The Incorrigible Tony Curtis

Hey Tony, are you listening up there?  Can you hear me?  Tell all the ladies to stop feeding you grapes on your overstuffed pillows and to stop oiling your body.  I have something to tell you.  Are you listening?  You were very handsome.  Ok, I'm sorry... you were very, very, very handsome.  Are you satisfied?  I got it out of the way right off.   Now listen up.

Okay, admittedly, that sounds like a scene from one of his early movies, say The Prince Who Was a Thief or Son of Ali Baba, two of the winners he made for Universal, but Tony always liked to hear how handsome he was and he liked to tell it as well.  So many of his films contained at least one line on his good looks.  I would not be surprised that he said it 50 times in his first autobiography.  It got to be such a hoot for my partner and me that while I was reading the book, I would call out... he said it again and I would often hear what's wrong with him?

I've never known an actor more obsessed with his own looks than Curtis.  He was shameless, conceited, embarrassing, self-obsessed, an inveterate name-dropper, ass-kisser, bad husband, worse father, a gossip, had a vicious mean streak and was forever trying to prove something and could go to extremes to accomplish it and was, well, just incorrigible.  That can mean unmanageable, uncorrectable and uncontrollable... yep, that's the right word.  I think I'll use it.  Oh wait, I see I have.

Let's do the other side.  I have to agree with Tony... he was handsome although I regarded it as a feminized male beauty that he helped bring into style.  We all noticed the black, pomaded pompadour, the striking blue eyes, the super long lashes, the gorgeous, ever-present smile, the infectious enthusiasm and the feeling that the delinquent in him was still there and thriving.  Talk about appeal.  There was something fun about all of those colorful Universal-International movies and the gorgeous actors, male and female, that populated them which sent me into my neighborhood theater.  Tony Curtis movies helped raise me.

Aside from his looks I found him to be a good actor but he became a big movie star before he became a good actor.  I section his 93 films into four.  First, of course, were those films for U-I, a studio that didn't care about too much more than if one were pretty and knew the lines.  Then came his best films, mostly post U-I, a period of around 10 years or so. 

During his second marriage and some time after, he made all those silly comedies, all trying to top Pillow Talk, with mainly European actresses.  It appeared he showed up for the paycheck and little more.  Then came a period of time that lasted longer than any other period (continuing until the end of his life) when his career fell into movie-making hell.  I wonder why.  It didn't happen to his pals Douglas or Lancaster or his idol Grant.

Curtis spent almost an entire life feeling very insecure and those feelings were always hurt.  I can't imagine that his years of counseling didn't shine a light on the fact that his bragging and need for attention were overcompensating for that insecurity.  It started very early.

Born as Bernard Schwartz in 1925 in the Bronx.  He was born to an inconsequential father, who eked out a living as a tailor, and a schizophrenic mother who frequently beat her children.  He adored one of his younger brothers, Julius.  The family, Hungarian Jews, were extremely poor and young Bernie was a street kid who was part of a gang.  The parents argued a great deal and Bernie went to a lot of movies.

Two childhood events had a powerful effect on him.  One was that his parents put their sons in the foster care system because they could not afford to keep them.  Even though the boys were only gone for a few months, Curtis said that he returned home a much
tougher kid.  In 1938 brother Julius was struck by a truck and killed.

In 1942 he enlisted in the Navy, serving in a number of capacities.  He felt he received the education he never received as a kid.  In 1943 he saw Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo and life was never the same.  For one, he became besotted with Grant, perhaps a case of simple hero worship, and it never changed.  Secondly, he decided he wanted to become an actor.  That decision intensified after he performed in a play aboard ship.

He got out in 1945 and through the G.I. Bill signed up for acting classes.  Sometimes his life as a young lothario got in the way but
three years later, at age 23, he was playing the lead in an off-Broadway play, Golden Boy.  He was spotted by an agent from Universal-International and signed to a seven-year contract at $75/week.  He could not believe his good fortune. 

Piper Laurie eventually stopped speaking to him

U-I, with all its shortcomings, did provide good training and he was in classes with Rock Hudson, Piper Laurie, Julie Adams, Jeff Chandler, Suzan Ball, Richard Long and other lookers.  Curtis soon gained a reputation as a vacuous pretty boy, womanizer, braggart and with a voice that needed to be worked on.  Yonda lies the castle of my fodder in one of his sand-and-sandal epics caused hysterical giggles from the public and around Hollywood.  He was humiliated but would exact his pound of flesh.

