American Prince

by Tony Curtis

  In my next movie, Take One False Step, I played a race-car driver. For me the big thrill of that movie was getting to meet William Powell, whom I had seen in The Thin Man when I was a kid. I spent two or three days on the picture, enough to see what a pain in the ass Shelley Winters could be. She was about five years older than I was, and she had been dating Burt Lancaster, along with a lot of other actors. Shelley looked nice enough, but she was a real yenta, a big-mouthed busybody. Whatever she did, she made sure the press knew about it. She had never really made it to the top tier of stardom, which really pissed her off. As a result she could be very demanding—even dictatorial—on the set.

  At one point during the shoot I was standing by a desk, waiting for my scene; I was sketching on a piece of paper, just killing time. Shelley grabbed the paper.

  “What are you doing?” she growled. “Why don’t you pay more attention to the scene?”

  “Well, excuuuse me,” I said. I felt like I was back in school, being tongue-lashed by the teacher. What a bitch!

  Moviemaking at Universal gave me some insight into how quirky actors could be off-camera as well. Lou Costello, of Abbott and Costello fame, liked to take props from the sets and bring them home. If he saw something he liked—a bookcase, a vase, a writing desk—he would tell his stand-in to take it once the scene had finished shooting. The stand-in would put whatever it was under his arm or inside his sweater, carry it outside, and put it in the trunk of Lou’s car.

  It didn’t take long for the propman to notice that things were missing, and if Lou was on the set, the propman knew who the culprit was. But it was a ticklish situation; no one wanted to blow the whistle on Lou because he was such a big star. Eventually the propman would go to the head of the department, and they’d confront Lou together.

  “Lou, we need that table for tomorrow,” the head of the department would say.

  “What table?”

  “The one that’s in the trunk of your car.”

  “Who put it in the trunk?”

  “We don’t know, Lou, but we know it’s there.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We just know.”

  They’d march out to Lou’s car and open the trunk, and not only would the table be there, but also three or four other items that had disappeared during the week. Lou was contrite and tried to be funny about it, but no one laughed until after he left. Then everyone had a lot of fun at his expense.

  I didn’t have a speaking part in my next movie, which was called Johnny Stool Pigeon. I played a deaf and dumb druggie who gets killed and whose body is shipped from Mexico to LA in a coffin along with a massive amount of cocaine. I have to say that even though I was dead, I looked sharp. I was wearing a beautiful pin-striped suit as I lay there in my coffin.

  Shooting a film could get really tedious, so to relieve the boredom, the crew would play practical jokes on me, the new guy, the green kid who didn’t know the ropes. For instance, they sent me out to get left-handed cans of film. That one didn’t work, but another one did. We were getting ready to shoot the scene with me in the coffin, and I was sitting up in the felt-lined box when the assistant to the director, Marshall Green, shouted to me, “Are you ready?” I said I was. He said, “Okay,” and he called over the nurse who was always available if there was an injury on the set.

  “What’s she doing here?” I asked.

  “She’s going to be the one who gives you the shot,” he said.

  “What shot?”

  “Well, you have to be convincing in this scene, and that’s how we do it,” Marshall said. “But maybe we won’t need the nurse’s help this time. Tell you what. You lie back, close your eyes, and act like you’re dead. See if you can convince me.” I did as I was told. Marshall said, “See, you can’t do it.” I sat up, and the nurse came over with a very long hypodermic needle in her hand.

  “This shot will relax you,” Marshall said. “You ready?”

  “No, no, no,” I said, my heart racing. “You’re not giving me any shot. I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it.” I didn’t care what it meant for my career; I’d reached my limit. That needle was so enormous that my heart was racing just from looking at it. As I started to get out of the coffin, everybody on the set cracked up. That was when I knew it was a setup. They were trying to scare the shit out of me, and it worked. Beautifully. I laughed right along with them, knowing their teasing was a sign of affection.

  I lay back in that box, and they shot the scene. Deaf, dumb, and dead: no needle, but I was convincing.

  I had been in Hollywood barely a year when my parents and my younger brother Robert ambushed me by moving out to Hollywood. I was still living in a rooming house, and they arrived without even telling me they were coming, much the same way my grandmother and her children had left Hungary and showed up in New York to join my grandfather. There was no discussion; their arrival was a fait accompli. My mother had told me they were coming just for a visit, but they abandoned that pretext as soon as they arrived. My mother knew that if they came out, I’d have no choice but to take care of them.

  Their arrival totally upset my equilibrium. I thought I had left my poverty-stricken Jewish background behind, along with my given name, Bernie Schwartz. I was Tony Curtis now. This was supposed to be my time. I was dedicated to succeeding in the movies, and that was hard work. I kept odd hours. And I had little room in my life for distractions. Now, all of a sudden, I had to find a place for my parents and brother to live. I had to pay their rent. I also had to help them find a special school for my brother, who was already acting far more strangely than my mother ever had. Robert would look up at the sky distractedly for long periods of time. Or he would blink obsessively and display all sorts of other odd tics and say nonsensical things. As he grew older, he acted out more and more, and we all worried that he might become a danger to himself or to others. He needed serious care, beyond what my parents and I could give him.

