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The Small Arms Review • Vol. 13 No. 10 • July, 201080

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The 1960s were turbulent times of jobchanges and dissolved marriages. His thirdmarriage only lasted a few years. Hisfourth and final marriage lasted literally afew days. The most consistent thread inthis tumultuous period was his uninter-rupted dedication to gun collecting, flyingand his visits to his children in Logan,Utah.

The end, in 1968, to the “marriage thatdid not count since it was so short,” as hewould joke, also brought an end to the

The first part of this three-part series described the early events in his life that shaped the man and hislegendary personality characteristics. In this, the second of the series, we provide his business strategythat parlayed his original collection into a collection worth millions and a revenue stream that putmillions in the bank. We also include a summary of his breathtaking inventory of NFA weapons.

overlapping part-time jobs: in 1968 he wasin the gun business full-time. The precisereasons that he became a full-time Class 3dealer are not known. It was probably ablend of numerous factors. No doubt, be-ing under the direction and control of cor-porations did not suit his style; déjà vuworking for his father on the farm.

Another likely factor was the fact thatfrom childhood he had developed the skillsof an astute dealer and trader. He wouldshrewdly buy two guns, keep one and sell

one then buy two more with the profits,repeating the process over and over fordecades. A 1981 newspaper article statedthat he “started out in the military armsbusiness while still a kid. He supportedhis wildlife-management education at USUvariously from farm work, gunsmithing,hawking war surplus sporting goods, andeven aerial shooting (for bounty and furs)from an old Cessna 140 airplane.”

Yet another factor may have been a twistof fate. He told friends that a wealthy in-

Lead photo, above: Curtis owned sev-eral Lewis guns including one used byCharles Nungesser, WWI French fly-ing ace responsible for 38 German kills,and three bought by Pancho Villa andconfiscated by authorities at the bor-der. This one that he is shooting in 1963is believed to have been one of thePancho Villa guns. (Gary Christopher)

Right: Small ads in gun magazinessuch as this one appearing in the Feb-ruary 1975 edition of Guns helpedbuild his gun business. By the 1970s,he had built an unsurpassed inventoryof NFA weapons. (Chuck Olsen)

The Small Arms Review • Vol. 13 No. 10 • July, 2010 81


dividual in the air cargo freight businesswas interested in collecting and investingin machine guns but could not legally ownthem. He helped Curtis apply for his Class3 FFL in 1964. (Author’s note: 1965 isoften cited as the start of his business; 1964is the date given in the 1983 business pro-spectus and may represent the date he sub-mitted the paperwork.) Curtis would laterclaim that there were only two other suchdealers in the country, one in Wisconsinand one in Illinois.

The wealthy businessman would providethe money but Curtis would own and storethe guns; the businessman could shootthem when he was with Curtis in Phoenix.Recognize that this was long before thestraw buyer concept was even imagined,and, of course, Curtis kept possession ofthe guns. He was given the opportunity tofly around the country and began makingkey contacts in police departments thatlater proved invaluable. It was another oneof those win-win situations that Curtisloved.

Curtis claimed that the businessmancaught his wife cheating and this led to atragic murder-suicide. All the guns, pa-pered to Curtis, became his. This story is“real” as told firsthand to others, but again,the truth may lie elsewhere. He also toldfriends that he had received a large settle-ment from the judgment on a car accident,severe enough to require a fusion of ver-tebrae in his neck. Monthly income fromthe storage units given him by his fatherpaid the day-to-day expenses. Additionalmoney may also have come from the con-tinued support from his father back inUtah. It is unlikely that he would everadmit this.

One thing was certain: he was reachingcritical mass whereby the revenue from thepart-time gun business was exceeding theincome from his more traditional corpo-rate jobs. In addition, he was living fru-gally and plowing the profits from gunsales into the purchase of more guns.