His debut was playing a gigolo, seen only from the back, dancing with Yvonne deCarlo, in 1948's Criss Cross.  The star was Burt Lancaster, who would come to figure prominently in Curtis's life.  He was in a dozen or so movies with forgettable roles, including some westerns for which he was wholly unsuited. 

Nonetheless he would go on to become U-I's second biggest star attraction of his day, right behind his pal Hudson, and yet Curtis was treated as a bit of a joke.   A favorite topic of derision came every time it was heard that he would ask a director if he could get  another closeup.  The class that he hoped he'd achieve with his big houses, Rolls Royces, fat Cuban cigars, closets-full of suits and wads of cash would come in a few years. 

There were also those gay innuendos.  Sometimes they faded away but then cropped up again.  I've recall interviews where he brought up the G word out of nowhere.  In certain circles folks would say he was too pretty not to be gay.  Some were fooled by his six marriages and six children.  What kind of a gay man would do that?   Well, his hero Cary Grant for one.  Oh wait, that's five marriages and one child.

Nonetheless I am not saying Curtis was gay then or ever.  For sure he loved women or more accurately he loved to bed them.  But he  wouldn't be the first or last handsome young man with questionable talent and a burning desire to succeed in Hollywood to slip under the sheets with an influential man. 

In 2002 he told the gay magazine Attitude that when he arrived in Hollywood he had more action than Mt. Vesuvius... men, women, animals.  He said there was a very powerful homosexual group out there and a lot of traps.  There were situations you could get into where you get yourself caught and you had to be aware of it.  But it never seemed to be anything you took seriously and I laughed my way through any of the ignominy.  I did OK.   Animals?

His first touch of true fame came, believe it or not, with The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951).  U-I could not believe how much fan mail Curtis received and when he went out on publicity tours, girls would scream and carry on like they would do for other gods of the silver screen.  A new teen idol had been christened.  Of course, he was living the moment, in more ways than one.

Hollywood royalty known simply as Tony and Janet

Another huge event happened during this time.  He met a pretty, curvy ingenue from the mighty MGM, Janet Leigh and they started dating.  Her studio wasn't crazy about the idea... they thought she could do better.  The publicity these two generated was quite unbelievable and for almost 10 years.  One really needed to have been around at the time and paid some attention.  Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds and Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner gave them a run for their money and The Liz and Dick Show topped them, but boy how I remember Tony and Janet, Tony and Janet, Tony and Janet.  Migawd it was everywhere.  Curtis, ever the ungallant one, said the marriage was partly for the publicity.

Meanwhile there were all those U-I stinkers... No Room for the Groom, Son of Ali Baba, The All-American, Johnny Dark, The Purple Mask, The Black Shield of Falworth... I can't go on.  Mentioning them makes my fingers hurt.  But doncha know I saw them all?

Then came 1953's Houdini (another one from Hungarian ancestry who learned to reinvent himself).  Hollywood thought it was high time to costar Curtis and Leigh in a film but interestingly neither of their home studios had anything to offer.  Paramount brought the highly-fictionalized story of the famous magician to the screen and the country flocked to it.  I loved it at the time and it allowed Curtis to turn another corner in his acting career.

The couple would go on to make four other films but we will not go through them because we've already done that once.

Also in 1953 came another Curtis movie I loved, Forbidden.  In the scheme of things, it's a little B programmer and a rip-off of the much better Gilda, but Curtis, my treasured Joanne Dru and one of the great movie villains, Lyle Bettger, and their shenanigans in Macao (okay, the Universal backlot) excited the hell out of young me.  

Trapeze (1956) saw Curtis turn another corner.  In fact it is the film that put him on the map, certainly as a movie star.  It concerns a trio of high-wire performers (Curtis, Lancaster and Gina Lollobrigida) who become involved in an unhealthy love triangle.  They all learned how to perform in the air although they had stunt doubles.  Unfortunately, Lollobrigida's died in a fall.  Curtis and Leigh loved being in Paris and he met a new buddy in Lancaster who would be back.

Curtis nailed it as Mister Cory (1957), a colorful romance-drama about a young guy from the slums who goes from a dishwasher at a country club to the world of movers and shakers through his skills as a gambler.  It now seems like classic Curtis... dressed to the nines, snarky, full of himself.  He romances two sisters (improbably played by Martha Hyer and Kathryn Grant) and had a wonderful onscreen relationship with old pro Charles Bickford.  

