by Tony Curtis
We appeared together in a Paramount film called Houdini. It was a big hit and it showed Universal how valuable I was. At the same time, Janet got better offers, like My Sister Eileen. She even sang in it. But Hollywood doesn’t reward you for being versatile. Hollywood rewards you for doing something that makes money over and over again. And you don’t want to object to it. I got lots of offers to play a young, good-looking guy with a New York accent, which was exactly what I was trying to escape. Janet told me that I should accept these offers. So did Lew Wasserman. A lot of times when I did accept them, it was because I didn’t want to make anyone mad. And Janet would get mad at me if I didn’t go along with the program. Well, not mad, exactly. She’d act kind of cold and distant. I wanted desperately to be liked, so I’d give in. But in going against what I wanted, I was setting myself up for bad things.
Janet insisted that we go to a lot of parties. I knew they were important. But so many? She’d insist we go to a party when I’d been working my ass off on a physically demanding film all day. Try going through umpteen emotions and fist fights for twelve hours without getting tired. I would come home exhausted. And she’d be ready to go to a party. Even if I couldn’t rest right away, I at least wanted to be alone with her. But no. We had to go to the Feldmans or the Goetzes or some other A-list party. I know it was important, but was every one as important as every other one? And did they have to go so late and serve so much booze when I had to be in front of a camera the next morning?
All of this frantic activity was driving a wedge between me and Janet. Sure, I was with her at the party, but I wasn’t really with her. We were in the same room, but talking to different people. I’d be in a corner with Gene Kelly. She’d be at the bar drinking with Debbie Reynolds. We might as well have gone there separately. Sometimes I would just sit by myself, nursing a drink, and watch the people. Cary Grant. Clark Gable. Errol Flynn. I would hear them talk from across the room, then maybe say hello. I was careful not to bother a big star. I didn’t want to be told to get away and not bother him. But that didn’t happen. They were gentlemen. And what I learned, after I heard them talking about the problems that they had with their agents or contracts or getting the right picture was that they were mortal. We all were. Regardless of what the publicity departments wrote about us, or how they photographed us, we were all mortal. And we knew it. So I lost my fantasies about people in the movies, and I lost my fantasy about being married to a movie star.
The way things were going with Janet, I had very little personal life. Not that Hollywood allowed stars to have personal lives, but I wanted something for myself. And I felt like she was too busy and too organized to be spontaneous about something as unplanned as lovemaking. That was the reason we’d gotten married. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We were always so hot. We couldn’t be apart. It was wonderful to feel like that, even if it didn’t have much to do with the reality of carving out a career in a hostile environment. But love isn’t supposed to have much to do with reality. By 1958 the reality was that we had one child and were expecting another, but we were living separate lives. We were rarely intimate. I still had needs. I started going outside my home to satisfy them.
Nicky Blair, who had a restaurant, gave me the address of a girl who lived up in the hills. I would drive up there, park my car carefully so that it wouldn’t roll down the hill, and then meet this girl. Her little house was in L.A., but high enough in the hills so that it felt like I was away from everything. I’d spend a few hours up there with her. It was different. It was like climbing to heaven. It wasn’t just the idea of going there for a sexual act. It was more like I was the character I’d played in The Prince Who Was a Thief or Son of Ali Baba. It was exotic and transporting, and it satisfied my needs for a time. Ultimately, though, I felt demeaned. I developed feelings of shame.
Obviously I couldn’t discuss this with Janet. I couldn’t confront her about our alienation. My frustrations weren’t her fault, but at the time I thought they were. I didn’t know what she was thinking. I thought that maybe she envied my progress. I was gaining ground with pictures like Kings Go Forth. Sweet Smell of Success hadn’t been a hit. It was too caustic for the average moviegoer, I guess. But I got sensational reviews. Of course Janet was doing well, too, so there was no reason to be competitive, but I felt that she was. I noticed that when I’d get home, there’d be something in the air. She’d be irritable for no reason. It put me on edge. There’d be this awkward silence. I couldn’t stand it. Then, just as I was getting ready to escape, I’d hear the sound of ice cubes dropping into a cocktail glass. Janet would call to me. She’d offer me a drink. I didn’t want to displease her, so I accepted. The drinks smoothed things over—for a while. Then we’d have dinner. But when we started to talk about some picture that I didn’t want to do, the alcohol would kick in. We’d argue. So I’d end up storming out anyway. I’d drive to Frank Sinatra’s or some restaurant bar. There’d be an attractive woman sitting by herself, which might mean that she was a B-girl or even a hooker. I didn’t care. I would go with her, as long as she was nice to me. Then I’d come home feeling guilty. And the cycle would start again. No wonder I spent $30,000 on a shrink in four years’ time.