Regardless of what propelled him tograduate from collector to dealer, the netresult was that on December 29, 1965,

Curtis formally opened for business as apart-time Class 3 dealer until he went full-time in 1968. His first entry in his “boundbook” was a Sten gun. (As an aside,throughout his life he used standard IdealSystem Company eight-column ledgerpages bound side-by-side and set up ac-cording to ATF record-keeping require-ments.) The last entry was an MG-42 onJuly 14, 1999. The ledger tracked as fol-lows:

•1960s 528•1970s 1,556•1980s 454•1990s 27 Total 2,565

With a Title II inventory such as this andsince he included his address in his ads,security was a constant issue. He built aseparate structure on the property with

overall dimensions of 12 by 27 feet, whichincluded a vault with a time lock door im-ported from Spain and originally installedin the First National Bank in Florence,Arizona. Both his house and the externalstorage areas had what he described in theprospectus as “sophisticated security sys-tems.” In reality, it was rudimentary ac-cording to close friends.

He always had a watchdog, usually aGerman shepherd, plus an assortment ofhidden, loaded guns around the house andin his car. He built a special bracket tohold a 12-gauge shotgun under a coffeetable, kept a .38 under a hat on top of therefrigerator and used as his primary de-fense weapon a WWII vintage .45 markedUnited States Property, SN 965435. Hehad it at the ready in a cut-off leather mili-tary shoulder holster stapled to the head-board of his bed. This gun would later beconfiscated by the police in one of the

Right: The ads may have been small,but his catalogue was enormous, typi-cally 32 pages. Between 1965 and1983 he had distributed over 65,000.By 1983 his income from catalog salesalone was nearly $34,000 in 2009 dol-lars. (Chuck Olsen)



darkest periods of his life just before hedied.

The Business Strategy

Clearly, the 1970s were the peak of hisbusiness, but it would be the very earlydays that proved critical since they laid thefoundation of his business developmentstrategy. As the 1983 business prospec-tive detailed, “This business was built upover the years by primarily buying every-thing in the Title II gun line that he couldafford. As the annual increase in the valueof all of these items is far in excess of anyother commodity, he continually pouredhis profits into more inventory and antiqueguns, he exercised the ‘new pots for old’approach and acquired many collectionsand large lots from states, governments,and law enforcement agencies. He spe-

cializes in good, clean guns... he has be-come the largest dealer in the U.S. with aninventory most probably in excess of allof his competitors put together!”

By the 1970s he not only was the larg-est Class 3 dealer, he was also one of themost influential. As mentioned in part oneof this series, his father and three of hisuncles were in the retail and sales busi-ness; maybe he picked up some of the skillsfrom them and understood the power ofadvertising. He was one of the first to runnational ads in widely read magazines suchas Gun World, Guns and Guns & Ammo.

The ads may have been small, but theycaught the eye of thousands who boughthis catalog that was nothing short ofbreathtaking for NFA collectors with itsdozens of illustrations. Between 1968 and1983 he had distributed over 65,000 bro-chures. By 1983 he was receiving nearly

$15,000 annually from catalog sales alone(nearly $34,000 in 2009 dollars). Curtisalso was quick to adapt new photo tech-nology, owning several Polaroid camerasand getting into home video back whencameras required a suitcase-size recorder.For those interested in getting a closer lookat a particular gun, he offered to take andsend a custom photo, “$1 submachine gunphoto, $2 light, and $3 crew served orheavy guns.” He even made and sold tapesof guns to potential buyers with a narra-tion of the gun’s statistics and qualities.

Curtis did three things in his catalog thatgreatly benefitted the collecting public.First, he educated them that they could ownmachine guns and explained the processto legally acquire them. For example,wording from the 1976 catalog states,“Machine guns are legal. They alwayshave been! However, old wives’ tales tothe contrary are bolstered by our Ameri-can new media (sic), the reverse of thishas been very effectively drilled into thepublic’s brains.”

