American actor and politician Albert Dekker was BOTD in 1905. Born in Brooklyn, he originally studied medicine before pursuing a career in acting. Beginning in summer stock, he starred on Broadway throughout the 1920s, before being lured to Hollywood in the late 1930s. His striking looks and European lineage led to his casting as aristocrats in lavish historical epics, including Marie Antoinette, The Man in the Iron Mask and Beau Geste. In the 1940s, he transitioned into playing villains, notably as a mad scientist in Dr Cyclops, a criminal mastermind in The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner and an atomic weapons dealer in Kiss Me Deadly. He had a rare romantic role opposite Marlene Dietrich in Seven Sinners and played an honourable newspaper editor in the film of Laura Z. Hobson‘s novel Gentlemen’s Agreement. A devoted Democrat, he was elected to the California State Assembly in 1944. Blacklisted in 1950s Hollywood for criticising Senator Joe McCarthy, he returned to Broadway, starring in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Robert Bolt’s historical drama A Man For All Seasons. He made a gradual return to Hollywood, with supporting roles in East of Eden with James Dean, and the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams‘ play Suddenly Last Summer with Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. As his film career faded, he appeared in TV shows Rawhide, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible and Bonanza. His final film appearance in 1969 western The Wild Bunch was infamous for his erratic on-set behaviour and amphetamine addiction. Dekker married actress Esther Guerini in 1929, with whom he had two sons. He died in 1968, aged 62. He was found kneeling in his bathtub naked, blindfolded, handcuffed and gagged, with a noose around his neck and homosexual slurs written on his body in red lipstick. His death was ruled accidental as the result of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Numerous theories have circulated about Dekker’s death, including being the victim of a robbery or (more likely) a consensual sado-masochistic encounter gone wrong.