by Tony Curtis
The big neon sign out front identified Loews Schooner Theater on Simpson Street, but I didn’t need that sign to find it. After Julie died, I practically lived there. My shoes may have had holes in them, and at home my parents may have been squabbling, but when I was sitting in the movie theater, all of that disappeared. In my mind I was wearing a pin-striped suit with a .45 stuck in my belt. My hair was slicked back, and on my feet were the same expensive two-toned shoes Jimmy Cagney wore. My father was a tailor, and I knew clothes. I couldn’t own suits like they wore in the movies, but I sure could pretend I did.
On days we skipped school and didn’t go to the movies, we’d go over to the Hudson River, which was on the West Side of Manhattan, and we’d watch the big ships go by. There was a lot of traffic on the waterways, and sometimes we’d sneak onto the ferry going to Jersey. I became really good at it. As I walked toward the ticket taker, I would point and say, “Oh, look at that guy,” and then I’d duck past him and run onto the ferry. It wasn’t easy, but I could do it almost every time.
Not only did I climb up the trestles of the El up to the subway platform, I would jump on the backs of trolley cars or taxis, holding on for dear life. People inside the cabs or the trolley cars would look out to see a kid hanging on the back, and sometimes they would scream. When the vehicle stopped, I would jump down and take off running. I figured I was becoming a self-taught movie stuntman, and in fact I was becoming a pretty good athlete—not because I was dedicated to a sport, but because I was preparing myself for the movies.
I became a child of the streets. That’s where I lived—and I don’t mean that in a negative way. When the weather was good, we played stickball. Or we’d climb into tenement houses that had been condemned. We played war on abandoned lots, using bricks as hand grenades. I was always fearless as a kid. I guess I just didn’t feel like I had anything to lose.
As a teen I didn’t eat much food at all. Once in a while we’d steal an apple off a pushcart, but on some level I knew that food wasn’t what I needed. I needed to come to grips with who I was: with being a Jew, with being poor, with being raised in a household where the only feelings I could get in touch with were tension, anger, sadness, and humiliation.
Not long after we moved to the Bronx, my father got a job with Shapiro and Sons, an important clothier in Manhattan’s garment district. Soon after my father started they made him a supervisor and put twenty other tailors to work under him. He didn’t want the job, even though it paid him a better salary, but they gave him no choice.
Given my mother’s focus on success, my father’s ascent to management tipped the balance of power, at least for a while. Now he was the boss at home, demanding his dinner, telling my mother what to do and where to get off. I often wonder: if he had gotten this job earlier, would he have left my mother? That was the only time I remember my father acting with confidence, even a little swagger.
Unfortunately, his new job didn’t last long. He wasn’t really suited to being a supervisor. He tried to take a humane approach to the workers, but they mistook his kindness for weakness and took advantage of him. And when they stopped producing clothes in the quantities the company demanded, my father was fired. He went back to working for himself—and to making very little money.
I’m not sure my father would agree with this assessment, but I thought that he was happiest when he worked for himself. Maybe not quite so proud of himself, but happier. He didn’t have to service the sewing machines. He didn’t have to worry about other employees. He only had to do his job. He made thirty or forty bucks a week, enough to take care of the basics, and somewhere deep inside, I think he was satisfied. If only my mother had felt the same way.
To pass the hours I spent alone each day, I started to draw. My first drawings were made on the brown paper my father used to wrap his customers’ clothes. He would pull off a three-foot length and give it to me, and I’d cut it into three pieces and draw on them using my father’s tailor’s chalk or pencils or crayons. I also drew on the sidewalk with different-colored chalk.
I found myself able to accurately copy things I saw, and then I found I could add things, and all of a sudden my artwork wasn’t just copying anymore. It was something else again. In the movies I could fence with Errol Flynn, but with my art I could go even further. I liked drawing what I was thinking or seeing. It became a driving force in my life.
