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20 Most Interesting Famous Franks in History

The name Frank has a long history, dating back to the Germanic Franks who conquered much of Western Europe in the 5th century AD. The name Frank is a Germanic name that means free man. It has been a popular name throughout history, and many people have borne that name. Since then, there have been many famous people named Frank, from musicians to kings and queens to explorers and artists. 

This article lists 20 of the most interesting and famous Franks in history. These individuals are selected for their unique achievements and contributions to society. This article will list 20 of the most interesting and famous Franks, let’s delve into it. 

1. Frank Whittle 

Frank Whittle was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force air officer. He is credited with having invented the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention which was technically unfeasible at the time.

Whittle’s jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany’s Hans von Ohain, who designed the first-to-fly but never operational turbojet engine.

2. Frank Ocean

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Frank Ocean is an American singer, songwriter, and rapper. Ocean began his musical career as a ghostwriter, prior to joining the hip hop collective Odd Future in 2010. The following year, he released his first mixtape, Nostalgia, Ultra, and subsequently secured a recording contract with Def Jam Recordings. His first studio album, the eclectic Channel Orange (2012), incorporated R&B and soul styles.

At the 2013 Grammy Awards, Channel Orange was nominated for Album of the Year and won Best Urban Contemporary Album; one of its singles, Thinkin Bout You, was nominated for Record of the Year. He was named by Time as one of the world’s most influential people in 2013.  From 2017 onwards, Ocean released sporadic singles, worked as a photographer for magazines, launched the fashion brand Homer, and started Homer Radio.

3. Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the Chairman of the Board and later called Ol’ Blue Eyes, he is regarded as one of the most popular entertainers of the mid-20th century. Sinatra is among the world’s best-selling music artists with an estimated 150 million record sales.

Sinatra found success as a solo artist after signing with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the Bobby Soxers. In 1946, Sinatra released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra. He then signed with Capitol Records and released several critically lauded albums. Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for From Here to Eternity (1953), he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Toward the end of his career, he frequently played detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967). Sinatra received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on CBS in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

4. Frank Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship.

Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater, which has been called the best all-time work of American architecture.

5. Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. 

Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation.

6. Frank Abagnale

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Frank Abagnale is an American author and convicted felon. Abagnale targeted individuals and small businesses. He later gained notoriety in the late 1970s by claiming a diverse range of workplace frauds, many of which have since been placed in doubt.

In 1980, Abagnale co-wrote his autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, which built a narrative around these claimed victimless frauds. The book inspired the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio. He has also written four other books. Abagnale runs Abagnale and Associates, a consulting firm.

7. Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert was an American science fiction author best known for the 1965 novel Dune and its five sequels. Though he became famous for his novels, he also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.

The Dune saga, set in the distant future, and taking place over millennia, explores complex themes, such as the long-term survival of the human species, human evolution, planetary science and ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, economics and power in a future where humanity has long since developed interstellar travel and settled many thousands of worlds. Dune is the best-selling science fiction novel of all time, and the entire series is considered to be among the classics of the genre. 

8. Frank Capra

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Frank Capra was an Italian-American film director, producer, and screenwriter who became the creative force behind some of the major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Capra became one of America’s most influential directors during the 1930s, winning three Academy Awards for Best Director from six nominations, along with three other Oscar wins from nine nominations in other categories. 

Among his leading films were It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). During World War II, Capra served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and produced propaganda films, such as the Why We Fight series. Outside of directing, Capra was active in the film industry, engaging in various political and social activities. He served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, worked alongside the Writers Guild of America, and was head of the Directors Guild of America.

9. Frank Miller

Frank Miller is an American comic book artist, comic book writer, and screenwriter known for his comic book stories and graphic novels such as his run on Daredevil.  Miller’s feature film work includes writing the scripts for the 1990s science fiction films RoboCop 2 and RoboCop 3. 

Miller is noted for combining film noir and manga influences in his comic art creations. He said, “I realized when I started Sin City that I found American and English comics to be too wordy, too constipated, and Japanese comics to be too empty. So I was attempting to do a hybrid. Miller has received every major comic book industry award, and in 2015 he was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. 

10. Frank Robinson

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Frank Robinson was an American professional baseball player and manager in Major League Baseball who played for five teams over twenty-one seasons. Robinson was the only player to be named Most Valuable Player (MVP) of both the National League (NL) and the American League (AL).

His 586 career home runs ranked fourth in major league history at the time of his retirement. His 2,943 career hits are the most since 1934 by any player who fell short of the 3,000-hit mark. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1982.

11. Frank Rizzo

Frank Rizzo was an American police officer and politician. He served as commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) from 1968 to 1971 and mayor of Philadelphia from 1972 to 1980. 

