fraught with intrigue, betrayal, murder, and the possibility that the tomb itself has been emptied of all its artifacts by ancient looters.
Valley of the Kings
1954
5.9After his mistress is murdered, a Mafia leader goes after the killer with a bloody vengeance. Soon after the hunt begins, a gang war ensues.
The Don Is Dead
1973
5.8Two 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.
Santiago
1956
7.1An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.
Kiss of Death
1947
6.1Jack 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.
The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond
1960
6.5Chicago 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...
Cowboy
1958
6.1When the Kwimper family car runs out of fuel on a new Florida highway and an officious state supervisor tries to run them off, Pop digs in his heels and decides to do a little homesteading. He, his son Toby and their 'adopted' children—Holly, Ariadne, and the twins—start their own little community along a strip of the roadside.
Follow That Dream
1962
5.4In 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.
Passion
1954
5.1A 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.
Atlantis: The Lost Continent
1961
6.0George 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.
Machine-Gun Kelly
1958
6.8Blaise 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.
Day of the Outlaw
1959
6.6Two tough Kentucky mountaineers join a trading expedition from St. Louis up the Missouri River to trade whisky for furs with the Blackfoot Indians. They soon discover that there is much more than the elements to contend with.
The Big Sky
1952