  My parents sent Robert to special doctors who cost me three hundred dollars a visit. I couldn’t keep that up for long. Fortunately, a friend of mine suggested that I call the governor of California to see if he could help me get some state assistance for my brother. The governor connected me with the people at the state agency who handled this sort of thing. They arranged to have Bobby tested, which resulted in his diagnosis of schizophrenia. That diagnosis made Bobby eligible to become a ward of the state. It was hardly an ideal solution, but the truth was that we really had no choice. Given the possibilities, it was the best possible outcome, both for Bobby and for the family. Meanwhile, my mother, who was only too skilled at ignoring reality, kept pushing me to put Bobby in the movies.

  “Give him a part,” she would plead. “Let him play you as a boy.”

  I tried to let her down as gently as I could, but my mother was not an easy person to dissuade, especially when one of her precious children was involved.

  Later in 1949 I made a movie called Francis, which was the name of the now-famous talking mule. Donald O’Connor, a child star who would go on to become Gene Kelly’s sidekick in Singin’ in the Rain, played a schlubby soldier who talked with Francis. This was Donald’s first major role since he’d returned home from the war, and it probably ruined his career, because the studio went on to make a Francis the Talking Mule picture every year for the next five years, and Donald got typecast.

  I played a lieutenant who was Donald’s friend. In real life Donald was a hilarious guy, and we got along great. He used to love to use his film projector to secretly project porno films onto his next-door neighbor’s garage door. A car would drive by at night, and you’d hear the tires squeal as the driver slammed on the brakes. Then Donald would shut the film off.

  On the set, Donald and I would fool around between shots to entertain the cast and crew. Donald would talk in the voice of Francis the mule, and I would play Donald.

  “How are you doing?” I’d say.

  “Fine. How are you?” he’d say.

  “I�
�m great,” I’d say. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a movie.”

  “Who’s the star of the movie?”

  “That fucking idiot Donald O’Connor,” he’d say. The cast and crew would scream with laughter.

  Most of the actors in the Francis cast were young, and we were always pulling practical jokes on each other. In one prank, someone would come up behind me with a stick and tap my shoe from behind. Then a crew member would come over to me and say, “Are you getting electric shocks in your foot? These soundstages are so old that the electricity jumps around like crazy.” And just as he was saying it, another guy would tap my shoe from behind.

  “Hey, there it went, I felt it,” I said.

  “Yeah,” the crew member said, “it happens to all of us. Just be careful.”

  The one old-timer in the cast of Francis was Zasu Pitts, who had starred in the movie Greed in 1924. In that movie she had been slinky and beautiful; I remember one scene where she had sat in bed wearing very little, throwing gold coins around. While she was making Francis I went over and talked to her a little before she went on the set. I didn’t tell her how much I loved her when I was a kid. Age was a sensitive subject in Hollywood, given the premium the industry placed on youth and beauty.

  In my next movie, I Was a Shoplifter, Universal decided to showcase two of their young up-and-comers: Rock Hudson and me. Rock’s real name was Roy Scherer. After spending several years in the Navy during World War II, Rock was discovered by agent Henry Wilson, who combined the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River to create his screen name. Rock and I were the same age, but he looked ten years older than I did. He was a tall, handsome man who played against women in their mid-thirties, while I would play a younger role, like their son. As a result, Rock and I never competed against each other for parts, which was a good thing for me.

  In I Was a Shoplifter, I played a fence who bought stolen goods from the girl who did the shoplifting, and Rock played the detective trying to catch her. This was not a movie that could be dignified by the designation Grade B; it was a Grade Z movie. Already I was beginning to see what people meant when they said Universal was a nickel-and-dime outfit. I could see why Universal actors got the itch to make pictures outside the studio, and it didn’t take Rock long to start feeling the same way.

  Rock used to invite me to parties at his house, and he and I would go out to the clubs every now and then. Even then word was getting out that he was a homosexual. I surmised it because Henry Wilson was his agent, and Henry was a very swishy man with a stable of gay clients, including Tab Hunter. Henry got wind that a gossip tabloid was going to run a story about Rock being gay, so Henry arranged for his secretary to go out with Rock and later marry him to keep the rumormongers away. Rock liked women, and he had a good time with them, but he liked the other team even better.

  • • •

  • • •

  My next big break came near the end of 1949, when I was given one of the leads in Sierra, a western. Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. combat soldier in World War II, played the starring role of a horse breaker who’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit. Murphy wasn’t more than five feet five inches tall, but he was as tough as any man I ever met. I’ve been told that he killed two hundred and fifty Germans while fighting in Europe and blew up five or six tanks. I don’t doubt it for a moment. If you want to know what heroism is, see To Hell and Back, the movie they made about his life. Murphy plays himself, and it’s quite a role.

  Once again, the crew had lots of fun playing practical jokes. One day one of them came up to me with a rectangle of black velvet cloth, about the size of a diaper, and pinned it on my belt, above my backside.

  I said, “What’s that for?”