Then came his biggest break yet... when the popular movie star became an actor of some real substance.  The film noir Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is his shining hour.  As Sidney Falco, he is a perspiring, unctuous New York publicist suffering from serious self-loathing as he sucks up to a powerful and evil Broadway columnist (apparently based on Walter Winchell and played by Lancaster).  It's the best work Curtis ever did and he thought so, too.  And the reason for that is simple enough... this is Tony Curtis laid bare.  He never made a film where he gave or showed this much of himself.   If Curtis is essentially playing himself, Lancaster is playing against type.. if nothing more than he's never been so quiet in a movie and perhaps never so evil.

For quite a few years it wasn't very popular... certainly not with the public, including me, and I suspect by critics too.  But when we all took a second look, it is clear that the Clifford Odets/Ernest Lehman screenplay sparkles and intrigues.  Dark and talky it is... and a classic as well.  

Director Alexander Mackendrick took another tack.  He said that he felt Curtis would never be a real star.  He had a fantastic vanity but no ego.  He hasn't this granite quality that icons need.  I suspect Curtis didn't give the director the respect he deserved and Mackendrick's remarks are largely retaliatory.  I still remember how much Curtis fawned over Lancaster in the press and the older actor never appeared to return the favor.

The late 50s and early 60s were a most interesting time for the Curtises, both personally and professionally.  They were always the social engagement not to be missed.  Their parties were legendary and their guest lists mind-blowing.  They rubbed elbows with the Rat Pack and soon it would be JFK.  Devout Democrats, Janet and Tony did all they could to get him more well-known and elected.  

Curtis was beside himself with glee.  He hoped the old gang in the Bronx was keeping up with his good fortune.  He said that Hollywood folks thought of him as an upstart, someone who was always taking advantage, always looking for a new angle. (Hollywood was right.)  He said he felt despised.   Now look at his guest lists, note who visited his home.  He would count the President of the United States among his friends.  He was a bon vivant, the great impresario.  He could add farceur to his résumé.  He was still the adolescent who never planned to grow up.

He and Leigh had two very young daughters (I think you know one of them) that also became part of the movie magazine fodder.  My goodness, weren't they a beautiful, young family.  The Camelot they had come to know would last forever.

Curtis enjoyed the year 1958.  The couple headed off to Norway, France and Germany to both appear in The Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Ernest Borgnine.  Douglas, Curtis and Leigh would co-produce.  It was a difficult shoot but a fine adventure movie, hinting at some authenticity.  The Curtises had become good friends with the Douglases.  

Returning to the states he immediately went into filming Kings Go Forth, a romance-war film dealing with him and Frank Sinatra both in love with Natalie Wood in France.  The relationships are complicated because of her mixed race background.  Sinatra was top-billed but Curtis had the showier role.  Despite making two more films with Wood (The Great Race and Sex and the Single Girl, both losers), she didn't particularly care for him.

With Poitier...  pals forever 

Then came another of Curtis's great films, The Defiant Ones.  For my money, this performance is in the same class with Sweet Smell of Success although this film was far more popular.  The Curtises' Curtleigh Productions would co-produce along with director Stanley Kramer's company.  The story focused on two escaped prisoners on the lam, one black, one white, who are chained together and hate one another.  

It was an exciting story in which Poitier, clearly the better actor, brought out the best in Curtis.  He, on the other hand, knew that United Artists plan to give him sole above-the-title billing and he went to bat for Poitier, claiming they both deserved it.  And they got it.  Poitier was beholden and the two men became life-long friends.  Both were also Oscar-nominated for best actor.  Poitier would be the first black man nominated in that category and it would be Curtis's only nomination.

Surely Some Like It Hot (1959) is his most famous film and another of his best acting jobs.  He did have a flare for comedy.  Two musicians donning drag and joining an all-girl band in order to avoid a mob of killers always seemed inspired to me.  Curtis and Lemmon were a joy to watch and Monroe turned in one of her best performances.  

Do you need names?

There have long been tales of some unkind things that Curtis said about Monroe (kissing her was like kissing Hitler... and more) but in his bios and elsewhere he swears he has been misquoted or that he was just having fun.  After all, he says, I have not kissed Hitler.  He says that, in fact, they resumed an affair that they'd had many years earlier and that he got her pregnant.  He said she was quite a woman.  Oh TC, you are so right.

