Alan Curtis Quantified

Alan Curtis (Harold Ueberroth, 1909-1953) was well on the way to some kind of lasting stardom when a bad reaction to a routine kidney operation took him at age 43. Despite a somewhat forgettable name and visage, he had attained leading man status and was in some well remembered Hollywood movies.

Curtis started out as a male model in print ads in the Chicago area. By 1936 he was getting bit parts and walk-ons in films, rapidly progressing to good supporting parts. An early one was the comedy short One Live Ghost (1936) with Leon Errol,Vivien Oakland, and a very young Lucille Ball. He was a romantic lead in two Abbott and Costello comedies, Buck Privates (1941) and The Naughty Nineties (1945), and had cameos in Crazy House (1943) with Olsen and Johnson and the all-star wartime film Follow the Boys (1944). Other notable films include Mannequin (1937) with Joan Crawford,Sidney Howard’s Yellow Jack (1938), High Sierra (1941), The Great Awakening (1941, in which he played the lead, the composer Franz Schubert), Hitler’s Madman (1943, in which he plays the hero, whose mission is to take out Reinhard Heydrich, played by John Carradine), The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944), and a couple of Philo Vance mysteries, in which he played the eponymous sleuth. His last film, out of over 50, was Love and Blood (1951), starring Maria Montez.

Curtis was married and divorced four times. His wives were Priscilla Lawson, Ilona Massey, model Sandra Lucas (former sister-in-law of big band leader Clyde Lucas and future wife of John Payne), and showgirl Elizabeth Dodero, ex-wife of an Argentine millionaire. None of his marriages lasted longer than three years.

For more on classic comedy and film please read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.