There was one party that Janet and I couldn’t get out of, even if the idea of going to it made me nervous. It was about a week before we were scheduled to start shooting Some Like It Hot. Arthur Miller had flown in to be with Marilyn, so Harold Mirisch thought it would be a nice idea to throw a dinner party so everybody could get acquainted. Janet and I went. Walter Mirisch and his wife, Pat, were there, too, along with Izzy and Barbara Diamond, Billy and Audrey, and a few others. Cocktails were at seven, dinner at eight. We didn’t sit down until after nine. Marilyn and Arthur hadn’t shown up yet. We ate, had after-dinner drinks, shot the breeze, and waited.
Finally, at twenty past eleven, we heard the doorbell way off in the distance. Sure enough, it was Marilyn and Arthur. Oh, they were so sorry to be late. Blah-blah-blah. Everybody made the best of it. And then Arthur walked up behind Billy and Izzy. He put one arm on each guy’s shoulder and started to talk to them about the script. “Now,” he said, “the difference between comedy and tragedy is . . . ” I tell you, there were some perplexed looks in that room. Billy and Izzy just stood there with faces of stone, listening to this bullshit. Finally Billy rolled his eyes and shifted his weight. Arthur backed off. I could see Marilyn. She was standing off to the side, watching. She looked uneasy. She knew that her husband had made a fool of himself and had insulted Billy’s intelligence. It was not a happy scene. It was not a happy way to start a picture.
11
I could tell that we were getting close to starting Some Like It Hot when our dressing rooms were rolled onto the first floor of the actor’s wing at the Goldwyn studio. First there was Billy’s. It had a sign on it: “Gift of Rouben Mamoulian.” He was directing Porgy and Bess on the next stage. I’d seen a lot of his pictures when I was a kid: The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, Golden Boy. That one helped me when I played the lead in the Workshop after the war. Mamoulian was one of the greats, but there had to be a sign on Billy’s dressing room to let everyone know that Mamoulian had paid for it. In Hollywood, no one gives you credit unless you demand it. He’d been there thirty years. He knew. Or thought he did. On July 23, Sam Goldwyn fired him from Porgy and Bess. Mamoulian was gone, but Billy kept his sign. And when Goldwyn prohibited smoking on the entire lot, Billy put up a sign on our stage: “Come on the Billy Wilder set and smoke your little hearts out.” Billy loved his cigarettes. I don’t think he loved Sam Goldwyn. The old man was always raising the rent.
The next dressing room on the stage was Jack Lemmon’s. Then there was Marilyn’s, and then mine. I reported to it for a fitting session with George Orry-Kelly. He was another great talent. He’d designed costumes for all the classic Warner Bros. pictures. Bette Davis owed a lot to him. I found out that he was a good friend of Cary Grant’s since the early thirties in New York, when they
were roommates. I idolized Cary Grant, plain and simple. Orry-Kelly was constantly on the phone, talking to some woman. I assumed he was gay, so that didn’t figure. I later learned that he was talking to Gracie Allen. They were thick as thieves. Even though she’d retired, she wanted to hear all the gossip.
