Of all of the actors who played soldiers and other military men in mid-century American TV and movies, a few were the real deal. Unlike those who served in picture units or who showed up at the Hollywood Canteen, these men served overseas in an active capacity, sometimes seeing actual battle.
Theodore Marcuse was one. Lee Van Cleef. Dean Fredericks, too.
Born Frederick Foote, Fredericks grew up in Antelope Valley, in Southern California, the son of a petroleum products distributor.
Fredericks served in World War II in the United States Army as a sergeant with the First Cavalry Division. While in a landing craft on a beach in Leyte, Phillippines, he and other soldiers were bombed into the water by a Japanese dive bomber.
He was so badly wounded with a leg injury that he spent two years recuperating. Fredericks received the Purple Heart.
Fredericks’ brother, Edward G. Foote Jr., named after their father, served during the war, as well. He died in Burma (Myanmar) in 1944 at the age of 21.
With that kind of history, it wasn’t a great stretch to see Fredericks in the role of USAF pilot Steve Canyon. Not just that, but Fredericks looked strikingly like cartoonist Milton Caniff’s creation. The only missing element was the blonde hair.
No problem there, though. As papers reported in 1958, Fredericks dyed his “mahogany” hair peroxide blonde on a regular basis at Myda’s Beauty Salon, Lancaster, California. The salon was owned by his wife, Myda Fredericks.
Dean Fredericks’ high cheekbones and strikingly Asiatic looks served him well in Hollywood as a bit actor, scoring part after part as indigenous characters with names like Crow Feather, Comanche Chief, Grey Wolf, Great Bear, Spotted Wolf, and more.
Steve Canyon and the title role of Col. Frank Chapman in The Phantom Planet were a couple of the high points in Fredericks’ acting career. True fame eluded Fredericks, though. He retired in the mid-1960s and died in 1999.
