American Prince

by Tony Curtis

  I remember one fight I had over a girl named Gretchen. She was beautiful, and I was chatting her up when this burly kid came over and said, “Stay away from her.” I stood my ground. Gretchen watched as he came at me. He threw a big roundhouse punch, and when I ducked, his momentum carried him past me. I stuck out my foot and gave him a little push that knocked him to the ground, hard. The fight was over, and I hadn’t thrown a single punch.

  Gretchen looked at me and smiled. I took it to mean that I hadn’t done anything wrong, and that she was impressed. I remember walking away feeling very good about myself. It was a hell of a lot better than being taunted and punched and feeling helpless.

  I learned to avoid the toughs who ran in gangs. Even if you won a fight with one of those guys, they could gang up on you later and hurt you very badly. I never picked a fight, either, but if somebody did me dirt, I was capable of biding my time and getting even.

  When I was about twelve there was a big kid who used to pick on me because of my shabby clothes. On weekends I would go to the dances at the Central Jewish Institute on Madison Avenue and Eighty-fifth Street. This kid didn’t badger me for being Jewish, because all of us at the dances were Jewish, but he kept after me for the way I dressed, for the worn secondhand clothes I wore. My father would give me a coat, and I’d just wear it, but after this kid started on me, if my parents gave me a piece of clothing, I would ask my father to tailor it. It’s funny how life works sometimes. Just because this one kid baited me about my clothing, I would become very meticulous about how I dressed and take great pleasure in looking good.

  After two years of listening to this kid go on about my clothes, I got even. At this one dance he was all over the most beautiful girl in the room. But every time I turned around, she was looking at me. I don’t know where I got the chutzpah, but at one point I just walked over, stepped between them, and started talking to her. He stood there dumbfounded, but he could see she was smiling at me. He reached out to grab me, but I ducked out of the way and gave him a quick shot in the balls. He let out a loud groan, and as he slumped to the floor, everyone in the place turned to look at him. He never said another word to me again.

  The girl invited me to her home for a party. There were about ten kids there, five boys and five girls. I wasn’t wearing any under wear, but I was wearing a jockstrap that I’d kept on since gym class, and in the middle of the party it started to itch me something terrible. I wanted to scratch, but I couldn’t do that, so I excused myself, went to the bathroom, took off the jock strap, and threw it under the tub. I was so relieved, I was a new man.

  Fifteen minutes later her father came out of the bathroom holding up the jockstrap.

  “Who does this belong to?” he wanted to know. I put on one of the great performances of all time, reassured by a hunch that he wasn’t going to make us all take our pants off. I said, “What’s that? Never saw it before,” and I just kept on talking to the girls. I didn’t know it then, but that was my start as an actor.

  My clothes may not have looked like much, but I began to realize that I was considered handsome. I didn’t understand the power my looks gave me until I was in my late teens, but I did notice that older women paid attention to me, and sometimes men as well. One time a guy sat next to me in the movie theater and tried to grab my hand. I moved away and he followed me, so I ran out of there. Another time when I took Julie to the zoo, this pervert came up behind us and started rubbing himself against me. We ran away from him as fast as we could.

  I was almost thirteen, and with my confidence growing I was beginning to see some signs that things were looking up. But I had no idea what lay just up ahead.

  Fuck ’Em and Feed ’Em Fish

  In high school, 1942.

  Until the fall of 1938, it seemed like I always had my brother Julius by my side, which was both gratifying and annoying. Even though Julie was four years younger than I, he was still a big part of my life. He looked up to me, and he loved me. At night we would wrestle and fool around, and Julie was the one dependable connection I had to the rest of humanity.

  We were living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at this time. I was thirteen years old, and my bar mitzvah wasn’t too far off. Early that evening I had been watching the American Legion parade over on Second Avenue. Some kids and I were standing around behind the police barricades when Julie came over. I was embarrassed to have him pester me in front of my buddies, so I shooed him away. I said, “Go play with your own freakin’ friends.” We didn’t need a nine-year-old hanging around, ruining our fun.

  That night my father went to synagogue for Shabbat services, and by the time he came back, Julie still hadn’t come home. My mother asked me, “Where’s your brother?” I said, “I saw him a while ago, watching the parade.” She replied, “Why didn’t you stay with him?” I said, “I was playing with some of the guys.” I could see she was getting worried. It wasn’t like Julie to stay out without letting us know where he was.

  My mother said, “I heard a boy was hurt on First Avenue up around Seventy-eighth Street.” That was just five blocks away from the tailor shop, but there were so many kids out on the street that day that I didn’t think much of it. Then, about an hour later, we heard a knock on the door. Two cops were standing there, and they asked if they could come inside. One of them wanted to verify our names, and then he asked my father if everyone in the family was home. When my father told him that his younger son hadn’t come home yet, and we were starting to worry, the other cop said, “We think your son may have been hit by a truck a few blocks up on First Avenue.” My mother grabbed her breast and started to cry. My father stood motionless.

  The first cop said to them, “This boy is unconscious and isn’t able to talk, so we’d like to ask you to come down to the hospital and see if you can identify him. We’ll give you a ride over in the squad car.” I had a terrible, sinking feeling that Julie was in big trouble.

