Walter Abel

Walter Abel was an American actor born on June 6, 1898, in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Christine (née Becker) and Richard Michael Abel. He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating in 1917, and subsequently joined a touring company. Abel was married to concert harpist Marietta Bitter. His brother Alfred, who had served overseas in World War I, died in 1922 from tuberculosis contracted during that service. Abel died on March 26, 1987, of a myocardial infarction at a nursing home in Essex, Connecticut. He was cremated, and a memorial service was held at the Little Church Around the Corner in Manhattan. His ashes were combined with those of his wife and scattered in Long Island Sound.

Abel's Broadway career extended from 1919 to 1975, beginning with his debut in Forbidden. In 1923 he appeared in As You Like It, and in 1924 he took on two Eugene O'Neill productions simultaneously: Bound East for Cardiff at the Provincetown Playhouse and Desire Under the Elms at the Greenwich Village Theater. His subsequent stage work included William Congreve's Love for Love in 1925, Channing Pollock's The Enemy in 1926 alongside Fay Bainter, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in 1929–1930, Mourning Becomes Electra in 1929, and Kaufman and Hart's Merrily We Roll Along in 1934. He also appeared in Trelawny of the 'Wells' and made his London stage debut in the 1929 production of Coquette. Among his other Broadway credits were Night Life, First Mortgage, The Mermaids Singing, and The Ninety Day Mistress.

Abel's screen career began in 1918 with a small part in Out of a Clear Sky. His first major film role came in 1935, when he played D'Artagnan in RKO Pictures' The Three Musketeers. In 1942 he appeared in the musical comedy Holiday Inn, playing hyperactive agent Danny Reed alongside Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Over the course of his career he appeared in more than sixty films and served as a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild. The Enemy, the play in which he had appeared on stage in 1926, was adapted to film in 1927 with Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes.

Beyond stage and screen, Abel worked as a concert narrator, appearing with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait in 1951 and in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood in 1953.