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.
In a better world “Don’t Make Waves,” one of the oddball orphans of 1967, might have proved an auspicious reunion for Tony Curtis and Alexander Mackendrick, who had directed his breakthrough dramatic performance in “Sweet Smell of Success” a decade earlier. Instead, it remained a fitful collection of satirical impulses revolving around the lotus land aspects of Southern California on the verge of going hippie or counterculture or something inevitably disenchanting.
“Waves” confirmed the stale drift of the actor’s comedy persona: He was again a rank opportunist while starting to show his age, a stranded tourist who discovers a flair for a salesmanship and lusts after Sharon Tate. Her very presence now haunts the movie in unintended respects.
Skittish and ragged - and available only in a VHS edition that distorts the aspect ratio - “Waves” was something of a wipeout literally and metaphorically. It was the last movie Mr. Mackendrick directed before deciding to abandon the movie industry for academia. There are precursors for several later movies adrift within “Waves,” including “The Poseidon Adventure” and Blake Edwards’ “10.”
Not to mention the current economic cave-in and mudslide, anticipated in a subplot about a dream house precariously located on a cliff over Malibu. Speculator Mort Sahl blithely deals this lemon to Mr. Curtis’ character, and it leaves several cast members upside-down while tumbling toward the Pacific Coast highway during a deluge. The metaphor is now better than ever, but anticipating calamities of various kinds didn’t save the movie from its own slide into failure and obscurity.
TITLE: “Operation Petticoat”
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1959, before the advent of the rating system; episodes of naval combat; vintage sexual humor and innuendo)
CREDITS: Directed by Blake Edwards. Screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin
RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes
DVD EDITION: Republic Pictures/Artisan Home Entertainment
WEB SITE: www.artisan.com
TITLE: “Don’t Make Waves”
RATING: No MPAA Rating (released in 1967, before the advent of the rating system; occasional sexual humor and innuendo)
CREDITS: Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Screenplay by Ira Wallach, George Kirgo and (uncredited) Terry Southern, based on the Wallach novel “Muscle Beach”
RUNNING TIME: 96 minutes
VHS EDITION: MGM/UA Home Video
WEB SITE: www.mgm.com
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