by Tony Curtis
I loved going out, but I didn’t have a lot of money to spend. After paying my rent and the installment on my membership in the Screen Actors Guild, I had about twenty-five bucks a week to live on, which was enough to get by but didn’t allow for any luxuries. I was netting roughly the same amount I had been receiving from the GI Bill of Rights when I was studying drama in New York City. Back then my dad would slip me a few bucks here and there, which helped, but I didn’t have his help here in Hollywood. Still, I loved being on my own. I just had to be frugal to make it work.
The important thing was that I had enough money to take girls out on dates now and then. There were so many beautiful women in Hollywood, and I was meeting more of them all the time. One girl I went out with had competed as Miss Sweden in the Miss Universe contest. She didn’t win, but as one of six finalists she was given a contract with Universal. She was a breathtaking natural beauty, a tall, eighteen-year-old blonde with a spectacular figure. Her name was Anita Ekberg.
The first time I picked up Anita to take her out, she threw her arms around me and we never got any further than her couch. At least she had a couch! I was fortunate enough to have a number of romantic moments with Anita, but we ran into the same problem I’d had with Marilyn Monroe: we were too young and too busy with our careers to make time for a serious relationship. Like Marilyn, Anita’s evenings were often taken up by big-shot film executives, and it was tough for me to compete with that. Anita ended up dating a string of movie stars, including Errol Flynn, Yul Brynner, and Frank Sinatra.
I went out with another actress, Betty Thatcher, who was also a knockout. I took her to a club in downtown LA owned by Benny Leonard, the Jewish prizefighter. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were working there weekends, doing their show. That’s when I met Jerry—and that’s when Jerry met Betty. It was obvious right away that he had big eyes for her. I had just met her, and we weren’t emotionally involved, so I stepped out of the way.
When I first met him, Jerry Lewis seemed very gregarious and open, just the way he was on stage. As I got to know him better, I saw another side to his personality. He could be very domineering, even mean, and sometimes acted like everybody worked for him. But at the same time, Jerry was absolutely hilarious to be around. He loved being outrageous. We’d be walking down the street together and he’d start skipping, just like a little kid. When we went out to eat, he’d stick his fingers in everybody else’s food. If you were driving a car with him in the passenger seat, he’d grab the wheel and force you onto the sidewalk. Jerry always had candy in his pocket, and if we were at a party, he would walk over to a girl, drop a piece of candy down her blouse, and go after it. I’m telling you, he was crazy, a helluva lot of fun, and completely impossible.
One day I was walking down a Universal Studios street when some guy stopped me and asked, “Can you dance?”
What, are you kidding me? Here I am, working to get my big break, so what am I going to say? “Of course,” I replied. “There’s nothing I can’t do.”
He smiled, and we made our introductions. He was Robert Siodmak, the director who had made The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. Now he was making a movie called Criss Cross for Universal. He said someone from casting would call me. I was excited, but by now I knew enough about Hollywood to take a wait-and-see attitude.
Later that afternoon a girl from the mail department knocked on my dressing room door and handed me a note: Call Bob Palmer. Bob Palmer was the head of casting. When I called he said, “The director of Criss Cross just called and wants you in his film. Burt Lancaster is in it, too. The director wants you to dance with Yvonne De Carlo. Can you really dance?”
“Sure I can dance,” I said.
“He’s expecting you first thing tomorrow,” Palmer replied.
Most fans know Yvonne De Carlo as the TV character Lily Munster from The Munsters, but in 1945 she played Salome in Salome Where She Danced, a role that made her a star. Two years later she played the lead in Slave Girl, and audiences could almost feel the heat from her sultry sensuality. When I met Yvonne, her career was soaring, and now she was starring in a picture with Burt Lancaster, who was also a big star.