Second, he pointed out the rarity of theclassic original guns and the impact onsupply and demand: “It is now simply amatter of supply and demand... with thedemand far greater than the supply!” andits impact on price: “Any machine gunworth having will demand premiums un-heard of today; they will fall in the samecategory as the Colt Patersons or Walkers,or any of the other highly sought and verycostly collectables.” He was correct, ofcourse, but in those early days he neveranticipated the astronomical rise after the1986 ban on the manufacture of transfer-able machine guns.

Part of his logic on the inevitability ofprice escalation was based on the impactof the transfer tax. “On each transactionof a live gun, the value of that gun is in-creased by $200.00.” As he detailed, theowner of the gun in each succeeding trans-fer would want to recoup his original cost,plus expenses, plus a profit. As he ex-plained, after several transactions, “The$59.50 Thompson (Author’s note:Interarmco was selling these at this price

Left: Curtis would pack his catalogwith useful information on how tobuy NFA weapons and would cor-rectly describe their investment po-tential such as it appears on thisback cover from a 1988 catalog.(Chuck Olsen)



in 1967) is now listing at $500.00. Thenew buyer pays the $200.00 federal tax,making his total cost for the gun $700.00...and ad infinitum.”

Third, he provided a summary of theclasses of machine guns, key dos anddon’ts, the possible problems withremanufactured guns or “re-wats,” theregulations and the legal traps, sometimesin brutally frank terms. For example inhis 1988 catalog, after the dust had settledon the historic ATF raid, “(Un-registered)guns brought home by an earlier collectoras a war memento, or something from pro-hibition days... will show up... now andthen... but contraband they are, and con-traband they will most likely always be...good for spare parts only. The BATF Ge-stapo loves to find the ‘innocent’ owner ofsuch items... You may as well get caughtwith a kilo of ‘H’.”

Curtis had eight business advantagesthat, in sum, no one else had. First, he hada lifetime of collecting, bargaining knowl-edge and contacts. He knew guns andwhere you could get them. Second, he hada tremendous inventory from day one ofthe business. Third, the market timing wasin his favor. He went into business duringthe golden period, long before the astro-nomical rise in machine gun prices and thefield was packed with competition. Fourth,he had the capital to buy large lots of weap-ons from collectors, police departments,movie studios and prisons. Fifth, he had aknack for self-promotion and advertising.Sixth, he had something that few had - anairplane and a pilot’s license which al-lowed him to traverse the country lookingfor deals. Seventh, he could work out ofhis home, thus eliminating the cost for astorefront. Zoning was not an issue.Eighth, he had fortuitous luck as explainednext.

The Thoresen Gun Runs

Mentioned earlier was his chance en-counter with a wealthy air cargo freightbusiness owner that may have helped jumpstart his dealer career. Again, this may or

Right: Curtis bought the entireMGM Automatic Arms Collectionin 1970. There were so many sig-nificant items from this single pur-chase that he prepared a specialcatalog listing the guns and acces-sories. (Chuck Olsen)

may not have occurred, at least to the ex-tent Curtis would tell the story to severalfriends. But there was no question aboutanother chance occurrence, one that even-tually was described in the 1974 book, ItGave Everybody Something To Do, byLouise Thoresen.

Born Louise Banich into a blue-collarfamily of meager means, at the age oftwenty-one she met and married WilliamThoresen, a Chicago trust fund millionaire.He may have had wealth, but he was alsoan unstable manipulator and petty crimi-nal who had visions of grandeur, includ-ing dreams of establishing a military armsmuseum in San Francisco.

Louise wrote, “So once again I wascaught up in his schemes and agreed toembark with him on this new adventure -into the upper echelons and lower depthsof the gun dealing world.” Curtis’ ads had

caught his eye and he made arrangementsto meet him at his home in “Santa Fe, NewMexico.” In the book the characters’ ac-tual identities and locations were not re-vealed. Curtis was “Orval Lee.”

