Tony Curtis comes towards me in a wheelchair, wearing a white sleeveless
T-shirt and very short white shorts. “Good to meet you,” he says. He takes
my hand, brushes it with his lips and almost imperceptibly looks me up and
down. At 83, despite baldness and a paunch, the legendary Hollywood Lothario
still knows how to turn on the charm. He apologises for the wheelchair,
which he needs following a bout of pneumonia in 2006 that has inexplicably
affected his legs. “I can walk, just not very well.”
We’re in his living room in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas. It’s a
nondescript suburban house with wall-to-wall windows overlooking a golf
course and the Nevada desert, with the skyline of the Strip in the distance.
Five tiny dogs yap at our feet. Jillie, his wife of 10 years, a statuesque
blonde 46 years his junior, is at the kitchen counter on her computer. Huge
canvases are propped up against every surface: enormous reclining nudes,
still lifes of flowers, figurative but modern. “Are these all yours?” I
ask. “Yes,” he says, proudly. “Let’s go to my studio.” He even makes that
sound suggestive.
Curtis scoots across the floor using his bare feet instead of his hands as we
step out into unseasonable rain caused by Hurricane Ike and into a small,
light-filled room next to his house. We’re surrounded by canvases of Marilyn
Monroe, sitting in the same pose, head turned away, laughing, in slightly
different colours, all with slightly prominent nipples. His current study
and his past life.
We’re here to talk about his autobiography, American Prince, a rollercoaster
of a book in which he’s brutally frank about his childhood, his affairs,
stardom, drug addiction, depression, women and sex. Lots and lots of sex.
It’s a romp through Hollywood’s golden age, when Curtis, with his thick,
black hair and cerulean eyes, practically invented celebrity as we know it.
But, curiously, before we get to the Hollywood glory and female conquests, he
starts talking about the death of his brother, Julius, who was run over by a
truck when he was nine years old. He’s still haunted by it. “It was a
Friday,” Curtis recalls. “He wanted to hang with my gang but I was 13 and I
told him to go play with his own friends. But he didn’t have his own
friends. If I hadn’t hustled him away from me… ” His mother and father made
him go alone to identify the body. “I didn’t know what they were asking me
to do. But there he was. His head was so black and swollen I could only
recognise him by a chip in his tooth… His death is still with me. There’s
this feeling that anything can go wrong. You know, he was there one moment
and then he was gone. I think of him every single day.”
I tell him that, after reading his book, I can’t work out if his life is
blessed or cursed. “Well, on the one hand you could say I was tremendously
blessed, on the other I was definitely cursed,” he says, without a hint of
self-pity.
His childhood was Dickensian in its poverty, deprivation and violence, set in
the tenement buildings of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His parents were
miserable with each other. His father was a gifted tailor, but he could
never make enough money to satisfy his mother, later diagnosed as a
schizophrenic, who could turn into a “holy terror”, beating both her sons at
the slightest provocation. At school, when he could be bothered to go, he
was beaten up for being Jewish. He still suffers from periods of crippling
depression that began before his 10th birthday.
How did he survive it all, I ask, retaining such “exuberance for life”, as he
calls it?
“Look,” he says, “I’m so privileged to be alive in this studio that happens to
be mine. I’m 83 years old and I’m still a factor in this world, I still
contribute wherever I go. It’s astounding. I could have been a politician or
a brain surgeon. But I didn’t have an education, so there wasn’t anything I
could do but get into the movies. And, boy, did I ever. To burst into the
movies like I did. Isn’t that neat?” He grins, delighted with his glorious
past.
In 1948, the day before his 23rd birthday, Bernie Schwartz signed his first
contract with Universal, changed his name and became a celebrity almost
overnight. For the next 10 years he was turning in an average of four
pictures a year – many of them “sand-and-tits” films, as he calls them, with
limited shelf life, but there were some gems. Trapeze, with Burt Lancaster,
remains a classic, and he turned in a great performance as a sleazy press
agent in Sweet Smell of Success. However late he partied with friends like
Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando, he always turned up on time and knew his
lines. Early on, he decided he didn’t want to be known as “a mere actor”.
