Algernon Maltby "Curley" Stecker (July 10, 1892 – June 16, 1924) was an early Hollywood animal trainer, Universal City Zoo superintendent, animal-film producer, and occasional actor-stuntman.

[8] Technically it was a hypnotist he ran off with but nonetheless young Stecker then "drifted from one traveling show to another until he finally found his forte with the menagerie of a circus.

[9] Curley Stecker appears with an unidentified elephant in a stereoscopic view taken at the Appalachian Exposition in 1910; at the time he was apparently associated with "Big Otto's Trained Wild Animals.

While standing in as Williams' stunt double, Stecker was mauled by a tiger that bit into his shoulder, clawed his chest and tore off a chunk of flesh.

There is a photo in the Los Angeles-centric Security Pacific National Bank Collection wherein "an elephant named 'Old Charlie' is pulling a wagon as men clear brush from a hillside near a road in April 1914.

[19] In October 1917 Stecker married a 25-year-old vaudeville[20] actress named Ethel L. Spurgin Schroeder,[3] the mother of his one-year-old son Roy.

[22][23][24][25] In January 1919 it was reported that Stecker has been working on "aviation serials" recently "but after having two bad falls...he came back to the lions for a quiet life.

"[26] Stecker lost part of a finger—the little finger of the left hand was off at the knuckle—in 1921 in an accident while shooting a lion scene on Terror Trail!

[27][28] Also in 1921 he had a credited on-screen part in the lion-tamer romance The Man Tamer (1921) starring Gladys Walton, alongside past and future Universal City Zoo superintendents Rex De Rosselli and Charles B.

[30] It may have been on this occasion that "boy wonder" producer Irving Thalberg, who sometimes demonstrated a "lack of sensitivity to other people's problems...went to the hospital and lectured Stecker on the proper way to take care of wild animals.

The attack took place during a break in shooting the genie-in-a-bottle film The Brass Bottle, directed by Maurice Tourneur.

Charlie had spent the day leading a parade of camels and donkeys down a London street set—"the elephant had been painted white and loaded with gorgeous East Indian trappings for the scene and it is believed this may have angered him.

"[35] An obituary in Exhibitors Herald related "The famous handler of beasts passed away at his home in Lankershim last week as the result of injuries received about a year ago when Charlie, a trained elephant owned by Universal, turned on his master and mauled him severely.

Besides Charlie, Stecker trained Joe Martin, the famous ape, Ethel, the educated lioness and other four-footed screen stars.