There's a sad touch of irony in the fact that both Utah native Keene Curtis and the stately old Promised Valley Playhouse met their respective demises in the same week.
Sometime in the early 1980s, when the Tony Award-winning actor was paying a rare visit to Salt Lake City, he toured the historic State Street theater with manager Ralph G. Rodgers Jr., Pat Davis (assistant manager at the time), longtime Deseret News entertainment editor Howard Pearson and me.
In one of the dark hallways leading downstairs to the dressing rooms, Curtis recalled writing his autograph in the stairwell when he was performing there years before. That was when the theater was known as the Lyric (or maybe even the Orpheum) — before he became a professional, with a career that ranged from big Broadway productions and off Broadway dramas to roles in more than 100 films and TV shows.
But while the autographed wall has, by now, been hauled off with other piles of bricks and plaster to a landfill somewhere in the valley, treasures from Curtis' quite remarkable career can still be seen in two other theaters — venues that are likely safe from the wrecking ball.
At Pioneer Memorial Theatre, there's a large painting by Alvin Gittins depicting Curtis in his four distinctive roles in "The Rothschilds," for which he won the Tony Award in 1971.
The composite painting, for which Curtis posed a total of nearly 42 hours — 15 to 20 minutes at a time — shows him in his diverse portrayals of four statesmen from the Napoleonic era: Prince William, Joseph Fouche, Lord Herries and Prince Von Metternich.
Several months later, Dr. Russell M. Nelson (then a respected heart surgeon, now Elder Nelson, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), was in New York to have his portrait painted by Gittins. He saw the Curtis painting hanging in Gittins' studio and decided to purchase it himself.
Elder Nelson kept the painting at his home and, for a while, in his office, then decided that it really should be displayed at Pioneer Memorial Theatre. In 1975, when Curtis was inducted into the Pioneer State Theatre Hall of Fame, the painting was donated by Elder Nelson to the theater as part of the program.
There's also a small collection of mementoes from Curtis' career on display in Kingsbury Hall, including several photographs and his 1971 Tony Award.
The tragic impact of Alzheimer's was driven home for me when I interviewed Curtis just a couple of years ago, before he was honored by having one of the Kingsbury Hall dressing rooms renovated and named after him. Instead of just calling him directly for a long-distance telephone interview, I was asked to fax him my questions in advance, so that he could write his answers down. Even then, however, his comments would drift off onto other, unrelated topics, and I had to gently steer him back on track.
In more recent months, as his mental state slowly deteriorated, his extended family in Utah would make frequent trips to Beverly Hills, to keep tabs on his situation there. His sister-in-law commented once about how difficult it was for Curtis to have his driving privileges taken away (they just couldn't run the risk of Curtis getting lost in Los Angeles' labyrinth of freeways).
Finally, just a couple of months ago, the family decided it was time to move Curtis to Bountiful, where he would be closer to them and under the watchful eyes of the staff in an assisted-care retirement center.
It's especially heart-wrenching, considering that this was a man who, not too many years before, could recite passages from Shakespeare, fill a Broadway theater with his well-trained voice and deliver strong performances in front of a camera.
E-mail: ivan@desnews.com