According to quite a lot of his colleagues, he was very friendly and helpful. Moreover it has been reported, he proverbially always had a smile on his face and seemed to be very lucky. Among movie people he was also kept for one of the best actors in the Italian cinema era, he was part of. Only few colleagues claim, they recognized psychological problems, he could have had, for example actor Robert Hoffmann and a former companion from his UCLA time, who wrote an article about him.
Actor Brett Halsey wrote a book, called 'The Magnificent Strangers', which includes a lot of characters based on Halsey's real movie business colleagues and is kind of autobiographic in a way. The character Frank Ward, who's suicide is thematized in the book, is said to have been written with Frank Wolff in mind.
Actor Robert Hoffmann, who starred in Alberto De Martino's Femmine insaziabili (1969), co-starring Frank Wolff, settled in his Hilton Hotel apartment in Rome after his suicide, because they had the same agent (Michele Pietravalle) at this time. Hoffmann, searching immediately for a roof over the head, didn't care much about the fact his predecessor had been found dead in the bath tub.
Died before shooting of his last movie When Women Lost Their Tails (1972) was finished.
Directed two original one acts for the advanced direction class at the UCLA: "The woman in Strindberg's room" and "The lucky guy".
He became quite good friends with director Monte Hellman when they studied and worked together at the UCLA in the 1950s. As a result, one of his first movies was Hellman's Beast from Haunted Cave (1959).
He provided the role of The Stranger to actor Tony Anthony and played the villain in The Stranger's first movie A Dollar Between the Teeth (1967) as a favor for Anthony. The part became Anthony's most famous role besides his Blindman (1971) and he repeated it three times. Several months before Frank Wolff's death, according to Anthony himself, Frank Wolff asked him for a similar favor, wanting the role in Blindman (1971), which was finally taken by Ringo Starr. It was kind of deal between them, Anthony would provide him role, because Wolff had done him a favor earlier. But the producers wanted Ringo Starr for the role - Wolff was dropped and had a falling out with Anthony. About one year later Frank Wolff killed himself. There have always been rumors, one reason for the suicide was, he saw his career at an end/thought he couldn't get the roles he wanted anymore.
His father was a Bay Area doctor.
His last agent was Michele Pietravalle in Rome.
His parents helped set up the bookings for an anti-war play at the UCLA titled "The time is tomorrow" in the early 1950s. Frank Wolff appeared in the tour version of this UCLA production.
His parents were politically active and more or less left oriented. They supported corresponding theatre projects at the UCLA, when Frank Wolff studied there in the 1950s.
Starred and co-starred in movies by most of the most important Italian western directors of all time: Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Enzo G. Castellari, Giuseppe Colizzi, Giuliano Carnimeo (aka Anthony Ascott) and Sergio Sollima. Only with Sollima he did no western, but the agent-action-adventure Agent 3S3, Massacre in the Sun (1966).
Was offered the role of the villain in Sergio Leone's legendary A Fistful of Dollars (1964), but dropped it more or less for artistic reasons.
Went to Italy in the early 1960s for making movies there on the advice of director Roger Corman. He had starred in two Corman movies (Ski Troop Attack (1960) and Atlas (1961)) and had also appeared in a fistful of other Corman works shortly before traveling to Italy.
Won two times the UCLA best actor award: for "Macbeth" (1951), playing the title role, and "The Lower Depths" (1952), playing Satin.