The premise of Criss Cross was that Burt and Yvonne were in a relationship, but had been divorced and he had left town for a year. While he was away, she worked as a dancer and a prostitute, and in this one scene she was dancing with me. I was on the screen for about two minutes. I was supposed to do the rumba, whatever that was. I just shook my body like crazy, and everyone loved it. When Yvonne’s character and I are dancing, Burt walks in and sees us. She goes over to him, and I’m left standing there, but I decided not to let that bother me. I was going to dance, dammit, girl or no girl. So I kept on going. They liked that too.
I was very attracted to Yvonne, and she took a liking to me as well. We started going out, and after a few dates we went to bed. The excitement of slowly taking off Yvonne De Carlo’s clothes was indescribable. Having her undressed with me in a bed on Mulholland Drive overlooking LA was like winning first prize in the lottery. It was like a sweet, sexy Hollywood romance, only it was real.
The picture was released a few months later. My family still lived in New York, and I had told my mother all about the film, so all my relatives and friends were waiting for Criss Cross to come out. My parents reported that when I appeared on the big screen in my bit part, the theater in our neighborhood exploded with cheers and applause. And my friends and family weren’t the only ones who liked seeing me up on screen. Fans mailed in hundreds of letters asking: Who was that guy who danced with Yvonne De Carlo? The studio was so impressed by all that mail that it renewed my contract right away and bumped up my salary to a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week. I’d been on screen exactly two minutes, but they turned out to be the most important two minutes of my life.
As soon as I started getting fan mail, I knew I was on the right track too. And when I watched myself in the picture, I liked the way I looked and moved on screen. I’d already been working hard at learning my craft, but now I poured everything I had into it. I paid close attention to every last detail. Now I was in a hurry to be a movie star. I didn’t want to have to wait until I was thirty; I needed it to happen now. I needed it to counteract all the negative stuff in my head that I had heard all my life from my mother, from relatives, and from people in the neighborhood. You’re good for nuttin. You’re gonna end up a homosexual dancer in some lousy club. You’ll never make a living as an actor.
I didn’t deny any of this crap, because I didn’t want to dignify it with a response. Still, I could feel it all around me. I could feel it in my own family. But when I signed my contract with Universal, all of a sudden I could sense that things had changed. People from back home treated me a little differently. I was accorded a little more respect those days when I went home to visit. But I could see in some people’s eyes that they were thinking I must have been shacking up with some gay studio exec, that someone powerful must be promoting me in exchange for favors. And there were people working at Universal who probably felt the same way. I didn’t have any film experience. How else could I have gotten into a movie so quickly? I could hardly blame anyone for their cynicism when I was having difficulty believing things were going so well myself. So I played it cool and didn’t let on when I felt insulted. I never became angry, mean, or frustrated. Even in those first few months I knew that success would be the best revenge.
My parents were also having a hard time seeing me as a successful actor. It seemed so implausible. They’d been going to the movies their whole lives, and for them to go to the movies and see me up on that screen—it was a major thrill for them. They were so excited they didn’t even get upset when they saw my new name, Tony Curtis.
• • •
My next movie, City Across the River, was about street gangs. Based on my fan mail for Criss Cross, the studio wanted me to have the lead role, but the director, Maxwell Shane, got cold feet and refused to give it to me. I suspec
t Shane didn’t take the chance because I had so little film experience: he had absolutely nothing to go on except one scene in Criss Cross when I was faking the rumba. I had some experience in the Yiddish theater, but no movie directors had seen me in those plays. Plenty of people like me got two minutes on screen in one film, and that was it; six months later their contract was allowed to expire, and they went back home. I didn’t want that to happen to me, which was why I wanted this lead so bad. But at least I got a supporting role that gave me some lines. I was making progress.
In City Across the River I played Mitch, one of the gang members. Peter Fernandez played the lead, and Stephen McNally was the star of the film. McNally was a good-looking man in his mid-thirties who was a very versatile actor. Steve was good enough to play nuanced parts but usually not quite good enough to get the lead. Looking back, I remember that he did a perfectly fine job, but there was no bite to his performance.
