Albert Dekker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Albert Dekker | |
 from the trailer for the film Gentleman's Agreement (1947). |
|
| Birth name | Albert Ecke |
| Born | December 20, 1905 Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Died | May 5, 1968 Hollywood, California, USA |
Albert Dekker (December 20, 1905 – May 5, 1968) was an American character actor. He is sometimes credited as Albert Van Dekker or Albert van Dekker.
Born Albert Ecke in Brooklyn, New York, he adopted his mother's maiden name of Dekker as his stage name. Whether the "Van" used in his earlier career was of historical origin in the family or was an affectation is unclear.
He made his Broadway debut in 1927, and was soon cast in Eugene O'Neill's play Marco Millions (1928). On April 4, 1929, he married actress Esther Guernini; they had two sons and a daughter.
After a solid, if undistinguished, career on the stage playing both comedy and drama, he transferred to Hollywood in 1937. He spent most of the rest of his acting career in the cinema, but from time to time he returned to the stage. He replaced Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman in the original production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and during a five-year stint back on Broadway in the early sixties, he played the Duke of Norfolk in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons.
He appeared in some seventy films from the 1930s to 1960s, but his three most famous screen roles were as a mad scientist in Dr. Cyclops (1940), as a vicious hitman in the The Killers (1946), and as an unscrupulous railroad detective in The Wild Bunch (1969).
From 1945 to 1946, Dekker served as a Democratic member of the California State Legislature, for the 57th Assembly District which included Hollywood.
In May of 1968, Dekker was found dead in the bathtub at his home in Hollywood, California.
There were reports that his death was suicide or murder, and may have involved sexual deviance, but it was finally ruled that he died of accidental asphyxiation. Although a divorced father of three children, with a girlfriend at the time of his death, the circumstances of the tragedy suggested that he might have been a closeted bisexual.
[edit] Complete Filmography
- 1937 The Great Garrick
- 1938 The Lone Wolf in Paris
- 1938 She Married an Artist
- 1938 Marie Antoinette
- 1938 Extortion
- 1938 The Last Warning
- 1939 Never Say Die
- 1939 The Man in the Iron Mask
- 1939 Hotel Imperial
- 1939 Beau Geste
- 1940 Rangers of Fortune
- 1940 Dr. Cyclops
- 1940 Seven Sinners
- 1940 Strange Cargo
- 1941 Reaching for the Sun
- 1941 You're the One
- 1941 The Great Commandment
- 1941 Honky Tonk
- 1941 Blonde Inspiration
- 1941 Among the Living
- 1941 Buy Me That Town
- 1942 Star Spangled Rhythm
- 1942 A Night in New Orleans
- 1942 Yokel Boy
- 1942 In Old California
- 1942 Once Upon a Honeymoon
- 1942 Wake Island
- 1942 The Forest Rangers
- 1942 The Lady Has Plans
- 1943 The Kansan
- 1943 War of the Wildcats
- 1943 Buckskin Frontier
- 1944 The Woman of the Town
- 1945 Experiment Perilous
- 1945 Salome, Where She Danced
- 1945 Hold That Blonde
- 1945 Incendiary Blonde
- 1946 The Killers
- 1946 Suspense
- 1946 Two Years Before the Mast
- 1946 The French Key
- 1946 California
- 1947 Slave Girl
- 1947 Wyoming
- 1947 The Pretender
- 1947 Gentleman's Agreement
- 1947 The Fabulous Texan
- 1947 Cass Timberlane
- 1948 Lulu Belle
- 1949 Tarzan's Magic Fountain
- 1949 Search for Danger
- 1949 Bride of Vengeance
- 1950 The Furies
- 1950 Destination Murder
- 1950 The Kid from Texas
- 1951 As Young As You Feel
- 1952 Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie
- 1952 Leonardo da Vinci
- 1954 The Silver Chalice
- 1955 East of Eden
- 1955 Illegal
- 1955 Kiss Me Deadly
- 1957 She Devil
- 1958 Machete
- 1959 Middle of the Night
- 1959 The Sound and the Fury
- 1959 These Thousand Hills
- 1959 The Wonderful Country
- 1959 Suddenly, Last Summer
- 1965 Gammera the Invincible
- 1966 Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
- 1967 Come Spy with Me
- 1969 The Wild Bunch
