A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Birthplace:
Norwich, Connecticut, USA
Born:
January 28, 1945
Died:
March 3, 2018
Thin, intense, antsy, and often unnerving character actor Frank Doubleday usually portrayed creepy villains in both movies and TV shows alike from the mid-1970's up until the early 1990's. Frank was born on January 28, 1945 in Norwich, Connecticut and came with his family to Los Angeles, California at age six. Doubleday made his film debut as an aggressive switchblade-wielding punk thug in the hilariously raunchy comedy The First Nudie Musical (1976). Doubleday's lean, hollow-eyed, sunken-cheeked face, closely cropped light blonde hair, skinny limbs, and slim build gave him a striking and potent screen presence that was put to especially effective use in two pictures for director John Carpenter: He's genuinely scary as the vicious street gang leader who kills little girl Kim Richards in cold blood in the terrific urban action classic Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and was likewise memorably freaky as Isaac Hayes' ghoulish flunky "Romero" in the excellent futuristic science fiction cult favorite Escape from New York (1981). Doubleday's other noteworthy parts are a mob kingpin's conceited jerk son in Avenging Angel (1985), a fidgety prison inmate in the nifty science fiction item Space Rage (1985), a ferocious member of a roving murderous band of supernatural Eskimo spirits in the spooky Nomads (1986), a mercenary in Broadcast News (1987), and a sweaty, twitchy hoodlum who holds a bunch of fat ladies hostage in a laundromat in the funky urban science fiction hoot Dollman (1991). Among the TV shows Doubleday did guest appearances on are Amazing Stories (1985), Sledge Hammer! (1986), Stingray (1985), T.J. Hooker (1982), Hill Street Blues (1981), CHiPs (1977), The Incredible Hulk (1978), Charlie's Angels (1976), Wonder Woman (1975) and Starsky and Hutch (1975). Outside of acting, Frank also directed stage plays and taught acting at the Hollywood Court Theater. Doubleday died at age 73 from esophageal cancer on March 3, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.