So I played Mitch, a lesser role, and Joshua Shelley, a comedian and a solid character actor, played Crazy, a gruff guy from the streets. In the movie I watched over Crazy, took care of him, and made sure he was all right. He fell in love with the girl lead, so when she started going out with Peter Fernandez, Crazy wanted to kill himself. I talked him out of it.
I had a few lines, none of which was particularly memorable, but it was a nice part for a novice. And since we were filming some of the scenes from City Across the River in Manhattan, I was able to fly to New York with the rest of the cast. We shot in a downtown tenement area near the Bowery, and I loved being in front of the camera in public. I got a kick out of how people in real life responded to me working as an actor. There was a rope separating us from the spectators, and there were all these girls on the other side of that rope batting their eyelashes and jumping with joy whenever I looked in their direction. Steve McNally was pretty well known, but I signed more autographs than anyone else in the cast.
I stayed at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel with the rest of the actors, although every once in a while I would go home and spend an evening with my parents. I did it out of a sense of obligation rather than any real desire to be under their roof. I didn’t want to go back home anymore; I was making my own life now. My parents came to watch me work a few times, and my mother liked to come down with one of her sisters. My mother just loved being around show business.
While we were there shooting City Across the River, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were working at the Loews Theater in Manhattan. Jerry invited me up to their dressing room, where he was clowning around as usual. Their fans were lined up around the block before their performance, so Jerry and Dean opened up the second-floor dressing room window and yelled down to the throng below. Jerry grabbed me and made me stick my head out, so I waved, and the girls squealed. I always enjoyed the fame that came with acting. As a kid I’d dreamed of getting this kind of response, if only I got my chance. And here I was, living it.
After we finished filming one afternoon, the studio limo took some of the actors back to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel. After they got out, I asked the driver if he would take over me to the President Theater at the New School. It was during school hours on a weekday, so I knew the students at the Dramatic Workshop would be there.
As we drove up, there was Walter Matthau, standing on the sidewalk. On a crazy impulse I said to the driver, “See that guy over there? Pull right up next to him, and then stop.”
Walter was standing there, immersed in a newspaper that might have been The Racing Form. He loved betting on the ponies. It was kind of a gloomy day, and although Walter was only about twenty-nine years old, he looked fifty-nine—he always looked older than he was. We pulled up, and Walter peered at the big car, trying to look through the dark glass to see who was inside.
I rolled the window down. Before he could say anything, I said, “I fucked Yvonne De Carlo.”
I rolled up the window and ordered the driver to speed off.
For me, that moment captured all the giddy craziness of Hollywood in those days, and how hungry one young person could be to make his mark.
Getting Shot by Audie Murphy
With Cary Grant, 1952.
Universal had a dozen or so young actors and actresses in its stable all starting out at about the same time I was. We all had our various strengths and weaknesses, but I had a weapon in my arsenal that no one else had: my hair. This was a time in America when men had crew cuts. That was the all-American way. In high schools and colleges, the Big Men On Campus all had short hair. Everyone who came back from the war had short hair, and so did politicians, businessmen, you name it. But I thought I looked better with a lot of hair, so I grew it long and twirled it on my forehead so it would look curlier, and on the nape of my neck I combed it into a DA (duck’s ass). I had styled my hair to please myself, but soon after I danced the rumba with Yvonne De Carlo in Criss Cross, I discovered that my hair had made me a hero with practically every white teen ager in America.
From 1949 to 1951, I became famous for my hair. I was mentioned in Ed Sullivan’s column, which appeared all over the country, as “the kid with the haircut.” Before I knew it, I was being featured in movie magazines. A newspaper cartoon from back then shows a guy in a factory operating a big machine; the guy has long hair combed back, and the caption says, “Those of you who have Tony Curtis haircuts, stay away from the machinery. Danger.” I loved it. You can’t imagine the publicity my hair generated. The studio didn’t have enough money to pay for that kind of publicity. My hair took on a life of its own. In fact, for a while my haircut was more famous than I was. I felt like introducing myself to people as “the guy with Tony Curtis’s hair.”
