Frank Reicher was born in Munich, Germany, the son of actor Emanuel Reicher  and Hedwig Kindermann, a popular German prima donna who was a daughter of the famous baritone August Kindermann. Reicher’s parents divorced in 1881 and his mother died two years later while at Trieste. His sister, Hedwiga Reicher, would also become a Hollywood actor. Frank Reicher immigrated to the States in 1899 and became a naturalized American citizen some twelve years later. Reicher made his Broadway debut the year he came to America playing Lord Tarquin in Harrison Fiske’s production of Becky Sharp, a comedy by Langdon Mitchell based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. His early career was spent in legitimate theater on and off Broadway. He was head of the Brooklyn Stock Company when Jacob P. Adler performed The Merchant of Venice in Yiddish while the rest of the cast remained in English. Reicher was for a number of years affiliated with the Little Theatre on West Forty-Fourth Street as an actor and manager and would remain active on Broadway as actor, director or producer well into the 1920s. On stage, Reicher starred in such plays as the first Broadway production of Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight (as the cashier), and the original production of Percy MacKaye’s The Scarecrow (in the title role).

Frank Reicher is probably more familiar to modern audiences as a supporting character actor in films. He began his cinema career with an uncredited role in the 1915 film The Case for Becky and would go on work in over two hundred motion pictures. He is probably best remembered for playing Captain Englehorn in the movies King Kong and The Son of Kong and for such films as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). His last Hollywood role was in the very first theatrical Superman movie, Superman and the Mole Men, in 1951. Frank Reicher died at the age of 89 at a hospital in Inglewood, California. He was survived by his sister and a brother. His interment was at Inglewood Park Cemetery.