Dekker was born in Brooklyn, New York City, the only child of Thomas and Grace Ecke Van Dekker. He attended Richmond Hill High School, where he appeared in stage productions. He then attended Bowdoin College, where he majored in pre-med with plans to become a doctor. On the advice of a friend, he decided to pursue acting as a career. He made his professional acting debut with a Cincinnati stock company in 1927. Within a few months, Dekker was featured in the Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's play Marco Millions.[1]
Dekker as Dr. Thorkel in the 1940 film Dr. Cyclops
After a decade of theatrical appearances, Dekker transferred to Hollywood in 1937 and made his first film, 1937's The Great Garrick.[2] He spent most of the rest of his acting career in the cinema but returned to the stage from time to time.
Dekker appeared in some 70 films from the 1930s to the 1960s, but his four famous screen roles were as a mad scientist in the 1940 horror film Dr. Cyclops, as a criminal mastermind in 1946's The Killers, as a dangerous dealer in atomic fuel in the 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, and as an unscrupulous railroad detective in Sam Peckinpah's Western The Wild Bunch, released in 1969. In 1959, he played a Texas Ranger in The Wonderful Country. He was rarely cast in romantic roles, but in the film Seven Sinners, featuring a romance between Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne, Dietrich sails off with Dekker's character at the end of the film. Dekker was an often memorable guest star – usually a villain – in numerous TV series from the 1950s through 1968, such as Rawhide, The Man From UNCLE, Mission: Impossible, Climax!, Bonanza, and I Spy. Dekker's role as Pat Harrigan in The Wild Bunch was his last screen appearance; he died over a year before it was released.
Personal life
On April 4, 1929, Dekker married former actress Esther Guerini. The couple had two sons, and named them John and Benjamin, and their daughter who they named Jan, but they divorced in 1964.[3][4]
In April 1957, Dekker's 16-year-old son, John, fatally shot himself with a .22 rifle. This happened at the family's home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. The entire year he had been working on a silencer for the rifle. That death was ruled accidental.[4]
In his book-length account of the production of The Wild Bunch, writer W.K. Stratton describes Dekker as "completely nuts," and possibly the most troubled person on a set filled with eccentrics.[5] According to actor R.G. Armstrong, Dekker showed up to the remote Mexican shooting location of that film in 1968 with a 13-year-old girl he described as his wife, telling people (falsely) that he was a medical doctor, and that after filming he would retire from acting to help impoverished Africans.[6]
Politics
Dekker's off-screen interest in politics led to his winning a seat in the California State Assembly for the 57th Assembly District in 1944. Dekker served as a Democratic member of the Assembly until 1946.[7]
During the McCarthy era, he was an outspoken critic of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's tactics. As a result, Dekker was blacklisted in Hollywood and spent most of the blacklist period working on Broadway rather than in Hollywood (but he did work throughout the 1950s, including a part in Kiss Me Deadly).[8]
Death
On May 5, 1968, Dekker was found dead in his Hollywood home by his fiancée, fashion model and future Love Boat creator Jeraldine Saunders. He had hanged himself in his bathroom while dressed in women's lingerie. His body was covered in explicit words and drawings in red lipstick.[9]
Money and camera equipment were missing, but there was no sign of forced entry. Police, calling it "quite an unusual case",[10] originally said it was suicide but the deputy coroner found no evidence of foul play nor any indication that he planned to take his life and ruled his death accidental, the result of autoerotic asphyxiation.[8][11][12] Dekker was cremated, and his remains interred at the Garden State Crematory in North Bergen, New Jersey.[13]
Dekker has a star in the motion picture category on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6620 Hollywood Boulevard.[14]
^Parish, James Robert (2002). The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More Than 125 American Movie and TV Idols. Contemporary Books. p. 260. ISBN0-8092-2227-2.
^"Rule Albert Dekker's Death As Accidental". Variety. May 15, 1968. p. 2.
Lamparski, R. (1981) Lamparsaki's Hidden Hollywood, Simon & Schuster: New York. ISBN0671418858.
Monush, B. (2003) Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the Silent Era to 1965, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books: New York. ISBN1-55783-551-9.
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