“I wanted to feel like a star. I wanted to get my footprints in Hollywood on
the sidewalk, which I got. I wanted to be on the cover of all the magazines
and go to parties in a limousine with a beautiful girl. I did all of that –
and more. And I appreciate it. Every day I’m reminded of who I am. People
stop me in the street all the time. Women love to see me – and I love to see
them. I have an affinity for women, you know.”
“Affinity” is a tame euphemism for a voracious sexual appetite that feasted on
literally hundreds of women (he has never counted). He married six of them,
including the actress Janet Leigh, star of Hitchcock’s Psycho, with whom he
had two daughters: Kelly, 52, and Jamie Lee, 49. He also slept with most of
his co-stars, including Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe. Then there were the
showgirls, the models, waitresses and Playboy bunnies. How did he keep it
up?
He laughs. “It was love. I was falling in love every day. I am completely in
love with women. Every woman. I loved their company and there was always a
chance you could kiss them. I found kissing a very appealing experience,” he
says, sounding oddly old-fashioned. “I was just always hoping for that
conquest, hoping for that physical affection… that ejaculation.” He scoots
his chair towards me until his eyes are three inches from mine. “I’m being
very candid with you. What compelling eyes you have.” I’m beginning to feel
like Little Red Riding Hood, so I bring up his mother. Was it because of the
lack of affection from her? “Yes, yes, that had a lot to do with it. I got
nothing from her. I got slapped around is what I got. But I liked to be with
women. I never did it with dogs or elephants or men. Only with women.”
He claims he treated all his women well, that women genuinely liked him and
that there was “nothing salacious in it”. Hollywood, he claims, was like
that in those days. A male-orientated system where the producers would sign
young girls on six-month contracts, put them up in apartments, have affairs
with them and, when they got tired of them, refuse to renew their contracts.
“These girls of 18 or 20 were fodder. All the guys at the studios, including
myself, would feast on them, taking their sweetness. There were a lot of
them. I don’t remember their names. Then they would go home and get married.
Poor darlings. They came and went.” He doesn’t sound in the least bit
regretful. “But if you were smart,” he adds, “there would be a part of you
that nobody could touch.”
One of his first affairs in Hollywood was with the young 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.”
In each other they found a kindred spirit. “You could tell she’d already been
battered by life, and I found that she’d been in an orphanage, as I had, and
that her mother was also schizophrenic. I loved her. And she loved me, but
we both wanted to be in the movies, and that meant everything.”
They drifted apart, full of hunger to climb the star system. Whatever it took.
“I even married Janet for my career,” he confesses. “I could see the two of
us could get more attention together. We had the paparazzi wherever we went,
we were on the cover of all the movie magazines. It wasn’t enough for a man
to be cute, he had to be connected to the right woman.” Their marriage ended
acrimoniously 11 years later. I ask if he regrets marrying for that reason.
“No, no, no, not at all. I loved it. What better way to get famous?”
You should despise him, but there’s something endearing about his shameless
admissions about sex and fame. He has a boyish enthusiasm for his meteoric
trajectory. He was the “best-looking kid in town”, he says, adding: “It’s
not what you have but what you do with it that counts.”
And he’s still star-struck. “I became great friends with all my co-stars. With
Gregory Peck, Burt Lancaster, Jack Lemmon and Cary Grant… Cary Grant… Cary
Grant.” He’s whooshed up to me again in his wheelchair, grabbed my hand and
he’s holding his hand and mine against his heart. He’s gone all misty-eyed.
He and Grant played together in Operation Petticoat, a second world war
comedy set in a submarine, directed by Blake Edwards. “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. The greatest movie actor of all time.”
Suddenly, he’s Bernie Schwartz again, the poor Jewish boy from the East Side
of Manhattan whose only escape from misery was going to the movies. Then he
could fight alongside Errol Flynn and rescue Olivia de Havilland and light
cigarettes for Greta Garbo. Cary Grant taught him everything else. How to
open a door for a girl, tip a cab driver, how to be tough and sensitive at
the same time. He based his performance in Some Like It Hot on Grant and was
thrilled when he pulled it off. “Meeting him was the best thing that ever
happened to me,” he says. “He was the reason why I wanted to get into the
movies – and that is all I ever wanted.”
