Memorial Page for Tony Curtis (née Bernard Schwartz)

Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz, 3 June 1925 in New York City; died 29 September 2010 in Henderson, Nevada) was an American actor, painter and author. The son of a Hungarian-Jewish tailor, he became one of the great stars of 1950s and 1960s Hollywood: he starred alongside Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot” and earned an Oscar nomination for “The Defiant Ones”. In Germany he is also fondly remembered as Danny Wilde in the TV series “The Persuaders!”

A kid from the Bronx

Bernard Schwartz grew up the son of Hungarian Jews who had come to the United States after the First World War. His father Manny had wanted to be an actor himself, but with his heavy accent work was hard to find, and he settled for tailoring. The family moved again and again, and Bernard was always the new kid on the block. He got beaten up, he later said, until he decided to be the crazy new kid instead.

That is how he started performing: first on the street, then in plays at a settlement house. And he discovered the movies, where for 11 cents you could sit in the front row for ten hours – which, by his own account, he did constantly.

In the Navy

In 1943 he joined the US Navy and went to signal school. Inspired by films about submariners, he applied for submarine school and was accepted, but as a Signalman Third Class he was assigned to the submarine tender USS Proteus instead. The ship was stationed at Guam, where he also helped ready the submarine USS Dragonet for sea. On 2 September 1945, in Tokyo Bay, he watched through binoculars as Japan’s surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri.

Bernard Schwartz becomes Tony Curtis

Back in New York he used the GI Bill to study acting. He did summer stock and played the hotels of the Catskills until an agent arranged an audition with Universal. In 1948, at 23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio.

The studio felt his name sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, and so Bernard Schwartz became Anthony Curtis – the first name from his favourite novel, “Anthony Adverse”, the surname an anglicised form of a Hungarian family name. After his eighth film he became Tony Curtis. Rather than being typecast in the same kind of adventure picture, he fought hard for a wider range of roles.

Janet Leigh

In 1951 he married the actress Janet Leigh, who, like him, was a rising young star. They became a glamour couple the fan magazines followed breathlessly. Their marriage of eleven years produced two daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom became actresses. Janet Leigh later recalled:

“Tony and I had a wonderful time together; it was an exciting, glamorous period in Hollywood. A lot of great things happened, most of all, two beautiful children.”

The great years

His breakthrough came in 1956 as a daring aerialist in “Trapeze”, opposite Burt Lancaster. A year later he played the slippery press agent Sidney Falco in “Sweet Smell of Success”; the critic Pauline Kael wrote that in this film Curtis “grew up into an actor”. In “The Defiant Ones” he played a white convict on the run, chained to a Black fellow prisoner played by Sidney Poitier. At the 31st Academy Awards, held on 6 April 1959, both were among the nominees for Best Actor – for Curtis it remained the only Oscar nomination of his career.

The same year saw the release of Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot”. As a musician on the run from the mob, Curtis spent much of the film in women’s clothing, and along the way did a famous impression of Cary Grant. His co-star Jack Lemmon, like him, was a Navy veteran. In 2000 the American Film Institute named the comedy the funniest American film of all time. After “Some Like It Hot” came, among others, “Spartacus”, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and “Taras Bulba”; in 1968 he played Albert DeSalvo in “The Boston Strangler”. In all, he appeared in more than 100 films.

There were honours, too: twice, in 1958 and 1961, he won the Golden Globe as World Film Favorite, and he received Golden Globe nominations for “The Defiant Ones” and “The Boston Strangler”. He also received Germany’s Bambi award for his performances of 1958; his “Spartacus” co-star Kirk Douglas presented it to him in Hollywood.

Christine Kaufmann and “The Persuaders!”

In “Taras Bulba” he appeared alongside the Munich-raised actress Christine Kaufmann. They married in Las Vegas on 8 February 1963, had two daughters, Alexandra and Allegra, and divorced in 1968.

In Germany, “The Persuaders!”, which ZDF began showing on 11 July 1972 under the title “Die 2”, became a sensational hit. Curtis played Danny Wilde, an American who had worked his way up from the streets of the Bronx, alongside Roger Moore as the British aristocrat Lord Brett Sinclair. In the German version of the series Curtis was voiced by Rainer Brandt, who also wrote the German dialogue. Brandt himself called his cheeky, pun-filled style “Schnodderdeutsch”, and many still see it as the main reason for the show’s enormous success in Germany.

Crisis and a new beginning

By the late 1960s the roles were getting smaller and the offers fewer, and Curtis fell into drug and alcohol addiction. In the 1980s he entered treatment at the Betty Ford Center and returned to film and television as a character actor.

He also found a second form of expression: painting. He painted still lifes reminiscent of Matisse with astonishing speed, and his colourful canvases sold for as much as $20,000. As he put it:

“Painting has given me such a great pleasure in life, helped me to recover.”

He also wrote poetry and books, among them an autobiography (1993), the memoir “American Prince” (2008) and a book about the making of “Some Like It Hot” and his memories of Marilyn Monroe (2009).

Hungarian roots

His father came from Mátészalka in Hungary, his mother Ilona Klein from Nagymihály or, according to other records, Válykó; the family emigrated to New York from Mátészalka. Tony Curtis was proud of his Jewish-Hungarian roots. He first travelled to Hungary in 1985, again in 1988, and in 1996 at the invitation of the Hungarian government. He visited Mátészalka several times and set up a foundation that supported the restoration of the synagogue on Dohány Street in Budapest. In 2016 the citizens of Mátészalka placed a memorial plaque in the town’s former synagogue, commemorating his visits home.

Later years

At 60 he declared:

“I’m not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman, sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane. I’ve got a helluva lot of living to do.”

In 2002 he toured in a stage musical version of “Some Like It Hot”, this time playing the millionaire Osgood Fielding III. On 28 May 2004 the Navy veteran spoke at the Navy Memorial in Washington, at a ceremony marking the 62nd anniversary of the Battle of Midway.

In 1998 he married Jill Vandenberg, who runs a non-profit rescue for abused and neglected horses. They lived in Nevada, where he kept on painting and still took acting jobs from time to time.

Legacy

After his death his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis said that her father left behind a legacy of great performances – in his films as well as in his paintings and assemblages – and fans all over the world.

Farewell

Tony Curtis died on 29 September 2010, aged 85, at his home in Henderson near Las Vegas. His wife Jill said:

“All Tony ever wanted to be was a movie star. He didn’t want to be the most dramatic actor. He wanted to be a movie star ever since he was a little kid.”