  “Get on your horse,” the crew member said. I obliged him, and then he took the lower edge of the cloth and attached it to the saddle. He said, “You can tell an amateur horseman because he bounces up and down in the saddle a lot when he rides. When you’re riding across the frame, we can see daylight between your ass and the saddle, and we can’t have that. So you’ve got to wear this black cloth on your ass.” When I started to sputter, everyone started laughing. You never knew when the next gag was coming your way, but it was a great way to pass the endless downtime between shoots. There’s lots of that when you’re making a movie, but I never minded. I would read the trade papers, hang out in my dressing room, or take a nap. I always made myself available, no matter how long the day was. I never complained. All I wanted was the tip, which meant being professional at all times.

  I knew I was on my way in 1950 when the studio asked me to help publicize Sierra. Audie Murphy and Burl Ives were the big names in the picture, but when we held the premiere in San Francisco, I was the one who created a furor. Even though I hadn’t yet starred in a picture, a lot of teenage boys had seen me in my minor roles and had started to wear their hair like I did. Young girls would show up at the movie theater if they heard I was going to be there. Universal got to the point where they started sending me out to talk about pictures I wasn’t even in. I was the first of their young generation of actors to be used that way.

  One of the first things the studio wanted from you was an attractive eight-by-ten glossy photo. When you signed a contract, the studio didn’t see you as a long-term investment. All the brass cared about was money, and with that eight-by-ten glossy, they were able to judge how attractive you were to the fans who bought movie tickets. As I went out on tour to promote Sierra, I began to realize how important that photograph really was: it had as much impact as your work in the film! It helped you become an icon for your fans, who wanted that photograph to hang up in their rooms.

  I received direct confirmation of this from Kelly LeBrock, the actress and model who said the famous line “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” in Pantene commercials. Kelly told me that when she was a kid, she had a poster of me in her bedroom, and before she came out of the bathroom, she would always put something on. She said she didn’t want me to see her nude.

  At the premiere of Sierra in San Francisco, I was right there, standing in the theater lobby signing autographs. There were so many young girls carrying on in there that the owner of the place pleaded, “Get them out of here. They’re peeing on my carpet.” After they hustled me outside, hundreds of girls surrounded me, screaming like I was Frank Sinatra. And I didn’t even sing! I signed autographs in a frenzy, and then the PR people and I jumped in the limousine and made our getaway.

  When we first got to San Francisco, the publicity department came up with a promotion where I would randomly knock on the doors of twelve houses, wait for the door to open, and then surprise the owner by saying, “Hi, I’m Tony Curtis. I’m starring in the movie Sierra, and you’re invited to the premiere. Here are a couple of tickets to the movie at the Loews San Francisco. Come enjoy the movie and join us for treats at the end of the show.”

  I went to three houses without incident. I knocked on the door, and when someone answered, the PR guys and the photographer would jump out from behind the bushes and take pictures. When I went up to the porch of the fourth house, it was about eleven in the morning. I knocked on the door, and a beautiful woman in her forties, wearing a long silk gown, answered it.

  She looked me up and down and said, “Hello. What have we here?”

  I said, “My name is Tony Curtis.”

  “I know who you are. Come on in.”

  So I did, leaving the photographer and the PR guys still hidden behind me. I said, “We’re having a premiere of my movie, and I want to give you two tickets. You can bring a friend, and there’ll be refreshments.”

  She said, “Come with me.” I followed her into a sitting room where there were three young women—one wearing a robe, another in a short dress, and the third wearing a smock. “Sit down,” the older woman said.

  “I have my friends waiting at the door,” I said.

  The woman said, “I’ll take care of them.” She left the room
. The girl in the short dress asked me, “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m on tour, promoting this picture that I’m in.”

  She said, “What a handsome kid you are.”

  “Thank you very much,” I said. Then she sat down next to me, took my hand, and kissed me. The older woman returned and said, “How was that? Did you enjoy that?” I said I did. She said, “She’ll keep you busy for a little while. I have some things I have to do.”

  The girl in the short dress led me into a little bedroom down the hall. Then she took all her clothes off and lay down on the bed. Against my better judgment (I was supposed to be working, after all), I joined her. Who could resist? I never thought movie promotion could be so stimulating!

  After we finished, I went back out to the sitting room, and one of the other girls started to take my hand, but I thought about my colleagues waiting outside and my conscience got the better of me. I said, “Listen, there are some more houses I have to go to now. Why don’t all of you come to the screening tonight?”

  The girl in the robe said, “We’re working tonight.” I turned to the older woman and said, “Why don’t you call in sick?” I figured I’d boost morale by introducing my new lady friends to the other guys promoting the movie. After the premiere, I chose three other lucky PR guys, and we all went back to the women’s house. Everyone had a great time—just like I had that afternoon. And we added the cost of the champagne to Universal’s promotion expenses!

  Winchester ’73 was the first big-budget picture Universal put me in. The movie, starring Jimmy Stewart, was about a rifleman whose stolen gun passes through many hands. I had only two lines, but I was thrilled to play in a picture with Jimmy Stewart, and to work under a fine director like Anthony Mann. By this time Jimmy had starred in a long list of great pictures, including The Philadelphia Story, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life. Jimmy and Mann were a great team, and they had made some first-rate films together.