Frank Reicher

German American actor

Frank Reicher (born Franz Reicher; December 2, 1875 – January 19, 1965) was a German born American actor, director and producer. He is best known for playing Captain Englehorn in the 1933 film King Kong.

Reicher was born in Munich, Germany, the son of actor Emanuel Reicher and Hedwig Kindermann, a popular German prima donna who was a daughter of the famous baritone August Kindermann. Reicher's parents divorced in 1881 and his mother died two years later while at Trieste. His half sister, Hedwiga Reicher, would also become a Hollywood actor. His half brother Ernst Reicher was popular as gentleman detective Stuart Webbs in the early German cinema of the 1910s. Frank Reicher immigrated to the States in 1899 and became a naturalized American citizen some twelve years later. His early career was spent in legitimate theater on and off Broadway. He was head of the Brooklyn Stock Company when Jacob P. Adler performed The Merchant of Venice in Yiddish while the rest of the cast remained in English. Reicher was for a number of years affiliated with the Little Theatre on West Forty Fourth Street as an actor and manager and would remain active on Broadway as actor, director or producer well into the 1920s. On stage, Reicher starred in such plays as the first Broadway production of Georg Kaiser's From Morning to Midnight (as the cashier), the original production of Percy MacKaye's The Scarecrow (in the title role), and the United States premiere of Leonid Andreyev's He Who Gets Slapped. Frank Reicher is probably more familiar to modern audiences as a supporting character actor in films. He began his cinema career with an uncredited role in the 1915 film The Case for Becky and would go on to work in over two hundred motion pictures. He is probably best remembered for playing the character of Captain Englehorn in King Kong and The Son of Kong, and for his work in such films as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). His last Hollywood role was in the very first theatrical Superman movie, Superman and the Mole Men, in 1951.

Frank Reicher died at a hospital in Inglewood, California, aged 89. He was survived by his sister and a brother. His interment was at Inglewood Park Cemetery.