Art was also an antidote for the deep depressions that I suffered as a child. They would strike without warning, and all of a sudden I would just lose interest in everything around me. I loved playing stickball, but if depression hit, I’d just sit there in my bedroom, and I wouldn’t move. I’d hear my friends calling me: “Bernie, come on, we’re going to play ball.” But I wouldn’t go out. I wouldn’t do anything. I would sit there like a zombie. Eventually something would snap me out of it, then I’d look around and realize that I was sitting in the bedroom, or on the floor, or lying under the bed, hiding.
I had had these spells while Julie was alive, but they got worse and came more frequently after he died. I was never sure when they‘d strike. I’d be looking out the window, and I’d turn my head, and all of a sudden I would be overwhelmed by the feeling that I had to hide.
Now in my ninth decade of life, I still get overwhelmed by these deep depressions, this sense that despite how fortunate I’ve been, perhaps I haven’t done as well as I should have, perhaps I haven’t achieved enough success. It may not make sense, but when I’m in a funk there’s no room for logical thoughts, only that heavy feeling of unbearable sadness.
Objectively, you might say I did just fine in life, but when I’m feeling depressed that just doesn’t seem good enough. And to be honest, I never was interested in just doing okay. All my adult life I wanted to be the best. Or at least to do my best. If you aren’t doing your best, if you aren’t trying as hard as you possibly can, why bother? I’ve never had much patience for people who were loaded with talent but didn’t give it their all. I still don’t understand that. If anything, I was an overachiever. I took the talent that I had and made the most of it. And even when the deep blues come over me, I take comfort in that thought.
One afternoon after I’d been playing stickball, I went into our apartment to clean up. I went into the kitchen and I could see that my mother was very agitated. I wasn’t sure what the trouble was.
“Come with me,” she said in a fury. I had no idea where she was going.
We went out of our house and over to Southern Boulevard, where there were three theaters, a Loews, an RKO, and another small art house. I didn’t dare ask my mother where we were going or why. We walked to the front of the Loews and waited. All of a sudden, I saw my mother stiffen.
Coming out of the theater was my father, and it looked like he was with a redheaded woman. Could have been, anyway. I didn’t know who she was, and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But when my father saw my mother standing there, he went white. He saw I was there too, and maybe that embarrassed him even more. The girl stopped too, so I suppose they had been together.
My mother started to bawl out my father in Hungarian, calling him a “good-for-nothing bum.” He didn’t say anything. This beautiful red-haired woman stepped forward between my mother and father, and she said, “Don’t hold your breath for a nickel’s worth.” With that, she turned around and walked briskly away. My mother didn’t know what to do. She kept shouting at my father, and then she looked around, realized where she was, and stopped. To this day I don’t know what the red-haired lady’s comment meant, but I assume she was saying she wasn’t going to be part of any marital showdown.
My father walked past her and came up to me, and both of us walked home. My mother came in about ten minutes later. I don’t know what they said to each other, because I got the hell out of there. After that things were tense around the house, but not much worse than usual.
When I was in my early teens I used to take one of my roller skates and put an orange crate across it, and I’
d sit in it and ride down hills in the Bronx. I could pick up a lot of speed, and I shifted my weight so I could steer it. I got very good at it. Then one day I dipped a little too close to the ground and I scraped the middle finger of my left hand. It didn’t hurt much, but it created a blood blister, which became infected.
The next day it was festering, and a couple of days later it really hurt like crazy. My hand was swollen, I felt a lot of pain under my armpit, and I was dizzy. My mother took me the three blocks to East Bronx Hospital’s free clinic. A young doctor looked at my finger, and without saying a word he pricked it with a needle. I didn’t feel a thing.
He said to me, “You’ve got a serious infection here. Hey, you’re a good-looking kid.” That washed away my anxiety. He added, “Take advantage of it. Don’t neglect your life like you’ve neglected your finger.”