  My mother gave me a shove and I stumbled forward, and the two cops took me out to their car. I couldn’t believe my parents weren’t coming with me, but I guess they were too terrified by the thought of what might be waiting at the hospital. I turned to look back at them, still hoping they wouldn’t send me into that police car alone, but they just stood there like statues. Tears were running down my mother’s cheeks.

  The cops were very nice, which only made me more nervous. The situation with Julie must be pretty bad if they were on such good behavior. Up to that point I had never seen anything but a stone face on a cop. Once I’d been coming out of the five-and-dime store with two friends when a cop barked at me: “Get over here.” I stood spread-eagle against the building while he patted me down to see if I had stolen anything. When he came up empty, he just gave me that tough, expressionless cop stare and walked away. All the cops I’d ever met acted like that—like they were sure I was doing something wrong, and it was just a matter of time before they caught me at it.

  The police cruiser took me to New York Hospital, which wasn’t far from the tailor shop. When I got out of the car, a hospital attendant was waiting for me. He took me up in the elevator, and we walked down a hall that smelled of ammonia and into a simple room. I remember a glass filled with water with a straw in it, sitting on a nightstand. It hadn’t been touched. A doctor was standing there, and my kid brother was lying in the bed, unconscious. His head was wrapped in bloody bandages, and his face was black and blue, swollen almost beyond recognition, but I knew it was Julie from his cracked front tooth, where a kid in school had hit him. Every once in a while the body on the bed would shudder, like it was having a seizure.

  They asked me if it was my brother, and I said, “Yeah, that’s Julie.”

  My voice shaking, I asked the doctor, “Is he going to be all right?”

  The doctor said, “Don’t worry. It’s just a concussion.” Then he added, “Even though he can’t recognize you, he can still hear you.” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I sat down on the edge of the bed and told Julie how ba
d I felt about telling him to go play with his own friends. “If I hadn’t sent you away,” I said, “you wouldn’t have been on that corner where the truck hit you.” Sitting there, dark thoughts ran through my mind. Maybe Julie had been so upset by my rejecting him that he ran in front of that truck on purpose. I wasn’t being rational, but I was devastated, and these are the games the mind plays when we’re most vulnerable.

  A nurse asked me to sign a form, and then the two cops took me back home. “Don’t worry, kid,” one of the cops said. “It’s going to be all right.”

  I sat down with my parents and told them what the doctor had said: Julie had a concussion, and he’d be all right. To which my mother replied, “I hope so.” She asked me whom she could call at the hospital, and I gave her the doctor’s business card. Everyone relaxed a little bit. At least we knew where Julie was, and that he was getting medical attention.

  The next morning my parents got up early and went to the hospital, while I stayed home to keep an eye on the store. I sat outside on the stoop, its steps shiny from all the people who’d come in and out of the building over the years. Behind me was my dad’s old sign that read schwartz dry cleaning and pressing, and in little print one-day service. Looking out across the street, I could see the elevated trains going by. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t feeling more upset, but I guess the doctor and the cops had convinced me Julie was going to be okay.

  I sat there until about ten thirty in the morning. There were no customers. I didn’t do much, just watched the trains and the pedestrians walking by. Then down the block, amid the pushcarts under the El, I spotted my mother. When she got to the middle of the street she screamed at me, “Julie’s dead. Julie’s dead.”

  My heart froze. I couldn’t believe it. The doctor had said he was going to be all right. How could he be dead? And it was all my fault. If I had been doing my job, Julie would never have been run over. I felt like I was going to throw up. I put my head in my hands and wept.

  That afternoon I went down to the East River to find a stone to throw into the river and to commune with Julie. When someone Jewish has died and you want to show them you miss them, you put a stone on their casket or grave. Why is that? I don’t know, but that’s what relatives did whenever I went to an unveiling—the Jewish ceremony at the gravesite one year after someone dies.

  Now that Julie was dead, I wanted to do something to help him in the afterlife. He and I used to go over to Carl Schurz Park a lot, so it seemed appropriate to head over there. I got to the East River and looked around for a stone. When I found one, I held it up to show it to God. I walked down by the river, and as I stared into the murky, turbulent waters I knew I was in the right place to be thinking about my brother. I held the stone to my heart. I was sure that somehow this stone would help me see Julie again, or at least let me hear his voice.

  I prayed. “God, please let me see Julie every now and then. If you do that for me, I promise I will never do anything bad for the rest of my life.” And with that I threw the stone far out into the river. I think of that day a lot. I remember what the stone felt like. I guess it goes without saying, but I never got an answer to my prayer. I didn’t see Julie again, not even once.

  After my brother’s death, my father and mother and I sat shiva in the tailor shop for a week. Lots of friends and relatives came by to offer their condolences, and we all sat on orange and apple crates we’d set out on the floor because we didn’t have enough chairs for all our visitors. I was given a box to sit on, even though I hadn’t yet had my bar mitzvah, so I wasn’t technically deserving of an adult seat. I sat there on my crate, wearing a yarmulke, watching the men and women who came to express their sorrow to my parents and to try to find words that might ease the pain of my brother’s death.

