Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis and costume designer Orry-Kelly prepare wardrobe for Some Like it Hot.

The Making of Some Like it Hot by Tony Curtis and Mark A. Vieira is one of the most compulsively readable film books evuh. And believe me, yours truly has read many, in fact too many movie memoirs.

I admit that I am powerless when it comes to Hollywood memoirs. I probably need a support group, a bunch of movie memoir addicts sitting around drinking endless cups of coffee—okay latte, this is Hollywood—and kvetching about the lost hours of our lives, and fortunes wasted on out-of-print, ghost-written memoirs by long-forgotten stars.

Anyhoo, when I read a book I stick a Post It on a page to highlight—for blogging purposes—the memorable sections and quotes. But with this book I found myself putting a Post It on every single page.

Talk about overwhelming.

So here’s the plan, I’m going to open The Making of Some Like it Hot at random and whatever anecdote shows up, well that’s the one I’m going to feature.

Remember, totally random.

Here we go.

Opening… smoothing out the page… scanning… scanning…

Okaaay!

Bingo, we’ve struck gold.

I told you, great book, you just can’t go wrong.

Let me set the stage: Some Like it Hot (1959), is about to go into production, one of the most troubled shoots in Hollywood history c/o the deeply troubled Marilyn Monroe. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who will play most of their scenes in drag, are being fitted by the great costume designer Orry-Kelly.

When Orry-Kelly started my fitting, he noticed how fit I was. I was worried that he might think I was a dum-dum who did nothing but lift weights, so I made conversation about my father. I said he was a tailor. Orry-Kelly was interested in that. He cut quite a figure himself. He wore a spotless pin-striped suit, a dress shirt, and a Sulka tie. In his breast pocket he carried a tape measure like my father had—yellow and white, rolled up with a metal fixture at the end. Orry-Kelly made a production of the thing. He took it out of his pocket and then he whipped out the tape in this very grand gesture. It flew out with a whooshing noise.

Then Orry-Kelly went to Marilyn’s trailer. She was waiting. I heard she was reading books in there, odd things like Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke. When Orry-Kelly went in, she stood up. She was wearing a white blouse, panties and three-inch heels. Orry-Kelly said hello, and then he took measurements here and there: 37, 24. When he had his tape measure across her hips, he kind of chuckled. “Tony has a better-looking ass than you do.”

Marilyn turned around, opened her blouse, and said, “He doesn’t have t**s like these.” Of course it was true. Her breasts were so beautifully arranged. She had the best figure I ever saw in a girl.

Earlier in the book, Curtis writes that Marilyn had the hips of “a Polish washer woman.” I thought that was an insult. Maybe Curtis meant it as a compliment.

She kind of wore out her welcome with Orry-Kelly. After he’d gotten the gowns made, not only for Marilyn, but also for me and Jack [Lemmon], they were rolled to the stage on racks so that we could shoot wardrobe tests. Well, Marilyn was walking by the racks and she got curious. A little while later, Jack came to my dressing room. He looked upset.

“Tony,” he said. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“What?”

“Marilyn took my dress.”

“Whaddaya mean she took your dress?”

“She took it. The black one Orry-Kelly made for me. She saw it on the rack and said to the wardrobe mistress, ‘Ooh, this looks nice. Let me try it, huh?’ And she decided she had to have it. Orry-Kelly came screaming to me. ‘She took your dress! The b**ch has pinched your dress!’ And they’re going to let her get away with it!”

The other day, an Amazon package showed up. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what I ordered. Not a good sign. But when I opened the box, I unwrapped a Kindle, a gift from Karen. So my reading habits are going to change—except on Shabbat, when I can’t use electricity. Anyway, I’m delighted with the kindle. I’ve already downloaded Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Mark A. Vieira’s monumental biography of Irving Thalberg.

And Seraphic Secret will be on available on Kindle, for $1.99 a month, in the next day or so.

No matter how famous he became, no matter how much money he earned, Tony Curtis was always Bernard Schwartz, an insecure and damaged Jewish kid from the Bronx.

As the son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, Curtis didn’t speak English until he was five or six years old.

His father was a tailor and the entire family lived in the back of the shop. His mother was schizophrenic who frequently abused young Curtis. His brother Robert was also mentally ill and was placed in an institution. As Curtis explains in his memoir, he was responsible for his younger brother Julius. But Julius was hit and killed by a truck and Curtis shouldered the guilt for his entire life.