Despite the fame, adulation and women, he never felt entirely comfortable in
Hollywood.
“A lot of things that would have meant a lot to me were denied me by
Hollywood. I didn’t speak properly. I spoke with a thick New York accent.
Everyone knew my name was Schwartz – and Jews were not welcome.” He claims
he suffered resentment from the Hollywood establishment for marrying a
“shiksa goddess” in Janet Leigh. “Debbie Reynolds was the centre of gravity
for a glitzy Caucasian crowd, and I could tell they didn’t appreciate me.
They didn’t pick on you, they just ignored you. I couldn’t understand it.”
He was delighted to break the colour bar in The Defiant Ones with Sidney
Poitier, a movie so far ahead of its time in 1958 that, he claims, Robert
Mitchum turned it down, openly admitting he wouldn’t star with a black man.
And, he quips, Marlon Brando wouldn’t do it unless he could play both parts.
By contrast, Curtis insisted Poitier receive equal billing. They were both
nominated for an Academy Award. “What were they going to do – split it in
half? And I’d probably get the half that eats!” He chuckles, but it was his
only nomination and he still regrets that he never won an Oscar.
Some Like It Hot in 1959 was his high point. “It was perfect. Great dialogue.
Crisp acting. Billy Wilder was brilliant, and Jack Lemmon and I always had a
great time together; even though we were from different backgrounds – he was
Harvard-educated, very intelligent and urbane. We balanced each other out.”
At that point he could tell that Marilyn was going off the rails, but they
hung out together and their kissing scene was, he says, for real. He was
alone in Europe when she died; he couldn’t talk about it because nobody knew
they had had an affair. “Poor darlings, they’re all dead,” he muses.
“Sinatra, Brando, Cary Grant. They’ve all gone.”
He has little time for the stars of today. He registers no recognition when I
mention Leonardo di Caprio. “And Clooney?” He shakes his head. “And that
Pitt fellow – whatshisname? He hasn’t got it either. Now, Robert Downey Jr –
I think he might have something.”
Now he focuses on his art. He paints in his studio every day when he is in
town and loves the opportunity his art shows give him to be with his
“public”. “It’s rather nice not to be waiting for a script to come through
the door, and even if it did, I would turn it down,” he says.
His past is all around him, in small cigar boxes that he’s turned into
intriguing miniature three-dimensional collages. He has over 100 of them and
they “speak” to him, so he’s loath to sell any. He scoots over to one –
pushing me along in his office chair – of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man
with sand and marbles in the bottom. Next to it is another with a small
photograph of a young blond boy. “That’s Nicholas. My son who died.” I try
to ask how he coped when Nicholas died of a drug overdose in 1994, at just
23, but he can barely speak. Then he shuttles us both towards one with a
butterfly next to a porn star with enormous breasts. “I don’t know why but I
find a similarity between butterfly wings and bosoms.” He confesses he likes
“bosoms” large (38in and up) and hips “child-bearing”. It’s hard to get him
off the subject of women for long, but he has finally found happiness with
Jillie, his sixth wife, who rescues retired racehorses destined for the
knacker’s yard. That’s where most of his money goes these days. “She’s the
only one who didn’t want me to change after I married her.”
He claims he has learnt to “embrace” the depressions that continue to shadow
him. “I’ve learnt to slow my brain down, step back and look at things from
another direction.” The cocaine addiction that spiralled his life out of
control in the 1980s turned into a positive spell at the Betty Ford clinic,
when he finally slayed the demons of his childhood that no amount of fame,
sex or money could cure. He forgave his mother, which he’d been unable to do
when she died, refusing to visit her in hospital despite her constant pleas.
“We could have all turned out like her. She cleaned houses in Hungary from
when she was six or seven. She had no opportunities.” He says he has also
made peace with his children (he’s had six, including Nicholas), and Jamie
Lee, who was most vocal in her condemnation, has forgiven him for being an
absent father. He’s not made peace with his ex-wives, however.
