An actor who had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. Tony Curtis's early film career was built almost exclusively on his good looks, matched by a strong screen presence. By the latter half of the 1950s, he had proven himself a fine dramatic actor and charming light comedian. Tony Curtis is an excellent example of how important a good script and a good director are to the success of an actor. He has been electric and unforgettable with good scripts and good direction, but he has rarely transcended poor material.
Born Bernard Schwartz, he was the son of a former amateur actor from Hungary who settled into the life of a poor Jewish tailor in the Bronx, New York. The future actor was a gang member who flirted with a life of crime before a truant officer straightened him out at the age of 12. After his navy service aboard a submarine during World War II, Tony Curtis chose the actor's life and studied his new craft at New York's Dramatic Workshop. He had little stage experience before he was discovered by a Universal Pictures talent scout in an Off-Broadway revival of Golden Boy.
He was given a seven-year contract as well as a series of name changes. He was originally given the moniker Jimmy Curtis, but that was dropped in favor of Anthony Curtis by the time of his first minor film credit in Criss Cross (1949). He used the name Tony Curtis for the first time in Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), several movies into his new career. Movie fans took notice of him long before his studio bosses realized his potential. Teenage girls, in particular, wrote hundreds of fan letters to him without even knowing his name.
Universal finally understood they had a star in the making and they rushed him into the lead role in a cheaply made swashbuckler, The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951). The film was a major box-office hit and Tony Curtis was fast becoming a household name. In fact, he soon became so popular that he inspired male teenagers to imitate his curly hairstyle. Tony Curtis had to learn how to act on the job, but by the time he starred with his wife JANET LEIGH in Houdini (1953), he had already made much progress. But good movies were scarce, and he was rushed into a series of mediocre projects throughout the middle of the decade, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports films, and even a musical.
The actor was popular with movie fans but not with the critics. When they weren't panning his movies the critics were panning him. In 1957, however, Tony Curtis finally won his first measure of grudging acceptance from reviewers when he gave a riveting performance in support of BURT LANCASTER in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). The academy recognized him the following year by giving him an Oscar nomination as Best Actor for his work in The Defiant Ones (1958).
Tony Curtis's career was at its height in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He had the acclaim of both the public and the critical establishment and also the opportunity to work on good scripts with better directors. He starred alongside MARILYN MONROE and JACK LEMMON in BILLY WILDER's Some Like It Hot (1959), which was undoubtedly the best movie of his career. He also relived some of his submarine experiences in BLAKE EDWARDS's Operation Petticoat (1959), and gave a strong performance in Robert Mulligan's The Rat Race (1960), among others.
Tony Curtis met his second wife, actress Christine Kaufmann, during the filming of the epic Taras Bulba (1962). With just a few other exceptions, however, the actor spent the greater part of the 1960s starring in light comedies such as Forty Pounds of Trouble (1962), Wild and Wonderful (1964), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), and The Great Race (1965). A long string of box-office flops in the latter half of the decade put his star status in serious question. He recouped, however, with a powerful and highly regarded performance in the title role of The Boston Strangler (1968). It seemed as if Tony Curtis's career had taken a new and richer turn. But three successive mediocre films that failed at the ticket booth drove him to television; he was not terribly successful in that medium either. Tony Curtis has had several abortive big screen comeback attempts, most memorably in Lepke (1974), The Last Tycoon (1976), and Little Miss Marker (1980).
He performed admirably in all three films, but none of the movies was a hit. He has continued to act in the occasional low-budget film, but he gave one of his most stirring performances in recent years in a TV movie, playing mobster Sam Giancana in Mafia Princess (1986). Tony Curtis has appeared in more than 70 films and leaves a legacy to the American cinema via Jamie Lee Curtis, his talented actress daughter by Janet Leigh.
One of his best later roles was that of a senator (resembling Joe McCarthy) in the Nicolas Roeg film adaptation of the play Insignificance (1985), in which he set a standard for a character's sleazy manipulation. During the 1990s Tony Curtis continued to appear in low-budget films playing a variety of roles, playing aging hit men and sleazy movie producers. But more recently he appeared in a national theatrical revival of Some Like It Hot, based on the classic Billy Wilder film of 1959, although this time he plays the part of Osgood Fielding III, which Joe E. Brown had played so memorably in the film. As far as the Motion Picture Academy is concerned, Tony Curtis, one of the most talented screen actors of his generation, has been marginalized and neglected.
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