Alan Weeks

Alan Weeks was a performer best known for his role in William Friedkin’s classic 1971 film, The French Connection.

Weeks played a drug pusher in the Oscar-winning film that starred Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as a pair of New York City cops in the narcotics bureau who discover a drug smuggling operation led by a French narcotics trafficker. Early in the film, Weeks’s character is chased down by Hackman’s, and then dragged into an alley and roughed up.

Weeks also appeared in the films Shaft, Willie Dynamite, Black Belt Jones, Lost in the Stars, Truck Turner, Without a Trace, Claudia and Brighton Beach Memoirs.

Additionally, he worked in television, with roles on the TV series The Rookies, Police Story, Police Woman, Fame, Hull High, Dallas and PBS’s Great Performances as Tweedledee in a 1983 production of Alice in Wonderland. He also had a regular role on the short-lived 1982 CBS comedy Baker’s Dozen, about a New York City police station.

Weeks first appeared on Broadway at the age of 10 and worked primarily in theater throughout his career. He made his debut in 1958 in the musical comedy The Body Beautiful. He later appeared in the original production of Funny Girl, starring Barbra Streisand; The Wiz; Ain’t Misbehavin’; and Hallelujah, Baby! Weeks later turned to directing and choreography with 1992’s The High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club.

In his later years he taught theater in Poughkeepsie, New York, and directed at the Capital Repertory Theater in Albany, New York.

Weeks died October 10, 2015, in Rensselaer County, New York. He was 67.