It wasn’t long before young guys all across the country started growing their hair long like mine. Elvis Presley was fourteen when Criss Cross came out, and it’s not unlikely that he copied my look, as did countless other kids his age. That hair of mine was important, in its own way. What it did was reach out to kids and say, We can be our own people. We don’t have to wait until we’re adults before we can have our own identities. The youth of America responded. And as the fan letters kept rolling in, Universal decided to give me bigger and bigger parts.
The next movie I appeared in, later that same year, was called The Lady Gambles, starring Barbara Stanwyck, a big-time movie star near the end of her career. Her best roles, like the one she played in Double Indemnity, were behind her now, although she was still a very talented actress. This movie was about a woman hooked on gambling who gets beaten up by thugs. I had a scene where I played a bellhop who delivers a telegram to her.
On the day my scene was being shot, I had unfortunately developed a stye in one eye. I went to the director, Michael Gordon, and told him, “My eye is a little swollen.”
He said, “Listen, kid, you’re better looking with one eye than anybody I’ve seen with two. So not to worry.” That reassured me, so I began to think I’d be okay. The direction was: You’re off camera, facing the room. You look through the door and see Barbara and Steve McNally, and you come into the room. Then you say your line. My line was “It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country.”
As I stood outside that door in my bellhop uniform, I kept running that line over and over in my head, trying to say it with different words emphasized to see what sounded best: “It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country. It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country. It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country.”
Michael Gordon was watching me. By the door was a red light. When the light went on, that was my cue to knock. I was standing there, getting ready for the shot, thrilled and a little nervous about my big moment. I heard, “Quiet,” while I was standing there muttering, “It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country.” I kept looking at the light by the door. When that red light went on, that was my cue to knock and go on stage. I wanted to be sure I was ready when it turned red, so I wouldn’t waste any precious time while the
camera was rolling.
I looked to my right, and I saw Michael walking toward me. I thought, What’s he doing back here? Is he going to walk on with me?
He looked at me and said, “How are you feeling, kid?”
“Oh, great,” I said.
He looked at me searchingly and said, “All you want is a tip.” Then he turned around and walked away.
Now, Michael couldn’t have known I had delivered groceries and shined shoes as a boy. But when I worked those jobs, that was exactly how I felt: all I wanted was a tip. So I knew just what he meant. How he nailed me with that, I will never know, but it was perfect.
The red light went on, and I knocked on the door and entered, and when I entered the room I was smiling, looking friendly and helpful. How I said the line no longer mattered as much as turning on the charm while I was delivering that telegram. I was doing my best to get that tip. I said my line, and Barbara Stanwyck reached into her purse and gave me some money. The director yelled cut. My scene was over.
“Excellent,” Barbara said. That meant a lot to me, coming from her.
Michael Gordon had given me the best direction I’d ever gotten up to that point in my career, and believe it or not, I went on to apply it during every movie I made! I never forgot that I wanted my tip—the money they were paying me to make the movie. I wanted to behave professionally, and save the studio money. I wanted good reviews. And, just as important, I wanted everyone to like working with me. After the movie was in the can, I wanted everyone involved to say, “This guy is great. Let’s use him again.”
All you want is the tip. Neat, huh?
My role in The Lady Gambles was tiny, but I felt good about it. I was learning, which was what really mattered to me. And appearing in a movie with Barbara Stanwyck was going to raise my profile further. I was also starting to get publicity about all the girls I was going out with. Hedda Hopper mentioned me in her column, and in New York, columnist Doro thy Kilgallen wrote, “A lot of people in Hollywood are turning their heads when they see Tony Curtis.” Mike Connelly, another gossip columnist, printed a phony story about me going out with Barbara Whiting, the younger sister of singer Margaret Whiting. I didn’t care that the story got the facts wrong, as long as it was a girl they were writing about. It meant I was get ting noticed.
