10/6/22
Newsletter119
The Crack of Dawn
I just watched a good, hour-long interview with Tony Curtis (real name, Bernard Schwartz) from 2005, when he was 80. He couldn’t have had a better outlook on life. He understood that he was one of the luckiest people in the world, and didn’t take it for granted. Unlike almost every other actor who went through some sort of struggle, and trained in one way or another, Tony Curtis knew from the time he was little that he was going to be in the movies and that was that. Lucky for him he was a ridiculously good-looking kid. So much so – and this is what I’d never heard before – that it was a real detriment to growing up in the Bronx in the 1930s. He said that when he went out he was constantly accosted as a “Kike, faggot, pretty boy.” Tony said that this toughened him up a bit, but also made extremely aware of what streets not to go on. If he walked on certain streets he was going to get beat up, and he was in this sort of unique position of being reviled by Italians, the Irish, and the black folks. So, Tony served in the military during WWII, then got himself out to Hollywood as fast as he could. And, with no struggle, was immediately signed by a major studio and appeared in three movies right away. I really wanted his first film, City Across the River (1949), about tough street kids and gangs in NY, to be good, but it wasn’t. However, the gang he was in was the Amboy Dukes, which is where my fellow Detroiter, Ted Nugent, got the name for his band. Tony Curtis was the first young actor to sport the greasy pompadour haircut, which Elvis Presley admitted was why he got that haircut. Curtis was incredibly popular even though his first fifteen movies weren’t very good. He’d actually become something for a joke, particularly for his performance as a medieval English knight in The Black Shield of Farnsworth (1954), where, with his thick Bronx accent, he uttered the famous line, “Yondah lies the castle of my faddah.” But being a very likable guy, Tony made friends with two other actors who changed his life and career. He co-starred with Burt Lancaster in Trapeze (1955), which was not a bad film and made money. But more than that, it convinced Burt Lancaster that Tony Curtis had a lot more ability than anyone knew. So, Burt cast Tony Curtis in his first really serious part in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and it’s a terrific picture and Tony Curtis nails it. Nobody could have done a better job with that part than him. Burt convinced his best buddy, Kirk Douglas, to cast Curtis in The Vikings (1958), which was a huge success. And Kirk liked Tony Curtis so much he cast him Spartacus (1960), another huge success. And though it doesn’t mean much now, when I was a kid and Tony Curtis got the lead role The Boston Strangler (1968) it was a really big deal. Sadly, it’s not a very good movie. In any case, it was wonderful to see him at 80, as happy and thankful as anyone ever was.
And though I never met Tony Curtis, as I mentioned in an earlier newsletter, I appeared on the British talk show, Tonight With Jonathan Ross, with Jamie Lee Curtis, so that’s one degree of separation.
And soon a new day will dawn.