{"id":8162,"date":"2025-06-03T10:11:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T10:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8162"},"modified":"2025-09-07T19:53:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:53:22","slug":"tony-curtis-on-cary-grant-kirk-douglas-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8162","title":{"rendered":"Tony Curtis on Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tony-curtis<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Nobody loved being a movie star more than Tony Curtis, who was born on this day 100 years ago and who died in 2010, and as he got older he liked nothing more than to talk about it. \u201cDon\u2019t I have great stories?\u201d he said to me. \u201cDon\u2019t you fucking love it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis did an hilarious impression of Cary Grant to seduce Marilyn Monroe (pictured below) in \u201cSome Like it Hot\u201d (1959) but he told me that when director Billy Wilder screened the film for him, Grant said, \u201cI don\u2019t talk like that”, \u00a0and Curtis said it just as Grant would have. They had starred together in the Blake Edwards war comedy \u201cOperation Petticoat\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"some<\/a><\/p>\n

I spoke to the star of films such as \u201cSweet Smell of Success\u201d (1957), \u201cOperation Petticoat\u201d (1959), \u201cSpartacus\u201d (1960), \u201cTaras Bulba\u201d (1962), \u201cThe Great Race\u201d (1965), and TV\u2019s \u201cThe Persuaders\u201d at the Flanders International Film Festival on Oct. 18 2003 in Gent, Belgium, where he received a special Joseph Plateau Holemans Award for lifetime achievement.<\/p>\n

Curtis appeared chipper and he was happy to chat about his life and career although, at 78, he said he wasn\u2019t that interested in making more films: \u201cI don’t want to grow old on the screen. I don’t want to play doctors and judges and lawyers, grandfathers and grandmothers, surgeons. I really don’t. I find living such an interesting experience. I don’t believe in ‘seniors’ or \u2018juniors\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, NY, of Hungarian Jewish immigrants, he still hadn\u2019t lost the accent fully but he said he always wanted to be a movie star: \u201cRay, when I was a kid, I decided I wanted to be in movies. I’d go to the movies and see those images, those shadows, I’d say, ‘Jesus Christ, that’s for me.’ So what did I do? I started to jump on the back of trolley cars, jump on the back of taxicabs, climb up the trestles of the subway, climb up walls, chain link fences, jump from one roof to another, we’d put mattresses there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tony<\/a>Curtis had no formal education in acting but he was a good athlete and he tackled life like\u00a0an obstacle course: \u201cEverything is an obstacle course. Being in the movies, I know my distance from you to here. I know where the mike is. I know the table lamp. I know everybody moving around me. I catch everything. It’s becoming aware of life, don’t you see? And that helps you in whatever profession you choose. By watching everything, it helped me as a painter, as a psychologist \u2013 as a person who reads other people and can read myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

To have had his career gave him a great deal of pleasure, he said, and it was a joy to be who he was: \u201cI’m so fucking privileged. I started out \u2013 this is not a Horatio Alger story, ok? To have done what I’ve done in my life is really appealing to me. I don’t think of it as some great accomplishment. In an odd way, I expected it. I knew I was going to make it in the movies. I knew I was a handsome kid. I knew I could get all the girls I wanted. I knew I could jump and learn how to swim and fence, dive, ride horses.\u201d<\/p>\n

He always preferred physical acting to the kind that depended upon expressing emotion: \u201cFor me, an actor’s strength is in his movement and not in his emotional madnesses. You’re jerking off in Macy’s window when you’re playing those parts and your excitement, or your action, is getting angry. Anybody can do that. That isn’t action, that’s just a mental attitude about yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was never a movie he made that he demeaned or looked down on: \u201cNothing. I did a movie called ‘The Lobster Man From Mars’. \u00a0The special effects were the worst. It’s still very difficult for me to eat lobster in a restaurant, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"curtis<\/a><\/p>\n

He made two early pictures with \u201cSingin\u2019 in the Rain\u201d star Donald O\u2019Connor including \u201cFrancis the Talking Mule\u201d (1950), and he said they became great friends: \u201cI loved him. What a guy he was. What a brilliant, brilliant dancer. You saw what he danced like? How the fuck he never ended up one of the great dancers \u2026 I\u2019ll tell you why, because he worked at Universal Studios, like I did. Had they given him the opportunity, he would have danced with every one of the great ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor danced as well as Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Curtis said, \u201cAnd he was an excellent boxer, the kindest, sweetest man. I\u2019d go out to visit him at his house in the Valley where he had an 8mm movie projector. He\u2019d put on a porno movie and shoot it out the window onto the garage door across the street. People would drive by and go, \u2018What, what?\u2019 and then he\u2019d shut it off. That was my pal. I had a lot of fun with those guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis spoke of his \u201cSome Like it Hot\u201d co-star, Jack Lemmon \u2013 \u201cWhat a man he was; what a life we had together. Cary Grant. Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck.” But when it came to Kirk Douglas, not so much. They made \u201cThe Vikings\u201d (1958), \u201cSpartacus\u201d (pictured below) and \u201cThe List of Adrian Messenger\u201d (1963) together.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe’s the only actor that I found more difficult to be around, more neurotic, let’s say. And that’s not a negative,\u201d Curtis said. \u201cHe’s an excellent picture-maker. Boy, he sure knows how to get his picture made. He knows exactly how to delineate it; where to put the energy. But every picture he makes is a Kirk Douglas movie, all the rest of us are minor players. I’ll give you a good example, if I may. \u2018Spartacus\u2019, OK? Who gave him those crewcut haircuts? Where did he get someone to give him a Beverly Hills crewcut haircut? All of us were fucking walking around looking like gorillas and he comes out with this haircut. I don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"trapeze<\/a><\/p>\n