When Orry-Kelly started my fitting, he noticed how fit I was. I was worried that he might think I was a dum-dum who did nothing but lift weights, so I made conversation about my father. I said he was a tailor. Orry-Kelly was interested in that. He cut quite a figure himself. He wore a spotless pin-striped suit, a dress shirt, and a Sulka tie. In his breast pocket he carried a tape measure like my father had—yellow and white, rolled up with a metal fixture at the end. Orry-Kelly made a production of this thing. He took it out of his pocket and then he whipped out the tape in this very grand gesture. It flew out with a whooshing noise. Then he measured me: 16, 34, 43, 18, 19, 18. He had a short man with him. This guy’s job was to write down those measurements. Everything’s delegated in Hollywood.
Then Orry-Kelly went to Marilyn’s trailer. She was waiting. I heard she was reading books in there, odd things like Walt Whitman and Rainer Maria Rilke. When Orry-Kelly went in, she stood up. She was wearing a white blouse, panties, and three-inch heels. Orry-Kelly said hello, and then he took measurements here and there: 37, 24. When he had his tape measure across her hips, he kind of chuckled. “Tony has a better-looking ass than you do.”
Marilyn turned around, opened her blouse, and said, “He doesn’t have tits like these.” Of course it was true. Her breasts were so beautifully arranged. She had the best figure I ever saw in a girl.
She kind of wore out her welcome with Orry-Kelly. After he’d gotten the gowns made, not only for Marilyn, but also for me and Jack, they were rolled to the stage on racks so that we could shoot wardrobe tests. Well, Marilyn was walking by the racks and she got curious. A little while later, Jack came to my dressing room. He looked upset.
“Tony,” he said. “You’re not gonna believe this.”
“What?
“Marilyn took my dress.”
“Whaddya mean she took your dress?”
“She stole it. The black one Orry-Kelly made for me. She saw it on the rack and said to the wardrobe mistress, ‘Ooh, this looks nice. Let me try it on, huh?’ And she decided she had to have it. Orry-Kelly came screaming to me. ‘She took your dress! The bitch has pinched your dress!’ And they’re going to let her get away with it!”
This wasn’t the only problem Marilyn caused during preproduction. She argued about makeup and hair. Instead of being dreamy and sexy, she was querulous and demanding. One day I reported to the studio at one thirty to shoot tests with her and Billy. At five thirty she hadn’t yet arrived. She hadn’t even called. Billy walked out and drove home. At six Marilyn sauntered in. She seemed oblivious to how late she was. I was still there, so the tests were made, even though Billy was no longer present. Since the tests were shot after hours, the Mirisch Company had to pay the crew “golden time,” twice the normal rate. That didn’t go over so well.
That same week, Marilyn had to record her songs. (You probably know that musical numbers are always shot in lip sync to the playback of the song recorded earlier in a studio.) Her recording session was scheduled for two in the afternoon. The assistant director wasn’t taking any chances. He called her at six thirty in the morning. She still arrived fifteen minutes late. No wonder, with the entourage she dragged behind her. There was May Reis. There was Paula Strasberg. And even though no film or photographs were being taken, she brought Jack Cole, her dance director, and Sydney Guilaroff, her hair “designer.” She brought everybody but the parakeet.
If these people were there to provide moral support, they did. The session went so well that Marilyn finished an hour early. Amazing. But wait. Two days later, she decided that she wasn’t pleased with the results. She wanted to record the three songs again. Back she came. What was more amazing was that she was on time and didn’t charge extra for the hours she spent rerecording. She just smiled modestly and said, “A picture has to be great to be good.” No one asked her to explain.
Billy had a memo from Arthur P. Jacobs, the Rogers and Cowan publicist (who later produced Planet of the Apes). Jacobs wrote: “I would like to point out that there are no existing pictures of Miss Monroe which can be used for publicity. She has not had a portrait sitting for two years. She is very partial to Richard Avedon, plus the fact that we feel that Avedon could capture the spirit of the 20s expertly.” Marilyn had recently posed for a series of photos in which Avedon interpreted her as various stars of the past: Lillian Russell, Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, and Jean Harlow. These were scheduled to run in Life magazine in the fall. Arthur Miller was writing text to go with them.