Jumping directly to the end from Curtis’standpoint, this wealthy individual paid forCurtis to fly around the country, build keycontacts and support William Thoresen’sefforts in assembling an arsenal reportedby federal agents to weigh as much as 70tons. Fast-forwarding to the end of thisstory from Louise’s standpoint, the mar-riage disintegrated, he abused her and in afamous California trial, she was acquittedof the murder of William by reason of self-defense.

A careful read of the book reveals morethan just Curtis’ fortuitous encounter withThoresen to expand his network on some-one else’s dime - another one of the win-



win deals he loved. It also revealed thenear paranoia and suspicions that influ-enced a few of the buyers and sellers fromthat period. On page 192 Louise wrote,“Within two hours, two FBI agents cameto our motel and arrested William on thefugitive warrant from Tucson.” (Author’snote: ATTU was the Alcohol, Tobacco TaxUnit of IRS, as it was called back thenbefore independence from the IRS in 1970or so) “We later learned that Orval Leehad begun making immediate inquiriesabout William and the ATTU and the FBI...He knew from the FBI that William hadbeen arrested, but he was still chary that itwas all part of an entrapment plot to nailhim.” (“Him” is emphasized in the origi-nal.)

On page 202 Louise continues, “‘I donot want to go there,’ Orval said. ‘You takecare of it. You take me to Newark Airportnow’... No amount of persuasion wouldchange his mind. We did not understandwhat all the panic was about, but we drovehim to Newark Airport anyway... It shouldhave occurred to us that Orval Lee’s sud-den departure from the gun run was muchmore than an omen, but neither of us wasvery good at looking into the future.”

Hours later Louise Thoresen was ar-rested for “storing explosives at an airportand attempted interstate shipment of ex-plosives and contraband firearms.” Yearslater Curtis would tell friends that hethought the Thoresens were trying to sethim up in an ATF sting operation.

Double Dealing and Contraband

On page 194 Louise implies that Curtiswas ready to facilitate contraband deals,“Look, let me tell you something, Lee saidexpansively. ‘The ATTU told me not todo business with you at all. But I thinkyou’re a nice guy... your wife is nice... Helooked at me with much more than casualinterest. ‘I’ll work with you on it... I’lltake a deposit on the papered weapons youwant, crate them and store them in abonded warehouse till we can transfer themto your name. And in the meantime,’ hegrinned expectantly, ‘maybe I know abouta few things you can buy right now fromfriends of mine. Unpapered. Machineguns you wanted, wasn’t it?’”

Thoresen’s comment about the lustfullook-over was absolute pure Curtis. Nodoubt that happened. But I have been un-able to uncover so much as a shred of in-

formation that he ever knowingly dealt incontraband. From the 1930s to the 1960s,the world of machine guns was differentthan it is today and as documented in ear-lier interviews in Small Arms Review ofleading historic figures in the industry. Thedraconian controls today did not exist indays past.

Maybe there were some less than per-fect deals, but it is highly unlikely thatCurtis, a financially well-off dealer, wouldhave put his collection, which was his prideand joy, and his growing business, whichwas a major source of income, in jeopardy,all to earn a few extra bucks. He was defi-nitely always looking to abscond with afew extra dollars or score some trinket hehad his eye on, but felonious activities wereunlikely.

He did run into an issue in 1976 thateventually resulted in the confiscation of13 machine guns and one silencer. In hisbound book he listed their removal as“ATF Commandeered.” He bought fromthe Kearny, Arizona police department oneRuger AC-556 machine gun, three M60machine guns and one M-11 submachinegun. The ATF alleged that the transfer wasarranged to take advantage of the policeand military discount on the price of these

new guns - in effect, a straw purchasethrough Donald Lane, the Police Chief. Inaddition, some manufacturers would onlysell directly to the military and law enforce-ment. ATF allegedly used this as justifi-cation for the subsequent search warrantand raid in June 1977. Curtis claimed thatall these transfers were done with full ap-proval of the ATF.

