1905-12-20

ALBERT DEKKER, American actor, born (d: 1968); American character actor best known for his roles in Marie Antoinette, Beau Geste, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Killers, and The Wild Bunch. He is sometimes credited as Albert Van Dekker or Albert van Dekker. Dekker enjoyed a long career in pictures and one role that immediately identifies him to film buffs, is the one which he donned those thick spectacles and reduced everyone in sight to toy size in Dr. Cyclops.  He was also a California Assemblyman.

In life, as in this film, his future was ill-starred. His was one of the more unforgettable and bizarre Hollywood suicides.

After being missing for several days, he was found kneeling nude in the bathtub.  A noose was around his neck, but not tight enough to have strangled him. A scarf was tied over his eyes and a horse’s bit was in his mouth, fashioned from a rubber ball and metal wire, the bit had chain “reins” that were tightly tied beneath his head.

Two leather straps were stretched between the leather belts that girded his neck and chest. A third belt, around his waist, was tied with a rope that stretched to his ankles, where it had been tied in some kind of timber hitch. The end of the rope, which continued up his side, wrapped around his wrist several times and was held in Dekker’s hand.

Handcuffs clamped both wrists with a key attached. Written in red lipstick on his right buttock was the word, “whip.” Sunrays had also been drawn around his nipples. “Make me suck,” was written on his throat, and “slave,” and “cocksucker,” on his chest. On his stomach, in lipstick, was drawn a vagina. He had apparently been dead for several days.  He was 62 years old.