Raised in great poverty, Curtis was a street urchin who ran with a gang of petty thieves. But a kindly neighbor enrolled Curtis in the Boy Scouts and it was this experience that, according to Curtis, saved his life.

Inspired by the Cary Grant submarine film Destination Tokyo (1943), Curtis enlisted in the submarine service. After the war, using the GI Bill, Curtis studied acting and at age 23 made his way to Hollywood where his stunning good looks landed him a contract with Universal.

Curtis admits that he hungered for fame and women, not necessarily in that order. But he worked hard at his craft and soon emerged as a forceful actor playing Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Co-starring with Burt Lancaster, Curtis is a slimy press agent who regularly debases himself in order to move up the ladder. Curtis spits some of the most bitter dialogue ever heard in a Hollywood film and all the rage and pain that was Bernard Schwartz emerges in a performance that has not a single false note.

Here’s a clip from Sweet Smell of Success, notice how Curtis quietly holds his own against one of Hollywood’s great scene stealers, Burt Lancaster:

John Garfield could well have played the Sidney Falco role, but Garfield, a fine dramatic actor, did not have the range to perform in the light comedies for which Curtis is best remembered. Indeed, Tony Curtis had depth as a serious actor and just the right touch for bedroom comedies. It’s not often that a Hollywood actor has the chops to handle such diverse roles.

Curtis should have received an Oscar for Sweet Smell of Success but Hollywood was never quite sure about Curtis. He was just too pretty. Finally nominated for his performance in The Defiant Ones (1957), it’s quite clear that the film’s liberal fantasy of race relations was the driving force for the nomination. The film is, today, like most Stanley Kramer movies, almost unwatchable, whereas lighter fare such as Operation Petticoat (1959) remains a delight.

Curtis was not one of the New York Method Actors, the serious thespians who were tediously vocal about the art of acting.

Tony Curtis considered himself first and foremost an entertainer. He wanted people to have a good time at the movies.

In 1959, Curtis emerged as a master of light comedy playing three roles in Some Like it Hot, one of Hollywood’s greatest comedies. His timing is impeccable, and his performance stands as one of the finest in movie history. All the more astonishing when you consider that the production was a nightmare, with Marilyn Monroe chronically late and her need for multiple takes in order to get the simplest lines straight.

Curtis was asked by a reporter what it was like kissing Marilyn Monroe and he responded, “Like kissing Hitler.”

But this was, he explained over and over, a throw-a-way line. In fact, as struggling actors in Hollywood, Curtis and Monroe had a brief affair.

Curtis was generous with his throw-a-way lines. During production of Spartacus, when director Stanley Kubrick was setting up one of his incredibly long and complicated shots, Curtis turned to co-star Jean Simmons and quipped: “Who do you have to f***k to get off this picture?”

In the late 50’s and early 60’s Tony Curtis was the quintessential Hollywood star. As a movie hungry yeshiva student growing up in Brooklyn, I vividly recall taking the Coney Island Avenue bus to the Kingsway movie theater to see Spartacus (1960) Taras Bulba (1962), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), The Great Race (1965), and The Boston Strangler (1968), in which he played serial murderer Albert DeSalvo. For this role, Curtis gained 30 lbs., and wore a prosthetic nose. It’s a chilling performance. Curtis received ecstatic reviews but once again there was no Oscar and Curtis was vocally bitter about the obvious snub.

Tony Curtis loved being a movie star. He loved fame, he loved the big paycheck, and he adored the women—Curtis was married six times.

As the roles got smaller and the offers slowed to a trickle, Curtis turned to alcohol and cocaine and considered suicide. After cleaning up in rehab, Curtis made numerous appearances as a guest star on TV, but Curtis had become a Hollywood legend aka relic.

In his later years, Curtis turned his attention to his Hungarian-Jewish roots. With daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, he donated generously, helping to finance the rebuilding of the “Great Synagogue” in Budapest, Hungary, the largest synagogue in Europe. In 1998, he founded the Emanuel Foundation for Hungarian Culture, which works to restore and preserve synagogues and the 1,300 Jewish cemeteries in Hungary. He dedicated this to the 600,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Hungary.

In the end, Tony Curtis became, once again, Bernard Schwartz.