United Artists offered to fly Avedon from New York, but he was tied up. Jacobs hired a freelance photographer named Dick Miller. He worked for the syndicate called Globe Photos. When the session was supposed to begin, Marilyn walked onto the set wearing a man’s flannel shirt tied at the waist and Levis. She wasn’t made up and she looked distracted. When Miller started to talk to her, she waved him away. “No pictures today,” was all she said before walking out.
Two days later, she submitted to the full treatment and behaved like her old self. She told me that there was nothing she liked more than posing for pictures. But I guess she had to be in the mood. She was that day. She stayed an hour longer than Dick expected. She looked sensational. At least everybody thought so. She didn’t. She held up the proofs for almost two weeks before she passed a few poses for publication. She thought she looked heavy. I guess she’d read some of those snide articles. She was insecure. But with a $2 million project about to start, who wouldn’t be?
It would have been a fair question to ask Marilyn: If you’re frightened and you aren’t enjoying this, why do it? You don’t need the money. Do like Garbo. Retire. But nobody asked Marilyn, and nobody knew the truth. She needed the money.
The company she’d started with the photographer Milton Greene was not in good shape. She was on the outs with Greene. She was spending a fortune on psychiatrists and underwriting Lee Strasberg’s entire operation. Arthur Miller wasn’t rich. His writing wasn’t bringing in as much as we thought. He had huge legal bills. In May 1957 he’d been convicted of contempt of court after refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the names of alleged Communist writers with whom he attended five or six meetings in New York in 1947. The case was still being appealed. He wasn’t really happy with Marilyn. The reason? He knew that she was the main attraction and that she was supporting him. Poor Marilyn. Her life was in chaos. She did need the money.
In late July, Walter Mirisch heard from Lew Wasserman that he could use the title Some Like It Hot. As Billy Wilder prepared for the grind of production, he ran into another eminent producer, David O. Selznick, who was best known for Gone with the Wind. He was having a hard time in the new Hollywood. His last production, A Farewell to Arms, had not done well. I’d met Mr. Selznick at a number of parties. He was a complex, brilliant, intimidating man. He talked a mile a minute, jumping from topic to topic, and he had an opinion on every one. Billy sat down with him in the early summer and related the plot of Some Like It Hot.
“Well, what do you think?” Billy asked.
“My God!” Selznick gasped. “You start with that bloody scene? And go to men in drag? Oh, no. You can’t have machine guns and dead bodies and wigs and gags—all in the same picture. You can’t mix those elements. It won’t work. The audience, the people, they’ll walk out in droves. It’ll be a disaster. You’ll never make it work.”
“Dave,” Billy said. “I appreciate your objections. But I’m going to try it anyway.”
Part IV
The Production
12
Some Like It Hot started shooting on Monday, August 4, 1958. We weren’t working at the Goldwyn studio. The scene called for a train station. Goldwyn was too small to ha
ve a permanent set like that, but the MGM studios did, so on Monday morning we reported to Culver City. In this scene, Joe and Jerry come to the Chicago station to join Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators on their way to Florida. Although the scene doesn’t occur until twenty minutes into the film, it’s important for a number of reasons. It’s the first scene to show the all-girl band. It’s the first in which you see Joe as Josephine and Jerry as Daphne. Last, but certainly not least, it’s the first scene in which Marilyn makes an appearance.
The train station set on MGM’s Lot 2 looked familiar. It should have. I’d seen it in Greta Garbo’s Ninotchka and Judy Garland’s The Clock. Here it was with all the windows blacked out at nine in the morning, doubling for a Chicago train platform at night. Billy explained to us that our entrance was going to be a shock to the audience. No kidding. There was more, he said. Unlike Fanfares of Love, our film was not showing how the musicians “become” women, shaving their chests, plucking their eyebrows, and all that. All of a sudden we’re at the station dressed as women—trying to “be” women. What’s more, he wasn’t going to have us walk into the scene. No. He started with a camera dolly rolling behind us, showing our legs as we tried to walk in high heels. Then he let us walk a bit before cutting to a front angle. That’s what made him a great director. He showed the audience something that it didn’t expect to see before showing it just enough of what it needed to see. No spoon-feeding, but something equally nourishing.