Tony Curtis

A young Tony Curtis.

The first time I noticed Tony Curtis was when I was a kid and watched Some Like it Hot.   Marilyn Monroe got all the attention and Jack Lemon stole every scene, but Curtis played the straight man, making both stars better.   He plays a lothario, seducing every woman around him.  It was a role that he seemed to play often.

In real life Curtis bragged about his sexual conquests.  "I ran around with a lump in my pants, chased all the girls. This is what I reflected on the screen. There wasn't anything deeper or less deep than that."  He came from an abusive home where his mother would beat him.  He admitted that his need to get women to have sex with him had as much to do with getting a woman's approval as it did for physical pleasure.   'I realized if I could [have sex with] a girl . . . a woman has accepted me. The main force in me was to be accepted by others. Not education, not money in my pocket, nothing except to be accepted by a girl."  

He married five different woman and had six children, including Jamie Lee Curtis with his first wife, actress Janet Leigh.  For the most part he has been estranged from all of them.  He and Jamie Lee rarely spoke.  "What am I going to do? God bless her, I wish her the best. If she can't forgive me, then get another father."

Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx.  He changed his name to not sound Jewish.  When Curtis first came to Hollywood he discovered his good looks were his pass to a career,  as well as many girl's beds. "I was 22 when I arrived in Hollywood in 1948. I had more action than Mount Vesuvius...."   He claims in his Biography that he and many other Hollywood men would take sexual advantage of starlets trying to make it in the movies.

He claimed one of his many early conquests was Marilyn Monroe.  "She was 19 and didn't look anything like what she became. She had reddish-brown hair and her figure was not distinguished yet. Her bosoms weren't what they were later and her legs  were a little scrawny, but she was putting it all together. Don't you see? Once she accepted she was a woman, then, look out, world. There was no guy that was safe. If she liked you, there was no man who could resist."

He made his film debut in 1949.  He made a series of mostly forgettable films.  He had a small role in James Stewart's Winchester 73 (1950).  His first starring role was in The Prince Who Was a Thief. (1951)  He played Harry Houdini in 1953, co-starring with his wife Janet Leigh.  His career was at it's highest in the late 50's with a string of classics.  He starred in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957),  The Defiant Ones (1958), in which he lobbied for Sidney Poitier to be his co-star.

1959 was his year.  It saw the release of Some Like it Hot, and Operation Pettycoat.  Both were huge hits and Curtis got to work with his idol, Cary Grant, "He could have picked anyone, but he allowed me the privilege to be in the movie with him. Jesus. To be in a movie with Cary Grant. Meeting him was the best thing that ever happened to me."

In 1960 he shared a homoerotic scene with Laurence Olivier in Spartacus.  The scene was very controversial for the time.  Ironically, 45 years later Curtis would object to the gay love story Brokeback Mountain (2005), "This picture is not as important as we make it. It's nothing unique. The only thing unique about it is they put it on the screen. And they make 'em gay cowboys. Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it."

Curtis, Monroe and Lemmon in the greatest comedy ever made, Some Like it Hot.

Tony Curtis went on to make  many more films and appeared on numerous television shows.  He never regained the lofty heights of those few years in the late 50s.  He developed a cocaine addiction.  He claimed he started using it because it  enhanced his sexual pleasure.  He also became an accomplished painter.  He kept acting to the end, but he felt he never earn much respect as an actor, "I felt I deserved more than What the industry had given me."

With his classic films, and prolific sex life, Tony Curtis became a Hollywood legend.   I will always think of him as Joe, the horn dog who tries to, and eventually gets, Marilyn Monroe in bed, in Some Like it Hot.   It may well be the role that is closest to who he was in real life.  He lived to be 85.  "What's the secret to a long and happy life? Young women's saliva."

All quotes are attributed to Tony Curtis, via IMDB.