Rizzo was a member of the Democratic Party throughout the entirety of his career in public office. He switched to the Republican Party in 1986 and campaigned as a Republican for the final five years of his life.

12. Frank Oz

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Frank Oz is an American actor, puppeteer, and filmmaker. He is best known for his involvement with Jim Henson and the Muppets, Star Wars, as well as his directorial work in feature films and theatre. Oz continued his career as a puppeteer when he was hired by Jim Henson in 1963 to work for The Jim Henson Company where he went on to perform several characters in multiple television series and specials. 

Oz performed the Muppet characters of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, and Sam Eagle on The Muppet Show (1976–1981), and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover on Sesame Street (1969–2013). He also performed the character of Yoda in the Star Wars series, beginning with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and reprising the role in six subsequent films and various media over the course of the next forty years.

13. Frank Stella

Frank Stella is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. From 1960 his works used shaped canvases later developing into more elaborate designs, in the Irregular Polygon series (67). Later he began his Protractor Series (71) of paintings, in which arcs, sometimes overlapping, within square borders named after circular cities he had visited while in the Middle East earlier in the 1960s.

In 1967, Stella designed the set and costumes for Scramble, a dance piece by Merce Cunningham. The Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a retrospective of Stella’s work in 1970, making him the youngest artist to receive one.

14. Frank Lucas

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Frank Lucas was an American drug lord who operated in Harlem, New York City, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was known for cutting out middlemen in the drug trade and buying heroin directly from his source in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. 

Lucas boasted that he smuggled heroin using the coffins of dead American servicemen, as depicted in the feature film American Gangster (2007), which fictionalized aspects of his life. In 1976, Lucas was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 70 years in prison, but after becoming an informant, he and his family were placed in the Witness Protection Program. In 1981, his federal and state prison sentences were reduced to time served plus lifetime parole. In 1984 he was convicted on drug charges and was released from prison in 1991.

15. Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Angela’s Ashes, a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood.

Three years later, a movie version of Angela’s Ashes opened to mixed reviews. Northern Irish actor Michael Legge played McCourt as a teenager. McCourt also authored ‘Tis (1999), which continues the narrative of his life, picking up from the end of Angela’s Ashes and focusing on his life after he returned to New York. He subsequently wrote Teacher Man (2005), which details his teaching experiences.

16. Frank Borman

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Frank Borman is an American retired United States Air Force (USAF) colonel, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, test pilot, and businessman. He was the commander of Apollo 8, the first mission to fly around the Moon, and together with crewmates Jim Lovell and William Anders, became the first of 24 humans to do so, for which he was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. As of 2023, he is the oldest living former American astronaut.

17. Frank Marshall

Frank Marshall is an American movie producer and director. He often collaborates with his wife, film producer Kathleen Kennedy, with whom he founded the production company Amblin Entertainment, along with Steven Spielberg. 

Marshall has produced various successful film franchises, including Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Bourne and has received five nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He has also directed the films Arachnophobia (1990), Alive (1993), Congo (1995), Eight Below (2006), and the documentaries The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart (2020) and Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story (2022).

18. Frank Thomas

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Frank Thomas is an American former professional baseball first baseman and designated hitter in Major League Baseball. He played for three American League teams from 1990 to 2008, all but the last three years with the Chicago White Sox. 

A five-time All-Star, he is the only player in major league history to have seven consecutive seasons (1991–1997) with at least a .300 batting average, 100 runs batted in (RBI), 100 runs scored, 100 walks, and 20 home runs. Thomas also won the AL batting title in 1997 with a .347 mark. Thomas is a two-time AL MVP and won a World Series in 2005 although he was injured during the regular season and World Series.

19. Frank Shamrock

Frank Shamrock is an American former professional mixed martial artist. Shamrock was the first to hold the UFC Middleweight Championship, later renamed the UFC Light Heavyweight Championship and retired as a four-time defending undefeated champion. Shamrock was the No. 1 ranked pound-for-pound UFC fighter in the world during his reign as the UFC Middleweight Champion.

Shamrock has won numerous titles in other martial arts organizations, including the interim King of Pancrase title, the WEC Light Heavyweight Championship and the Strikeforce Middleweight Championship. Shamrock is regarded as one of the first complete mixed martial artists, having adapted his game from a ground-focused style of fighting to a more well-rounded and versatile style.

20. Frank S. Nugent

Frank S. Nugent was an American screenwriter, journalist, and film reviewer. He wrote 21 film scripts, 11 for director John Ford. He wrote almost a thousand reviews for The New York Times before leaving journalism for Hollywood. Nugent was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and twice won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Comedy. The Writers Guild of America, West ranks his screenplay for The Searchers (1956) among the top 101 screenplays of all time.

These Franks have really stood out amongst their peers and have left a mark in their respective industries that is rivalled by many. They wear big shoes which ought to be filled by any individual named Frank who comes after them.