Curtis was extremely cautious, to thepoint of paranoia. For example, he fre-quently would tape record telephone con-versations and some of these tapes stillexist. Even the ATF was aware that hewould record conversations. These re-cordings stand as vivid testimony to Curtis’skill as a crafty tactician and brutal nego-tiator. Several involved talks with LouiseThoresen after she was acquitted of mur-der and re-acquired all the properly pa-pered guns that were part of the estate. Shetold Curtis that she was offered $5,000 bythe ATF to set up dealers.

In her book, Thoresen also raised thepossibility of Curtis being an agent for thegovernment, essentially a snitch. On this,the record is clear. He was. Curtis helpedfrom time to time when he wanted to courtfavors or defensively position himself.

His July 1979 Senate testimony was ex-

Above: Curtis accompanied Louise and William Thoresen on a series of “gunruns” in 1966. The couple would later be arrested on weapons charges, andLouise was acquitted of the murder of her husband. As documented in Senatetestimony, Curtis was cooperating with the ATF on their gun-dealing activi-ties. (Source: It Gave Everybody Something To Do)



plicit, even mentioning some of theThoresen dealings and tape recordings:

Senator DeConcini: In what manner didyou cooperate with the agencies?

Mr. Earl: Primarily acting as an infor-mant to the FBI and ATF people in turn-ing in people who I know were bad guys.

Senator DeConcini: You had acted as aninformant for ATF?

Mr. Earl: Many, many, many times.

Senator DeConcini: At their request?

Mr. Earl: No sir; because I felt it was theduty as a citizen to do so.

His daughter Pat was aware of herfather’s cooperation with ATF, “In 1983 Iwas working for TransWest Air Service inSalt Lake City at the front counter rentingairplanes. Two ATF agents flew in andwaited at one of the nearby tables until theygot their orders to pursue a suspect. Theyflew off and returned in less than an hour.In the meantime, the office had called andasked for them and inadvertently men-tioned that they were from ATF. I assumedthat they lost their suspect and mentionedsomething to effect, ‘Looks like somebodygot away from the ATF.’

“One of the agents was surprised andasked, ‘How do you even know what ATFis?’ In typical Earl fashion, I told himbluntly, ‘You guys have been pretty nastyto my father, J Curtis Earl.’ One agentimmediately said, ‘One of my first ATFassignments was to check his books forseveral illegal weapons we were trying tolocate. I spent all day and found nothing.When I was leaving, your father askedwhat prompted the inspection and I toldhim exactly what we were looking for. Heresponded, ‘I do not deal in illegal guns.You should have asked me in the firstplace.’ Then he proceeded to tell me ex-actly the information I needed and thewhereabouts of the guns. I have a lot ofrespect for that man.’”

Getting back to the original point,

namely, Thoresen’s version of what wenton. Just how truthful was she in all this?Autobiographies are inevitably spun tofavor the author. She killed her husbandand she was, to some extent, rationalizingher actions. In the book she made numer-ous references to deals in transferable,properly papered guns across the countryin which Curtis allegedly was involved.Cross-referencing his bound book fromthat period reveals no connection to thesepossible deals. The book may be accuratein broad terms, but in terms of any spe-cific illegal operations which may haveinvolved Curtis, the evidence is weak.

A Collection of Dreams

By 1983 Curtis had amassed an inven-tory of approximately 800 NFA firearms.There were complete “sub-collections” of

machine guns which he divided into thecategories of (1) assault rifles; (2) light andheavy machine guns; (3) submachine guns;and (4) silencers and silent weapons.These were further broken down by coun-try of origin. He had complete or nearlycomplete collections of English, Japanese,French, German and American guns plusothers, from the first machine gun inventedup to, at the time, the latest U.S. M60. Healso had a nearly complete collection ofaircraft machine guns. There were mili-tary, commercial and even prototypes. Healso became the primary distributor of theE. H. de la Garrigue half-scale miniatureThompsons.