Director Billy Wilder, who was far more interested in working with Lemmon, said that Curtis was a man who just liked to wear too-tight pants and have big billing.  Apparently he wasn't impressed.  Curtis could usually be found feeling sorry for himself although it did seem he could never catch a break.  Unfortunately, despite his string of good roles, it was all gonna get worse shortly.

Sometime in 1959 a friend and I went to an-all male party (I mentioned it in my piece on Rock Hudson) and I wasn't there five minutes before I spotted Curtis across the room.  He was holding court.  I thought I'd make my way over by him but I got sidetracked and never saw him again.  

In his third of four films directed by Blake Edwards, Operation Petticoat (1959), Curtis realized the dream of a lifetime... to work with the man he always wanted to be, Cary Grant.  Curtis had just happily impersonated him in Some Like It Hot, just as he'd done at many of his soirees, but here was the man in person.  And while the submarine flick was racy-funny, it just never moved me like it seemed to do others.  Maybe I was starving or something when I saw it.

Curtis was visiting Kirk Douglas's home when the subject of Spartacus (1960) came up.  Douglas was producer and star.  Curtis asked if there was a part in it for him and when Douglas said no, Curtis asked if he would write one.  And it was done.  He told the press he would now only be acting in movies of social relevance.  Of course Curtis's gay-laced scene in the baths with Laurence Olivier, snipped out of the film for years, has always generated conversation.  Do you suppose he even considered that costar John Gavin was better-looking?

That same year Leigh made Psycho, unquestionably the most famous movie of her career.  The press not only fell all over her (and would for years to come) for her part in the film but she captured a supporting Oscar nomination.  Curtis was plainly jealous.  Actually, he'd always been jealous of her for the respect she was accorded and the fact that she came out of MGM while he was at lowly Universal.

Their marriage had not been going well.  I don't recall if in her autobiography she said she knew of his cheating but how could she not have?  Men who are especially susceptible to flattery are prime candidates for philandering.  His appetite for fresh flesh was gargantuan.

Curtis had great time making The Great Impostor (1960), a comedy-drama based on the real-life of a man who was exactly as the title suggests.  It was a role tailor-made for him.

I find The Outsider (1961) to be another of Curtis's great performances.  He brought a great sadness to playing real-life Pima Indian Ira Hayes, a marine who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima and who suffered great prejudice along the way.  It is a stirring performance.  

Curtis and Leigh often joined one another on the other's movie locations and so off they went to Yugoslavia to film the Cossack adventure, Taras Bulba (1962).  She didn't stay long but Curtis would later say he and Leigh were separated for over a year at the time.  That was not true and he was given to stretching a point.  He said once that he rarely let the truth get in the way of an entertaining story.

Taras Bulba is the story of a feuding father and son.  The son falls in love with the Polish daughter of an overlord, the enemy of the Cossacks, setting in place the clash of love and family honor and offering a great battle.  Yul Brynner, playing Curtis's father, relinquished top-billing to him.  I enjoyed this imperfect film but it did not do well.  And that is mainly due to the scandal that Curtis and his 17-year old German costar, Christine Kaufmann, caused by flaunting their affair.  

Leigh had had enough and she divorced him.  She said later that she was tired of him embarrassing her.  The public was shocked and saddened and Curtis's image was badly damaged.  Nobody was on his side.  When he and Kaufmann married, they were both, more or less, written off.

With Christine Kaufmann

In 1963 he had the only comedic role in the otherwise serious Captain Newman M.D. opposite Gregory Peck.  Comedy did seem to be his forte.  I always loved the twinkle in his eye when he got a kick out of himself in comedies.  But this, the third phase of his career, the 60's comedies, were not what was hoped for.  Like Hudson, Curtis made a habit of costarring with much younger European actresses and scripts that were simply banal.

By 1968, the year his marriage to Kaufmann imploded, Curtis had another good role playing The Boston Strangler (1968), a serial killer.  He added some poundage and the makeup folks further altered his looks and he made the most of it.  Oddly, he did not  make an appearance for the first hour.  He was hoping for an Oscar nomination that never came and the public largely found the film exploitative.  Disappointed though he may have been, he chalked it up to Hollywood still hating him.  It would be his last major role in a quality film even though he had 36 more to go.  After that, he said, the pictures I got were not particularly intriguing but I had lots of child-support payments.  

