Alan Curtis (American actor)

Born Harry Ueberroth or Harold Neberroth[1][2] in Chicago, he began his career as a model[3] before becoming an actor, appearing in local newspaper ads.

His looks did not go unnoticed in Hollywood. He began appearing in films in the late 1930s, making his screen debut in Winterset (1936).[4] His film activities included a Technicolor appearance in the Alice Faye-Don Ameche film Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) and a memorable role in High Sierra (1941). He was one of the romantic leads in Abbott and Costello's first hit film Buck Privates (1941) and played composer Franz Schubert in The Great Awakening (1941).[5]

His chance for leading-man stardom came when he replaced the unwilling John Garfield in the production Flesh and Fantasy (1943). Curtis played a ruthless killer opposite Gloria Jean. However, the studio cut their performances from the final film version. The footage was later expanded into a B-picture melodrama Destiny (1944). The film failed to establish Curtis as a major-name star, but it did typecast him in hardbitten roles, like the man framed for murder in Phantom Lady (1944) and the detective Philo Vance. Curtis starred in over two dozen movies.

Alan Curtis was married four times and had no children:

• Actress Priscilla Lawson,[1] widow of Gerald Lawson. Curtis and Lawson married in Las Vegas, Nevada, on 14 November 1937 and divorced 11 March 1940.
• Actress Ilona Massey, married 1941, divorced 1942
• Actress Alexandra Crowell[6]
• Elizabeth Sundmark Dodero (died 1959), a onetime showgirl, former wife of Argentine millionaire Alberto Dodero, and a close friend of Eva Peron. They married in New York City on November 21, 1950, and divorced the following year. She died in 1959, after marrying, in 1952, saloon singer Hugh Shannon.[7][8]

Curtis had a routine kidney operation on January 28, 1953, at Saint Clare's Hospital in New York City. Several hours after the surgery, as he sipped some tea, he "died" for four minutes when his heart failed.[9] He was revived and seemed to be improving but died five days later, aged 43.[10] He is buried in the Ueberroth family plot in Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois.[11]

Curtis has a star at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard in the Motion Picture section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was dedicated on February 8, 1960.[12]

Media related to Alan Curtis at Wikimedia Commons

• Alan Curtis at IMDb
• "Alan Curtis". Find a Grave. Retrieved September 3, 2010.