What does he miss? He goes all dreamy. “I miss a pale-green Buick convertible
with Dynaflow drive. I miss a little beach house in Malibu with the waves
lapping on the beach.” It’s a reference to his first months in Hollywood,
before any of it began, and obliquely to Marilyn, whom he used to take to
the beach house.
Mostly, he doesn’t dwell on nostalgia and claims he’s as happy now as he’s
ever been. And he’s taking no notice of mortality. In fact, he’s looking for
another moment in the sun. “So far so good, and I’m ready for more. My art
will give me more. There’ll be more shows, and this book will open things up
for me again. There’s still so much to discover. So I have to take good care
of myself so you don’t find me in the gutter.”
He shows me a huge portrait of Cary Grant in a gilt frame. There’s a
handwritten message on it by his hero, telling him he will be in for a
“long, happy and enduring career”. He says: “Isn’t that amazing? Cary Grant.
The movie star of all time.”
We say goodbye and he strokes my arm.
“My, you feel really good. You really are very appealing. Thank God the
interview is over.” And he wheels himself into the kitchen.
Marilyn
The kissing scene in Some Like It Hot was for real. In this first extract
from his memoir, Curtis recalls Monroe’s magic
One of the girls who came to Hollywood in 1948 was a very young actress,
Marilyn Monroe.
I first saw her just walking down the street. She was breathtakingly
voluptuous in a see-through blouse. Her beauty was intimidating.
“I’m driving into town,” I said. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
She had red hair pulled back in a ponytail. As we chatted I got a strong
feeling of, well, heat. She gave off an extraordinary aura of warmth and
kindness, of generosity and sexuality.
Both of us were aspiring to be in the movies. I had gotten my first break, and
this girl was still looking for hers. She didn’t wear much make-up, just a
little lipstick and mascara. I know it sounds crazy, but I noticed she had
beautiful arms.
I drove to this little hotel where she was staying. “Can I call you?”
She took a minute to write out her number. For two or three days I couldn’t
think of anything else. But I didn’t dare call her. It was too soon.
I figured a girl who looked like that had to be in a serious relationship.
After a week, I figured enough time had passed.
“Would you like to go for dinner?”
A few nights later we drove to a popular restaurant on the Sunset strip. We
laughed a lot, had a good time. On our next date we went to a club. Marilyn
was wearing a floral dress, nothing fancy, but she still looked fabulous. I
had the feeling that she was uncomfortable being seen in public. What I
didn’t know was that Joe Schenck, the head of Twentieth Century Fox, had a
place in LA where Marilyn stayed with him. Twentieth Century Fox hadn’t
picked up her option, but Schenck sure had. Schenck was married, so during
the week he’d go home and Marilyn would stay at her hotel.
Howard Duff, an actor, had a house down the beach just outside Malibu. He said
to me: “Use it whenever you want…” I called Marilyn, we agreed to go to the
beach. The sun was setting, and I was feeling a bit nervous. We went over to
Howard’s place.
We started to kiss and fondle each other, but that was the extent of it. About
11 o’clock I drove her back. That weekend I asked Howard Duff if I could use
his house again, and I picked up Marilyn at her hotel. We ate dinner
leisurely. We had a drink and went out to sit in the moonlight. I knew
something was going to happen that night, and so did she.
Around 2am we went up into the bedroom, and I took off my shirt. Marilyn made
herself comfortable by stripping down to her panties and bra, and sat on the
edge of the bed. She was magnificent. Her breasts were every teenage boy’s
fantasy. As we began to make love, I could tell that this was not her first
time.
Something about it just seemed so right. I was bedding more than a few
great-looking girls at this time in my life, but I liked Marilyn more than
any of the others. She was different. She was very fragile and vulnerable,
which attracted me greatly.
Eventually our relationship began to take a back seat to our careers.
I started making movies, and she did too. I could sense Marilyn was looking
for men who could move her up the ladder in Hollywood.
Frankly speaking
Sinatra was leader of the pack: where he went, others followed. He could be
unpredictable, but Curtis loved being around him
Frank Sinatra was like the sun, with a lot of people revolving around him. As
engaging and interesting as Frank was, he could also be antagonistic,
quick-tempered, and dictatorial. If you screwed Frank, he took your name out
of his address book. Forever. But I loved being around him. Sometimes he’d
call and say: “Get over here. We’re going to run a movie.” So I’d get up
there, get a drink or two in me, then once the movie started, often I’d fall
asleep. When it was over. I’d wake up, and Frank would serve me food while I
flirted with some of the pretty girls who were always part of the scene.