It was the first time anyone had told me that I was good-looking, or that I should make something of my life. But both thoughts stayed with me. I think I’ve always been vain, but this is when I first became fully aware of it. I soon grew very fond of my thick, luxuriant head of hair, which I could slick down on the sides and leave curly on top. I loved the way people looked at me. Underneath all that hair was a good-looking face. I’ve always been a little ashamed of acknowledging that I was handsome, but the truth is that I took real pleasure in looking good. I always kept that feeling inside me because I was afraid of the Schwartz curse, afraid something bad would happen to snatch that good feeling away.
When I was fifteen, a woman in the neighborhood called me over and asked if I could give her a hand lifting something in her apartment. As soon as I got inside the door she closed it, grabbed me, and kissed me so hard that my mouth started to bleed. She rubbed her body against me. After a few minutes I found myself back outside her building, with the feeling of her lips on my mouth, and her urgency, and at the same time feeling violated. I walked the half block to my house, went upstairs, and washed my face. I didn’t know what to think.
It was an era when nobody wanted to stand out, to be unusual. If you were good-looking, you were likely to be called a homosexual, a fairy. But once I found out the effect I could have on girls, I didn’t give a shit what anybody called me. Before puberty, I had no interest in girls, like most kids my age. Now that I was fifteen, I was starting to notice the way the wind would blow girls’ summer dresses against their bodies, and how great their legs and breasts looked.
When I first started to go out with girls I quickly fell for them, but they didn’t seem to care about me the same way. I could tell from their behavior that I didn’t mean anything to them. The lesson I took from this was simple: be careful; protect yourself. As a result, I was hesitant to enter into any relationships.
I was fifteen when I met Alicia Allen, a beautiful girl with a love of acting that made us instant companions. I had never told anybody but Alicia that I wanted to be in pictures, because I was sure they’d have laughed me out of the room. I hadn’t done any acting yet, but I was interested in giving it a try.
So I auditioned at the 92nd Street YMHA and played the lighthouse keeper’s son in the play Thunder Rock. Early in the play I had to walk through a scene and then come back in and speak my one line. It was actually just one word: “Yes.” I also had a part in another play at the 92nd Street Y, a Clifford Odets play. I can still remember that line too. I said, “They found Lefty in a car barn with a bullet in his head.”
Having the name Schwartz helped me get parts in YMHA plays. What an irony. The truth was that I didn’t feel Jewish in any way. As a kid all it meant to me was being taunted, being bullied, and not being treated as an equal.
One day Alicia said to me, “What are you doing Saturday? I’m going to a party. Want to come?”
“Sure.”
Saturday I called Alicia on the phone and told her, “I’ll be there at six to pick you up.” I got dressed in my coolest clothes. I wore a dark blue jacket with gray slacks, with loafers and a tie. My father had fixed the jacket, and it looked really spiffy.
I went downtown to Twelfth Street where Alicia lived. She was older than I was, and she had her own place. From there we took a cab to a private residence in the theater district over on the West Side. It was an old mansion. I had never been inside anything like it. We walked through the gate, in the front door, and went upstairs. Alicia introduced me to lots of people, and then, before I knew it, she was introducing me to Ethel Merman. I couldn’t believe it, and I’m sure I looked as starstruck as I felt. But Ethel Merman was very gracious, and she put me at ease. “Hi, kid. Oh, what a nice-looking guy you are.”
I loved being at this party with all these nicely dressed people, and I was pleased with the way I was able to mingle. I spoke well. I watched my language. We had a really nice evening, and Alicia was pretty happy with me for holding my own with this sophisticated crowd.
The next time I took Alicia out she invited me back to her tiny little apartment, and we necked in the living room. Things were hot and heavy for a while, and then she said, “Excuse me a minute,” and went into the bathroom. When she came back out, she was wearing only her panties and her bra. I was stunned. She had an amazingly voluptuous body. I started to unbutton my shirt, and she sweetly took my hand and walked me over to her bed. This is what I had always imagined sex would be like, just like it was in the movies.
