In 1950s Harlem a vicious Italian gangster (Frank deKova) tries to muscle in on a black racketeer's (Paul Harris) numbers game.
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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.
Henry Gayle Sanders is an American actor known for his TV roles as Prosper Denton on Queen Sugar, Samuel Carter on 9-1-1, Uncle Chester on Hap & Leonard, Cedric on the miniseries DMZ, and Robert E. On Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman as well as the TV movie of the same name. He's known for his film roles as Arthur Holloway in Samaritan, Pastor Jack in Roman J. Israel Esq., Cager Lee in Selma, Red Henderson in Whiplash, Martin in Rocky Balboa, Cesar's Trainer in Play It to the Bone, and Sandy in Bull Durham. He has also had roles in a number of TV movies. He's guest starred on numerous TV shows including Shameless, American Horror Story, Grey's Anatomy, The Mentalist, CSI, Cold Case, Eleventh Hour, Heartland, Commander in Chief, Joan of Arcadia, The West Wing, Boomtown, NYPD Blue, Moesha, Sliders, ER, Murphy Brown, The Young and the Restless, L.A. Law, Alf, Matlock, Married... with Children, Beauty and the Beast, Moonlighting, Cagney & Lacey, Highway to Heaven, What's Happening Now?, 227, Hunter, Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, Knots Landing, Night Court, Knight Rider, Diff'rent Strokes, St. Elsewhere, The Greatest American Hero, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and The Rockford Files.
