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Short Orders. Harlow Herbert Curtice was born (1893) in the little crossroads town of Petrieville, Mich., the second son of a wholesale-produce man. (Curtice's older brother, LeRoy, has been an hourly-paid paint-and-metal inspector at G.M.'s Fisher Body plant since 1936.) After graduating from high school, Curtice worked for a year in a local woolen mill, saved up enough to go to Big Rapids' Ferris Institute. To pay his way, he worked as a short-order cook in the Blue Front Cafe. Eager to get on in the world, he quit Ferris after two years, moved to Ma Kelleher's boarding house in Flint, where he got room and board for $3 a week. He answered an AC Spark Plug want ad for a bookkeeper, was asked in the interview what his ambition might be. Said the brash young man to his future boss: "Your job, within a year."
Red Curtice meant it. He worked nights, poked through the plant getting to know production and engineering, volunteered to do some selling. He soon caught the eye of John Lee Pratt, then a member of G.M.'s presidential staff and a director since 1923. Says Pratt, now 75: "Some of these accountant fellows just sit and look at pieces of paper. That young redheaded fellow started going down in the plant and found out what determined his costs. He had to learn the technical side of the business, and he went out and learned it." Within a year after he was hired, at the age of 21, Curtice was made controller of AC Spark Plug.
Middle-Age Spread. With time out for a World War I stint overseas in the field artillery (he came out a private first class), Curtice rapidly rose to AC assistant general manager, vice president, and, at 36, president. Then, in 1933, came an opportunity born of disaster. General Motors' Buick, for years a notable success as the safe, sound and respectable "doctor's car," was in dire trouble. It had gone up in price, fallen behind in styling, grown fat and heavy (one model was inelegantly nicknamed the "pregnant Buick," the "bedpan Buick" and the "bathtub Buick"). When Depression struck, it hit Buick square in its middle-age spread, and Buick's share of the auto market dropped from more than 8% to 2.9%, a mere 43,809 cars. G.M. directors talked darkly of dropping Buick from the company, but Executive Vice President William Knudsen, the Great Dane, took another view. He aimed to "get Buick off relief," and thought the man to do it was Red Curtice. Other G.M. brasshats were skeptical, since Curtice had had no auto experience. Said Knudsen: "Vait and see."
Curtice's first decision was to "make a car to sell at lower cost"; his second was to get Harley Earl, who was driving a Cadillac at the time, to design a Buick "you would like to drive." The result was a new, light and cheap Special. As the new car was being readied for production, Curtice swung around the country getting to know his harried dealers, talking over their problems and boosting morale. On many a trip, he took his wife and even his mother, who played poker with Curtice and his associates between stops.