We began to touch each other, and after all these years I can still remember the smoothness of her skin and how great it smelled. I was worried about how I would perform the first time, but I made up for my inexperience with sheer enthusiasm. And Alicia made it easy for me. She was just so sweet and loving. I can’t imagine how I could have had a better first experience. I found myself thinking. I’ve got to grow up in a hurry, so I can have more of this. Even then I knew I wasn’t ready for a real relation ship.
Unfortunately, I was right. Alicia and I continued to go out, but the time between dates got longer and longer. Alicia was kind to me, which is to say that she didn’t dump me. But we both knew that what we had together wasn’t going to go any distance. We never made love again, but that one time was truly unforgettable.
That same year, two years after Julie’s death, my parents decided to have another child. I couldn’t understand what they thought they were doing. Maybe they were looking for evidence that God wasn’t punishing them. But as far as I was concerned, my parents had no business having another child. They had cared so little for the ones they had already had! But the next thing I knew, I had a baby brother, Robert.
My parents bought a carriage for Bobby, and I would push it up and down the street. One reason I enjoyed it was that the good-looking girls who sat across the street rocking their own baby carriages would look at me as I walked by. They were eighteen and nineteen, mothers already, and I kept hoping one of them would invite me into her apartment and have sex with me. It never happened.
If I felt remote from my family before Bobby was born, afterward I felt even more so. What little enthusiasm my parents had for child rearing went into Bobby, although I can’t say they treated him any better than they had Julie and me. My parents had mellowed a bit, and money wasn’t quite so tight, but I just don’t think they were cut out for raising children.
I tried to feel close to my new baby brother, but I didn’t have much success. I couldn’t help but compare him with Julie. Julie and I would fight and laugh and scream and hug each other. Without him, I was flying solo. Bobby just couldn’t begin to fill the hole that Julie’s death left behind. I was going to school, but I didn’t give a shit one way or the other. Fuck school. Fuck that whole system. I wasn’t going to get involved with it, not one bit.
I couldn’t wait until I could get out of the Bronx, even though I had no idea what my future would hold. What future? When I look back on those days, I wonder what might have happened if my parents had said to me, “We see that you’re interested in art and acting, so we’re going to send you to a special school that will help you develop your ta
lents and interests.” My parents had no idea what my interests were. I try not to fault them for that, since they raised their kids much the way everyone else did in those days. But the bottom line was that I was lost, and the education I was getting was “fuck ’em and feed ’em fish,” although that wasn’t a line I’d understand until I was stationed in Guam during World War II.
When we were stationed there, the chief quartermaster was responsible for feeding all the sailors on the island. He oversaw the menus, and made sure they were followed and the meals were cooked properly. One day one of the men who acquired food rushed in and said, “Chief, we’re in trouble. I went out to get chicken and there’s not enough to feed the men.” The chief didn’t miss a beat, replying, “Fuck ’em, and feed ’em fish.” Word got out, and from that time on, we used that as our mantra.
Looking back, I can see that poverty also played a damaging role in my childhood. Lots of kids never get to know who they are or get a real chance at success in life because they don’t have the few advantages they need. Good things may still happen to you, but if they do, poverty tends to cancel them out. My mother was frustrated and bitter about the cards she’d been dealt in life. After she’d take some of that frustration out on me by slapping me around a bit, I wasn’t going to go out into the street and find a quiet place to practice the violin. That just wasn’t going to happen. It’s far more likely in that situation that you’re going to take that rage you feel and go push some other kid around. And if you’re lucky, you’ll stay out of jail.
After I graduated from the ninth grade, we moved back to Manhattan, near the corner where my father had had his old tailor shop. I was glad to be back in Manhattan, which was a much better place for me to live than the Bronx. I always liked the action there, so even when I lived in the Bronx, I would find my way to Manhattan. I liked the subways. There were always good-looking girls on them, and sometimes they would make eyes at me.