  The funeral was held on Lexington Avenue, way uptown, just before you get to Harlem. They put my brother in a coffin on a little stage, and everyone prayed for him. When I looked at that coffin I remembered seeing his unrecognizable face and bloody bandages in the hospital. I was told the truck had run over his head.

  After Julius was killed, I thought I’d never feel comfortable in my skin again. I was empty. Our little bedroom that we’d shared felt empty too. I just walked around like a zombie. At school I became an even worse discipline problem than I’d been before.

  I do remember the kindness of my teacher, Miss Hopper, at P.S. 28. When I came in, she told the rest of the class, “Bernie has lost his brother in an automobile accident.” She pulled me aside and told me she had lost a sister. For the first time I felt like someone really knew how I was feeling. My fellow students didn’t come up and say, “We’re sorry,” but I could feel their compassion too.

  My parents never let on how terribly Julie’s death affected them, but they closed down the tailor shop and we moved to the Bronx, near the corner of Fox and Simpson Streets. I can’t say for sure they moved because of Julie’s death, because I never questioned where we lived. All I knew was that whenever they decided to move, I had to take all of my toys and goods and put them in a cardboard box and hope no one would steal them.

  The Bronx wasn’t as alien as it might have been, because my aunts and uncles lived in the neighborhood. I had hoped that Julie’s death would have exempted me from having to study for my bar mitzvah, but no such luck. My parents signed me up at my aunt and uncle’s temple, and I had to start going to Hebrew school there. I had a lot of studying to do before I would be ready to conduct a service in front of the whole congregation; this was the big day when, according to Jewish tradition, I would become a man. Poor Julius, I thought, was never going to get that chance.

  I made it through Hebrew school and the bar mitzvah itself, including the speech that every kid makes. Mine was pretty generic: I talked about how much I loved my parents, how I was planning to devote myself to my religion, and how I was looking forward to a life of accomplishment. These were the things I knew everybody expected me to say, so I did, although to be honest I didn’t believe a word of it.

  To my surprise, it still turned out to be a very emotional day for me. It felt very strange to be up on that bimah without Julie in the audience. The experience shook me, and I felt that terrible sense of loss all over again.

  My mother and father both seemed to be very happy, although they must have been feeling Julie’s absence too. There were a lot of people in the synagogue that day. Some of them came over to me, hugged me, and slipped me envelopes. I slit them open and saw singles, five-dollar bills, and tens. It was the first time I had ever held paper money in my hands. Just when I was beginning to think that this was going to be a really good day, my father came over, took all the envelopes, and put them in his pocket. I never saw them again.

  My parents had registered me for P.S. 80, the local public school, but I hardly ever went. When I did, the teachers would ask me, “Where have you been? You can’t skip school.” I would make up extraordinary stories. “My aunt got sick, and I had to help her with her pushcart, or she wouldn’t be able to feed my cousins.” I created a fantasy world populated by family members who needed me so much that I couldn’t possibly go to school.

  One time in spelling class my English teacher said, “Schwartz, come here.” We had just been tested on ten spelling words, and I had spelled every one wrong. He said, “Not only did you get every word wrong, but you made a mistake in your own name.” Sure enough, I had left out the tz. I thought that was kind of funny.

  I’d get up in the morning, and if I went to school, I would always try to get the seat near the classroom door, so I could make a fast getaway. As it turned out, school wasn’t a total waste; despite myself I was learning to read and write and learn a little arithmetic. But I couldn’t help but feel that my life had absolutely nothing to do with algebra, or the Spanish-American War, or Beowulf, or whatever else I was being forced to study. I just didn’t see the point.

  In one class there was always so much turmoil that when the teacher’s head was turned, I could sometim
es sneak out altogether. I’d hide my knapsack full of schoolbooks in the stairwell, then I’d climb up the train trestles—that was quite a feat—and I’d sneak onto the Third Avenue El, making sure I didn’t land on the tracks when I jumped over the top of the wall. That way I could skip the fare. I’d ride deep into the Bronx, and then I’d turn around and come all the way into Brooklyn, Coney Island, or Brighton Beach.

  Sometimes my buddies would go with me. We’d be at school, hiding out in the stairwell, and I’d ask my friend Charlie, “Hey, what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s go to the nudie show.”

  “Okay.” So we’d ride the train down to the sleazy theaters on Forty-second Street, where the burlesque nudes performed. We’d slip in a side door when one show was ending and everyone was leaving. Once inside the theater we’d duck down until the next show, and then we’d pop up from under our seats to see all those girls with their bare breasts jiggling.

  Those dancing girls were exciting to look at, but even they weren’t better than the movies. To survive life at home I’d invent roles for myself based on the movies I’d seen. I would sit in my room and imagine sword fighting alongside Errol Flynn, as the two of us rescued Olivia de Havilland. I’d reach over suavely and light a cigarette for Greta Garbo, or take Jean Harlow out for a roman tic dinner. I’d picture myself riding horses with Norma Shearer, or swinging across the deck of a pirate vessel with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.