The center of the collection and whathe was most noted for, aside from somespecific guns mentioned later, was whathe claimed to be the only complete Th-ompson submachine gun collection in the

Right: His guns, usually the Thomp-sons, landed on the cover of gun maga-zines and received feature story treat-ment such as the “Midas Touch” Th-ompson in 1973. (Chuck Olsen)



world. So extensive was his col-lection that Gordon Herigstad,author of Colt Thompson SerialNumbers, sought out and wasgiven access to his bound bookrecords in 1995. Later, after Curtisdied, he produced a separate list-ing for all Thompsons Curtis hadfrom 1965 through 2000. OnCurtis’ bound book at one time oranother were the following:

• 199 Colt Model 1921, 1927 and1928 Navy

• 109 Savage Model 1928-A1 and1940-41 Auto-Ordnance

• 81 Savage Model M1 & M1A1and 1942 Auto-Ordnance

• 67 1952 Numrich Arms Corpo-ration Thompson Model 1921& 28

• 35 West Hurley Model 1928 &27-A1 Semi-Auto

He had five consecutively serialnumbered sets (i.e., 10 Thompsonstotal). Some were movie gunsfrom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer(MGM) Studios or television gunssuch as those used in the TV se-ries, The Untouchables. Manywere from police departments around thecountry or from notorious prisons such asAttica, Sing Sing, Folsom and SanQuentin. One incredibly engraved andornate 1921 Thompson was dubbed the“Midas Touch” and it made the cover ofthe July 1973 issue of Guns & Ammo. Thiswas another form of advertising that at-

tracted new, high-end customers.His inventory also included approxi-

mately 200 Title 1 firearms, some standard,but mostly rare collectable rifles, pistolsand shotguns, especially Lugers, Mausersand Winchesters. There were also sevencannons ranging from 20 to 75mm. Hehad tons of ammunition and accessories;

some rare accessories were more valuablethan the guns that they were designed for.A lot of the inventory was impressive justbecause of the sheer volume of particularmodels. Aside from the Thompsons, hehad 66 MAC M-10s and M-11s and 44Reisings. He also had a mind-bogglingcollection of German MG 34s and 42s -33 in all.

The 1983 business prospective totaledthe value as follows:

Firearms (Title I and II)$1,450,000

Destructive Devices60,000

Accessories and spare parts150,000

Ammunition15,000Total

(1983 dollars)$1,675,000

Total(2009 inflation adjusted dollars)

$3,600,000

Of course, gun values did not track in-

Above: Curtis helped on the Mexico set of the 1970 movie Catch-22, maintaining B-25 Mitchell bombers and sitting in the co-pilot’s seat dressed in uniform during film-ing. Curtis was in heaven; he could not be a real WWII hero like his famous child-hood friend, Gail Halvorsen, but he got to play a bomber hero in the movies. (MichelleEarl Cruson)

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flation, a fact pointed out by Curtishimself. If one were to make aguess of the average value of theguns at $10,000 each, one can seethat this inventory, if it existed to-day, could approach $10 million.This is all just idle speculationsince some of these guns wouldsell today for somewhere betweena few hundred dollars to a hundredthousand dollars or more each.Examples of a few of the moreexotic guns in this later categoryincluded the following:

• Charles Nungesser, WWI Frenchflying ace’s Lewis aircraft ma-chine gun responsible for 38German kills

• Pancho Villa’s Lewis machineguns confiscated by Arizonaauthorities in their originalshipping containers

• Thompson experimental 9mmmodel serial number S1

• Thompson Model M1A1 presen-tation commemorative madefor President Eisenhower

• FN-FAL select fire Serial num-ber 1

• Gewehr 43, semiautomaticMauser code ac44, presentedby the Walther people to AlfredJodl, WWII German militarycommander

The MGM Automatic ArmsCollection that he acquired at pub-lic auction in 1970 was so exten-sive that he prepared a specialcatalog detailing the items. Theyrepresented all of the machineguns used by MGM in their movieand television productions over a40-year period. This includedWorld War I and II movies,Pancho Villa and the SpanishAmerican War movies and “gen-eral shootouts of all descriptions,including the Tarzan flicks wherethree of the Vickers were used.”