Curtis had no illusions about the business of showbusiness: \u201cHey, my pal, there ain\u2019t no such thing as a movie that doesn\u2019t make money. There\u2019s absolutely no movie in the world that doesn\u2019t make money. The money they spend on making it, when they’re making it, is a deductible item. So, if it looks on paper that it cost $8 million, it really cost $950,000. That’s then. Now, that $950,000 that it costs to make, is nothing. You can’t even build a house for $950,000. And look at the money people make today. And how much they get for theatre tickets. What is it, 10 bucks a ticket? Can you fucking believe it? I was going to the movies when it was 25 cents. Ten bucks a ticket. Twelve bucks. It never catches up to itself, it’s always growing.<\/p>\n

I told him that it was a revelation to me to discover that in terms of the big studios, it’s not about profit, it’s about revenue. He said: \u201cExactly. Look how clever you are, to say that. Those pictures made 50 years ago, if that picture shows on television one night and generates $432, that’s like going into somebody’s wallet and taking out $432 and leaving. How could a movie like that generate that kind of money 50 years later? Don’t you see? That’s why everybody wants to get into the movie business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Signed to Universal, Curtis had been in films for seven years before his big break came along. \u201cI never got into pictures that were \u2026 well, they were all right but they were made in a hurry; there was no finesse to them; they didn’t try to get a really important director, or get some other actors. They were ‘B’ movies; that’s what we made at Universal. That made it difficult. But when I got \u2018Trapeze\u2019, that changed everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"curtis<\/a>Curtis and Burt Lancaster played aerial performers opposite Gina Lollobrigida (pictured with Curtis above) in Carol Reed\u2019s colourful \u201cTrapeze\u201d<\/a> in 1956 and one year later they teamed again for Alexander Mackendrick\u2019s highly acclaimed \u201cSweet Smell of Success\u201d, which showed the world that Curtis was a fine actor as well as a movie star: \u201cThat catapulted me into the major player category. From then on in there wasn’t anything I could do that would be wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

He made another picture with Mackendrick in 1967, an offbeat comedy titled \u201cDon\u201dt Make Waves\u201dabout the American Dream sixties\u2019 style with Claudia Cardinale (pictured above left with Curtis) and Sharon Tate: \u201cNow that was a very abstract movie, but he did it. He was a very brilliant man. Difficult to understand and very demanding of his work. Very domineering, you know. He wanted everything to work the way he wanted it. But look at the movies he made, ‘The Man in the White Suit\u2019, \u2018The Ladykillers\u2019. Wow!\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis\u00a0said he modeled himself on Cary Grant more than just in \u201cSome Like it Hot\u201d: \u201cCary Grant, the most gracious man, extremely intelligent, very perceptive about life. I admired him a lot and I emulated a lot of him. Not in my behaviour so much but so much rubbed off on me. I’m a gentleman now. I’m very appreciative of people’s friendship. I like to be gallant. I like to kiss ladies’ hands. All these little things that I felt Cary Grant did automatically, I decided I would do. Perhaps he learned it from somebody else, Noel Coward or somebody. And that’s the fun of it. It’s just fun. It’s not demeaning or difficult, or anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

We would have spoken longer but then Jeanne Moreau entered the hotel lobby and fans surrounded her with cameras. Curtis had appeared with her in Elia Kazan\u2019s \u201cThe Last Tycoon\u201d (1976), and he said, \u201cForgive me, I must say hello.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis made his way through the small crowd, not much taller than the petite French actress. He seemed so pleased to see her; she just smiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Nobody loved being a movie star more than Tony Curtis, who was born on this day 100 years ago and who died in 2010, and as he got older he liked nothing more than to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,2257],"tags":[4133,3987,2768,2217,4132,1719],"class_list":["post-8162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","tag-alexander-mackendrick","tag-cary-grant","tag-flanders-international-film-festival","tag-gent","tag-kirk-douglas","tag-tony-curtis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8162"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11517,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8162\/revisions\/11517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}