He had two daughters with Kaufmann.  Four days after their divorce, he married a model, Leslie.  It would be his longest marriage.  They would have two sons.  In 1984 he married an actress named Andrea.  In 1993 he married Lisa, a lawyer (his shortest marriage).  In 1998 he married Jill, a horse trainer, and she became his widow.  

In the early 70s he was busted for weed in London.  In 1975, while filming Lepke, he started messing with more drugs, particularly cocaine.  His drug use would seriously alter his looks and behavior and would affect his life for years.  Word was out in Hollywood... he was a serious druggie.

He joined Mitchum and Nicholson for cameo roles in The Last Tycoon (1976), based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's last uncompleted novel, about a shrewd movie producer (DeNiro).  The film was a bust but of course I liked it.

He must have done a few too many lines of coke when he accepted a part in the Mae West movie, Sextette (1977).  Everyone in that horrid film should have been banned from ever making another movie.  In 1980 he supported Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews in a tepid remake of Little Miss Marker.  Also with a poor showing was A Mirror Crack'd (1980), despite a cast that included Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak and Angela Lansbury.  I liked the whodunit (at its center a look at an incident in Gene Tierney's life) with Curtis playing another ass-kisser.  He could have phoned it in.

What a cast... Novak, Hudson, Taylor, Curtis

I would never see another one of his movies.  Yes, that's right, along with the aforementioned Lobster Man from Mars, I missed Some Like It Cool (oh, how could he?!?!), Insignificance (migawd, he supported Gary Busey!), Naked in New York, The Mummy Lives, Roxanne's Best Christmas Ever and many more.  Of course he turned to television, which included several short-lived series.

In the mid-80s Curtis took a break from making crappy movies and his drugged out and boozed-up life and signed up for the Betty Ford Center.  Around the same time he took up painting with a vengeance.  He'd been at the easel for years but now it became his great passion. 

He spent a year in 1992 touring with Sugar, a stage remake of his big hit, Some Like It Hot.  The public descended on it just to get a look at the one-time big movie star.  He played the Joe E. Brown millionaire part, not much more than a cameo.

In 1993 Tony Curtis: The Autobiography was published.  Apparently saying how handsome he was 50 times wasn't enough so in 2008 a second one came out, American Prince: A Memoir.  I guess he had a lot more to say.  Whether in his bios (especially that second one) or on TV talk shows, Curtis loved to run down people he'd known.  Hollywood liked him even less as a result.  A year later he wrote The Making of Some Like It Hot: My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Classic American Movie.   In 2013 Aubrey Malone wrote a very good biography on him called The Defiant One.

In 1994 his son Ben died of a heroin overdose at age 23.  There was lots of press about what a poor father he was.  Most or perhaps all of his five other children kept their distance.

The movies seemed to get worse and worse.  He wasn't going around saying how handsome he was although occasionally I heard him say how handsome he'd been.  He was painting a great deal but it didn't come with an audience which he needed.  So in 2006 he thought it was time to break out and say something controversial.  He picked on Brokeback Mountain.

By the end of 2005 and into 2006, the film would secure virtually every best picture win around the world, including three Oscar wins among eight nominations.  But before the Oscar ceremony Curtis launched his campaign.  He told Fox News that he hadn't seen the film and had no intention of doing so.  (His Vikings costar, Ernest Borgnine, shortly echoed the same sentiments.)  Curtis added the picture is not as important as we make it.  It's nothing unique except that they put it on the screen.  And they make 'em cowboys.

Well...!!!  I considered burning all copies of his movies.  He had some bloody nerve, especially with his background, to make such comments.  Maybe he wishes he could have been in so prestigious a film.  

In the last four years of his life, the only thing I recall of him was hearing something about his painting... something was sold for big bucks, there was a showing somewhere or maybe a picture of him sitting before an easel.  Once in awhile there would be something about horses, a passion he shared with his wife.

They lived in Henderson, Nevada and he died at home in 2010 of a heart attack at age 85.  He apparently left his five children out of his will.  I still remember reading an obit that said he could never rise above his own overblown ego.

His personal life makes for juicy fodder (and a long posting) but I prefer to remember him for his best work... Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like It Hot, The Defiant Ones, The Outsider and Trapeze.  

Did I mention he was once very handsome?


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They made the big musicals