Tony Curtis, Iconic Movie and Television Star, Dies
The enduring performer, whose vast and varied career spanned six decades, was 85.
Actor Tony Curtis, who embodied Hollywood stardom in the 1950s and ’60s, and whose body of work included several classic films and noteworthy television productions, died September 29, 2010, in Henderson, Nevada. He was 85.
According to news reports, the cause was cardiac arrest.
Curtis began his screen career with small parts in unremarkable films, but eventually advanced to leading roles in such respected productions as The Defiant Ones, Some Like It Hot, Spartacus and Sweet Smell of Success, in which he played opportunistic press agent Sidney Falco, widely considered his best performance.
He was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx on June 3, 1925. His parents were Hungarian Jews who had come to the U.S. after World War I. His father was a tailor who often struggled to support his wife and three children, of whom Bernard was the eldest.
Growing up amid hardscrabble surroundings, Bernard realized at an early age that he would have to fend for himself, and developed a firm self-reliance that would help him in his future career as a performer.
To escape from the often grim circumstances of his home life, he sought refuge at the movies, and dreamed of appearing on the screen himself one day.
During World War II he served in the Navy, stationed in the Pacific. Upon his discharge he returned to New York, where he used the G.I. Bill to take acting classes. He also appeared in stage productions in summer stock and in the Catskill Mountains.
He later met agent Joyce Selznick, the niece of David O. Selznick, producer of such classic movies as Gone with the Wind. She arranged a meeting with her celebrated uncle, who helped the young man sign a seven-year contract at Universal Pictures, where his looks, street smarts and ambition served him well.
Bernard Schwartz was deemed an inappropriate name for a movie actor, so the studio dubbed him Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite novel, Anthony Adverse, and the Anglicized name of a favorite uncle, Janush Kertiz. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis.
With his handsome looks and an ambition forged from years of poverty, Curtis rose to fame and relished stardom when it came.
Curtis received an Oscar nomination for his performance as a white convict who escapes from prison handcuffed to a black man, played by Sidney Poitier, in the 1958 release The Defiant Ones.
Other noteworthy films included Captain Newman, M.D., The Vikings, Kings Go Forth, Sex and the Single Girl, Trapeze, Operation Petticoat and The Boston Strangler. In a 1965 episode of the animated television series The Flintstones, he parodied himself as a prehistoric heartthrob named Stony Curtis.
Other television work came later in his career, including the 1971-72 series, The Persuaders, co-starring Roger Moore. Another series, McCoy, came a few years later; he also had a supporting role in the detective drama Vega$.
Over the years he continued to appear as a guest star on various series, and in 1980 he scored a Primetime Emmy nomination for his performance as the man who helped him get his start, David O. Selznick, in the made-for-television movie The Scarlett O’Hara War.
In his later years, after struggles with drugs and alcohol, Curtis became a respected painter and author.
Curtis was married six times, most famously to actress Janet Leigh, his first wife, with whom he had two daughters, the actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. He and Leigh married in 1951 and divorced in 1963.
At his death he was married to Jill Vandenberg Curtis, whom he wed in 1998.