Walter Frank Hermann Wolff (May 11, 1928 – December 12, 1971) was an American actor whose film career began with roles in five 1958–61 Roger Corman productions and ended a decade later in Rome, after many appearances in European-made films, most of which were lensed in Italy. Early life A native of San Francisco, California, Wolff was the son of a Bay Area physician. Both parents were of German descent. The elder Wolff, a political and social maverick, encouraged young Frank to follow an unconventional path. He attended University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied acting and stagecraft, wrote and directed plays and befriended another actor/director, Monte Hellman. Between 1957 and 1961, he appeared in nearly 20 episodes of TV series and feature films, a few of which fit into the horror/science fiction genre. Career with Roger Corman Wolff had bit roles in his first two films, Roger Corman's I Mobster and The Wasp Woman. The former, a 1958 black-and-white gangster melodrama in which Wolff does not even receive a billing, was presented as a first-person narrative by the title character, Murder, Inc. (fictional) boss Joe Sante (Steve Cochran). The latter, Wolff's first genre film, was a typically campy horror, filmed in 1959, in which the owner of a cosmetics business (Susan Cabot) becomes the titular monster after using one of her own experimental rejuvenating formulas. Wolff has a single, memorable scene. Later in the year, however, Wolff's billing dramatically increased to co-lead status in his next two Corman productions, scripted by Charles B. Griffith, Beast from Haunted Cave and Ski Troop Attack. Shot back-to-back in the snowy wilderness outside Deadwood, South Dakota, the films used the same crew and cast, which, in addition to Wolff, included Michael Forest, Wally Campo, Richard Sinatra (Frank's nephew) and Sheila Carol. The first of the two, Beast, directed for Corman by Wolff's UCLA friend, Monte Hellman, remains a well-remembered low-budget horror title, with a spider-like creature menacing a trio of robbers, led by Wolff, trapped in a ski lodge. In contrast, the equally poverty-budgeted Attack, on which Corman himself took over the directorial reins, turned out to be a little-noticed World War II quickie in which a quartet of GIs on skis slog through a snowbound landscape. The group's leader, a tall, stalwart lieutenant (Michael Forest), who played a similarly characterized forest ranger in Beast, is continually challenged by the disdainful sergeant