was an American stage, film, and radio actor whose career spanned nearly seven decades.
Abel was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the son of Christine (née Becker) and Richard Michael Abel. Abel graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts where he had studied in 1917 and joined a touring company. His brother Alfred died in 1922 from tuberculosis contracted while serving overseas in World War I. Abel was married to concert harpist Marietta Bitter.
Abel as D'Artagnan, with Heather Angel in The Three Musketeers
Abel made his film debut in 1918 with a small part in Out of a Clear Sky, and his Broadway debut in Forbidden in 1919.
In 1924 he appeared in two Eugene O'Neill plays simultaneously: Bound East for Cardiff at the Provincetown Playhouse and Desire Under the Elms at the Greenwich Village Theater.[3] His many theatre credits include As You Like It (1923), William Congreve's Love for Love (1925), Anton Chekhov's The Seagull (1929–1930), Mourning Becomes Electra (1929), Kaufman and Hart's Merrily We Roll Along (1934), and Trelawny of the 'Wells'. He also appeared in Channing Pollock's play The Enemy (1926) with Fay Bainter, adapted to film as The Enemy (1927) with Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes. Abel made his stage debut in London in the 1929 Coquette.
His first major film role was as D'Artagnan in RKO Pictures' 1935 The Three Musketeers, and as hyperactive agent Danny Reed in the 1942 musical comedy Holiday Inn, with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.
Abel went on to play in more than sixty films, and was a vice president of the Screen Actors' Guild.
Abel also appeared as a concert narrator or reader with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait in 1951, and in Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood in 1953.
