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Ben Frank

Ben Frank built the kind of wide-ranging acting career that could take him from low-budget horror to prime-time science fiction, with plenty of stage work along the way. Born in New York City on September 2, 1934, Frank accumulated 20 motion-picture appearances, 125 television roles and credits in 20 stage plays before his death in 1990. His first screen role came in 1963, when he played Duell in the horror film Terrified. He later appeared in So Evil, My Sister, a 1974 thriller starring Susan Strasberg, and played Hopper McGee in Live a Little, Steal a Lot, the 1975 movie about Murph the Surf starring Robert Conrad and Don Stroud. His film work also included an appearance in Death Wish II in 1982. Television gave Frank an even larger body of work. Among his credits was “Murder on the Rising Star,” a 1979 episode of Battlestar Galactica. In 1986, he appeared in “A New Lease on Life,” an episode of the horror anthology series Tales from the Darkside. Those roles place him comfortably within the genre television of two very different periods, from late-1970s space opera to the darker small-screen storytelling of the 1980s. Frank remained connected to live performance as well. In 1971, he appeared in the West Hollywood Gallery Theatre production of King of the Schnorrers, creating the rewritten role of Yankela. Later in his career, he stepped beyond acting alone by producing and taking the lead in the 1986 film Hollywood Zap! He was also involved in an anti-smoking commercial not long before his death. Across film, television and theatre, Frank’s career was defined less by a single signature part than by the sheer breadth of his work.