Frank De Vol on AllMovie

Bandleader/actor Frank DeVol began his professional career in 1931. The son of a Canton, Ohio, orchestra leader, DeVol worked with several bands as vocalist and arranger before organizing his own aggregation in 1935. That same year, he went on tour with the George Olsen-Ethel Shutta musical troupe, receiving his first acting experience fielding one-liners from the stars. He went on to network radio, conducting orchestras for such stars as Ginny Simms and Jack Carson. In 1954, he began a long association with Hollywood director Robert Aldrich, writing scores for Aldrich films ranging from World for Ransom (1954) to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) to All the Marbles (1981). He received an Academy Award nomination for his work on Aldrich's Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965), and was also Oscar-nominated for Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959), Elliot Silverstein's Cat Ballou (1965) and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1965). On TV, where he was frequently billed simply as "DeVol," he was musical director for The Rosemary Clooney Show (1957), The Betty White Show (1958), George Gobel Show (1958), and The Dinaah Shore Chevy Show (1961-62); in addition, he penned the well-known theme music for the long-running comedy series My Three Sons. In 1960, writer/director David Swift, an old friend from the radio days, hired the bald, dry-witted DeVol to play the role of a hapless camp counselor in The Parent Trap (1961). Frank DeVol scored so well in this brief appearance that he would thereafter evenly divide his time between acting and music: he went on to portray Bannister the Builder in the 1963 TV sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, a half-baked movie executive in Jerry Lewis' theatrical feature The Big Mouth (1967), and dour bandleader "Happy Kyne" on Norman Lear's talk-show satires Fernwood 2Night (1977) and America 2-Night (1978).