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The highs and lows of Tony Curtis

By Gary Arnold (Contact) | Sunday, October 12, 2008

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Tony Curtis has been on my mind lately. Well, on and off. The death of Paul Newman reminded me that he and Mr. Curtis were close contemporaries, born in January and June 1925, respectively. Both served in the Navy during World War II, Mr. Newman on a destroyer and Mr. Curtis on a submarine tender.

Both were partners in glamorous movieland marriages, although the seemingly enviable Curtis union with Janet Leigh lasted only 11 years compared to the enduring Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward match, still in force after 51 years.

Some time ago, I was informed that a Curtis "autobiography" would be published this month. It seemed cheerful news, in part because Mr. Curtis has proved a tenacious survivor. The press had gone on obit alert in 2006, when he made it through a bout with pneumonia.

I indicated an interest in reading the book and talking to the subject, for old times' sake but also because I possess a used copy of "Tony Curtis: The Autobiography," published in 1993, a collaboration of the actor with author Barry Paris, who evidently did the interviewing and annotating. I'm still intrigued by the idea of a "Tony Curtis, Part II," but there's been no follow-up on the initial overtures.

The movie version of "Flags of Our Fathers" should have revived interest in a commendable Curtis failure of 1961 titled "The Outsider." He played Ira Hayes, the star-crossed Marine who became one of the flag-raising contingent on Iwo Jima. The recent revival of the theatrical farce "Boeing Boeing" on Broadway provided a curious reminder that Mr. Curtis and Jerry Lewis had co-starred in a labored movie version back in 1965.

A curious aspect of the Curtis movie career in retrospect: He rarely appeared in comedies during his first decade in Hollywood, which began with a fleeting, unbilled bit role as Yvonne de Carlo's photogenic rumba partner in Robert Siodmak's fatalistic classic of 1949, "Criss Cross." (Perhaps one should qualify the point as "intentional comedies," since a number of the costume swashbucklers Mr. Curtis made at Universal were inadvertently funny.) Ten years later, the success of Billy Wilder's irresistible transvestite farce "Some Like It Hot" was so transforming that Tony Curtis was almost always playing comedy leads during his second decade as a Hollywood star.

Then the stellar years faded away. In regrettable comparison to Paul Newman's durability, there was no compelling reason to follow Tony Curtis through his 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s. In even more regrettable contrast, the Curtis private life became deplorable, a drug-riddled shambles during much of the 1970s and '80s. On the mend, he put some of the misfortunes to reflective advantage by talking about them with interviewers, including first biographer Barry Paris.

Recently, I found it bemusing to revisit the Curtis career at two points, when he was flying high in the aftermath of "Some Like It Hot" and then heading toward a prolonged decline in the late 1960s. The two movies that illustrated these phases: "Operation Petticoat" and "Don't Make Waves."

The former was made shortly after "Some Like It Hot" - and specifically because Tony Curtis, enjoying a professional hot streak, idolized Cary Grant, who had been suitably amused by the actor's brilliantly overdrawn impersonation of him during the last half of the Wilder masterpiece. Mr. Curtis' already duplicitous character improvised a third identity in order to seduce Marilyn Monroe's Sugar Kane, pretending to be a millionaire playboy requiring remedial lessons in love.

"Operation Petticoat," directed by Blake Edwards, proved a confident and adroit contrivance. One of the better service comedies of the period - surpassed only by Richard Quine's "Operation Mad Ball," which Mr. Edwards had a hand in writing - "Petticoat" matched Mr. Grant as a World War II submarine commander with Mr. Curtis as a master scrounger, a necessary annoyance in wartime. The movie got under sail so promptly and proficiently that it was ready to cash in during the Christmas season of 1959, only a few months after "Some Like It Hot" had taken the public by storm.