Television series included Com-bat and Rat Patrol. These wereguns used by Wallace Berry, ClarkGable, Humphrey Bogart, EdwardG. Robinson, John Wayne, JamesCagney and others. Twenty gunswere transferable and those thatwere not, such as several of the .50

Curtis’ inventory was nothing short of breathtaking. Some of the more valuablepieces were kept in the vault that was secured by a door imported from Spain. Inaddition, he had a display area in his home. These pictures are images taken of theoriginal 20x25 inch poster board photographs that he used in his 1979 $8.4 milliondollar lawsuit against several agencies for “malicious prosecution.” (Chuck Olsen)



caliber Brownings, were parted out and thereceivers destroyed by the ATF. ThisMGM lot also included spare parts andaccessories, some in mint condition.

According to a letter dated January 8,1992, 188 guns in his collection were soldto Windward Aviation, Inc. (ChamplinFighter Museum). Indeed, there were somany transferred in that one sale that heprepared a special rubber stamp to makeeach entry in the ledger. Even after thissingle lot sale in 1987 and other individualsales, he still had approximately 520 TitleII weapons in 1992 because of new addi-tions. These figures did not include hispersonal guns and all of the specialty itemssuch as ancient weapons and armaments.Many of these went to the J Curtis EarlMemorial Exhibit in Boise, Idaho.

Business with the Rich and Famous

Needless to say, Curtis and his collec-tion were attracting international attention,including interest from very wealthy andconnected individuals. From time to timeCurtis would relate stories to friends who

took these in, but sometimes wondered ifhe exaggerated. After his death, however,a number of photographs and other recordsverified these stories.

Some of these prominent connectionswere not related exclusively to guns. Forexample, he claimed that he would scubadive with Jacques Cousteau in Mexico. Healso was a friend of Frank Tallman, a stuntpilot, who worked in Hollywood in the1960s and 1970s. Tallman was the presi-dent of Tallmantz Aviation which supplieda fleet of operating B-25 Mitchell bomb-ers to recreate a Mediterranean wartimebase as depicted in the 1970 movie Catch-22. The flying was done in Guaymas,Sonora, Mexico and Curtis dressed in auniform and sat in the co-pilot’s seat. Theproduction required three months to shootand the bombers flew a total of about 1,500hours. Curtis was in heaven: he could notbe in WWII for real like his friend,Halvorsen, but he got to play a bomberhero in the movies.

He had pictures of himself with actorssuch as Mr. T (born Laurence Tureaud)who starred in the television series The A-

Team and autographed photos from celeb-rities such as Grits Gresham, host of ABC’sThe American Sportsman series from1966-1979. There were copies of recordsof export licenses for guns sold to MiddleEastern sheiks. Curtis would marvel toothers at how these otherwise complicatedexport deals would proceed through thebureaucracy at lightning speed for the dip-lomats. One friend relates the story of ar-riving at his house to find a shiny newFerrari in the driveway, “Curtis and theowner had been fighting over the price ofa case of ammo - like their very existencedepended on the last few dollars of pricedifference. The case of ammo wouldn’tfit in the trunk, so it rode in the passengerseat.”

He entertained his friends with these sto-ries, but the events were also a harbingerof something else... a growing interest byfederal agencies.

(Part three describes the growing frictionwith government agencies and the NFA guncommunity, his quest for a lasting legacy andthe tumultuous final days of his life.)

As his business became well-known and his repu-tation as a dealer in exotic weapons grew, Curtisstarted mixing with the rich and famous such asGrits Gresham, host of ABC’s The AmericanSportsman series from 1966-1979. He was alsoattracting interest by government agencies suchas the ATF. (Michelle Earl Cruson)

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