Albert Dekker

Albert Dekker (December 20, 1905 – May 5, 1968)

Dekker was a character actor and politician best known for his roles in Dr. Cyclops, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Wild Bunch. He is sometimes credited as Albert Van Dekker or Albert van Dekker. After a decade of theatrical appearances, Dekker transferred to Hollywood in 1937, and made his first film, 1937's The Great Garrick. He spent most of the rest of his acting career in the cinema, but also returned to the stage from time to time. 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 1960s, he played the Duke of Norfolk in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. Dekker appeared in some seventy films from the 1930s to 1960s, but his four most famous screen roles were as a mad scientist in the 1940 horror film Dr. Cyclops, as a criminal mastermind in The Killers, as a dangerous dealer in atomic fuel in the 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly, and as an unscrupulous railroad detective in Sam Peckinpah's Western The Wild Bunch.

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 was naked, kneeling in the bathtub, with a noose tightly wrapped around his neck and looped around the shower curtain rod. He was blindfolded, his wrists were handcuffed, there was a ball gag in his mouth, and two hypodermic needles were inserted in one arm. His body was covered in explicit words and drawings in red lipstick. Though speculation ran rampant, the coroner found no evidence of foul play, and ruled his death accidental due to autoerotic asphyxiation. Dekker was 62 years old.