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.
Jamie Farr (born July 1, 1934) is an American television, film, and theater actor. He is best known for having played the role of cross-dressing Corporal (later Sergeant) Maxwell Q. Klinger in the television sitcom M*A*S*H.
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Robert Easton (born Robert Easton Burke; November 23, 1930 – December 16, 2011) was an American radio, film, and television actor whose career spanned more than 60 years. His mastery of English dialect earned him the epithet "The Man of a Thousand Voices". For decades, he was a leading Hollywood dialogue or accent coach.
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Michael Brandon (born April 20, 1945) is an American actor who resides in the United Kingdom and United States.
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Jonathan Joseph "Candy" Candido (December 25, 1913 – May 19, 1999) was an American radio performer, vocalist and animation voice actor best remembered for his famous line "I'm feeling mighty low".
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Helene Winston was a Canadian actor and author. She is best known for her role as Gladys King, mother to Larry King played by the late Al Waxman on the popular TV series The King of Kensington. She began as a stage actor with Winnipeg's Theatre 77 which later became the Manitoba Theatre Centre. She retired from acting in 1993 due to ill health and devoted some of her time to writing poetry.
Hobbs was born in Étretat, France, to Dr. Austin L. Hobbs and Mabel Foote Hobbs. However, he was raised in New York City. Hobbs attended Solebury School in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and received his bachelor's degree from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He served in as sergeant in combat engineering during World War II and fought at the Battle of the Bulge.
Ralph Bakshi (born October 29, 1938) is an American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote. He has been involved in numerous television projects as director, writer, producer and animator.
Beginning his career at the Terrytoons television cartoon studio as a cel polisher, Bakshi was eventually promoted to director. He moved to the animation division of Paramount Pictures in 1967 and started his own studio, Bakshi Productions, in 1968. Through producer Steve Krantz, Bakshi made his debut feature film, Fritz the Cat, released in 1972. It was the first animated film to receive an X rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, and the most successful independent animated feature of all time.
Over the next eleven years, Bakshi directed seven additional animated features. He is well known for his fantasy films, which include Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978) and Fire and Ice (1983). In 1987, Bakshi returned to television work, producing the series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which ran for two years before it was canceled due to complaints from a conservative political group over perceived drug references. After a nine-year hiatus from feature films, he directed Cool World (1992), which was largely rewritten during production and received poor reviews. Bakshi returned to television with the live-action film Cool and the Crazy (1994) and the anthology series Spicy City (1997).
He founded the Bakshi School of Animation and Cartooning in 2003. During the 2000s, he has focused largely on painting. He has received several awards for his work, including the 1980 Golden Gryphon for The Lord of the Rings at the Giffoni Film Festival, the 1988 Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation, and the 2003 Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest Film Festival.
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Character actor Walt Gorney was born on April 12, 1912 in Vienna, Austria. He came to the United States of America when he was ten years old and lived with his family in Massachusetts, USA. In 1946, Gorney moved to an apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City, USA. Gorney appeared in a handful of movies in minor roles; he was usually cast as bums or average working class types. With his lean, stringy build, gaunt face, croaky voice, and intense off center movie/film presence, Gorney was perfectly cast as local town eccentric and grim prophet of doom, Crazy Ralph in the horror classic Friday the 13th (1980). He returned as Crazy Ralph in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and did the opening narration for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988). Outside of his regrettably sparse movie credits, Walt had a long and respectable career acting on the stage. Gorney was a member of the theatrical group, the Provincetown Players in the early 1950s.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: woodyanders