As a boy, Frank had desperately wanted a set of electric trains, so after he
became rich and famous, he bought himself an elaborate set for his house in
Palm Springs. The tracks ran through almost every room. While I sat there,
in came the train, with steam whistle, running under my feet, under a table,
through a tunnel, out of the room.
“It’s gone,” I’d yell.
“It’ll be back,” he’d shout. Then he’d run in, jump over tracks, and sit next
to me. We’d sit, marvelling at his fabulous electric trains.
When I met Frank, he had left his wife for Ava Gardner. A lot of other people
wanted her. Frank, of course, had bedded a whole roster of Hollywood stars
himself. His appetite was relentless. But when he and Ava saw each other,
that was it, and they got married in 1951. Unfortunately, Ava’s temper was
almost as bad as Frank’s, so the two of them had a very stormy marriage.
After Ava left Frank, he became chronically depressed — all Frank did was
sit around and play his own music.
You had to know how to handle Frank. One night he invited Nat “King” Cole and
me over to see his new hi-fi set. Frank was going with Lauren Bacall then
(her husband, Humphrey Bogart, died about a year before). Frank was talking
to Nat and me. Lauren Bacall came over. ”Frank, dear, time to eat,” she
said.
“We’ll be there in a minute,” Frank said, and kept talking about the hi-fi.
Lauren filled a plate with food, and handed it to Frank. Frank turned it
upside down, dumped the food on the floor, and gave the plate back to her. I
think Lauren made the right decision when she turned down Frank’s proposal
of marriage.
Hot property
Curtis was delighted when Billy Wilder cast him in Some Like It Hot — and
thrilled by Marilyn Monroe’s bad behaviour
Shaking Billy’s hand, I felt like a prizefighter who wanted to be a contender.
I just needed to get a big part in a Billy Wilder movie to show everyone I
was the real thing.
Billy said: “I’m making a picture about two musicians who are working in a
speakeasy during Prohibition, when the place gets raided. To escape, they
dress up as girls and join an all-girl band.” That was the hook, the Billy
Wilder touch that set this film apart. It would become Some Like It Hot.
Marilyn was perfect in the movie, but on the set she was a loose cannon. At
the time Some Like It Hot started shooting, Marilyn had caused so many
problems that some studios were refusing to hire her. From the start, she
was difficult. She refused to wear the clothes the wardrobe department gave
her. She demanded that she use only her own make-up. Her hair had to be the
way she wanted it. We weren’t sure she’d last through the first week of
shooting.
Every now and then she would simply not show up for work for a few days. Even
after the first third of filming was completed, the studio was considering
shutting us down for a week, recasting Marilyn’s part.They could have
replaced Marilyn, but everybody could see that she, in spite of herself, lit
up the screen.
She’d come to work late; she wouldn’t know her lines. From the time she got to
the set to the moment she left, she’d go through 150 emotional changes.
Being comfortable was just not something she did very well, although she
seemed to be having fun during our love scene on the yacht. We did that
scene over and over, and I loved every take. When we kissed, I was on the
receiving end of her tongue, and of her grinding. I had a hard-on all
through that scene, and she knew it, which made her even more aggressive.
She knew I wasn’t acting and when Billy yelled “Cut”, she pushed herself off
me and gave me a big, satisfied smile. After the scene some of the crew and
I stood around to watch the rushes, and they wanted to know what it was like
to kiss her. I figured a question that stupid deserved a stupid answer, so I
flippantly replied: “Kissing Marilyn is like kissing Hitler.” I was right —
it was a stupid answer. What I should have said was: “What do you think
kissing her is like, birdbrain?”
American Prince: My Autobiography, by Tony Curtis with Peter Golenbock (Virgin
Books, £18.99), is out on Thursday. It is available from BooksFirst for
£17.09, including p&p. Tel: 0870 165 8585
