American Prince

by Tony Curtis

  As a kid I had a sense that there was something wrong with my mother, but I didn’t know what it was. She always seemed to be mad at me, or at Julie. That was par for the course. But every once in a while she would look at me, and her face would become twisted in fright, as though something scary was chasing her. Her eyes would dart around and she would talk quickly, and then she’d just bury her head in her arms or leave the room. I’d think, What the hell is going on here? Looking back, I suspect those were the times when she was hearing voices, times when she couldn’t control her illness. Years later she would be officially diagnosed as schizophrenic.

  My mother was always much nicer to me and Julie when other people were around. We’d visit another family, and she would be telling jokes and patting me on the head. But once we got outside, she’d grab me roughly and say, “Go play with your brother, but keep an eye on him. And don’t make any trouble.”

  The thing about my mother was that she never seemed to have any fun. She rarely laughed, or even smiled. The only time I can remember hearing her laughter was when she was with Olga, her older sister. Whenever they got together, they’d both giggle hysterically. My mother’s father had had a wife who died young, and after he remarried, my mother was born. So my mother had three half-sisters from the first marriage, women who were educated and independent-minded. One worked as a secretary, and another was a businesswoman who sold bootleg whiskey. The third sister stayed in Europe, and was later murdered in the Holocaust.

  Ethel, the bootlegger, owned a townhouse in the Bronx. During the Depression she made whiskey in her basement, and she made a very good living selling it. Our neighborhood was populated mostly by Jews like us, who usually weren’t big drinkers, but she did a good business in the Irish and black neighborhoods nearby. With the proceeds she was able to send her two daughters to college and her son to dentistry school.

  Looking back, what I wanted more than anything as a child was to feel like I was part of something. Until I was four or five, we spoke only Hungarian at home, but I never really felt connected to my Hungarian identity. And out in the streets, where people were speaking an English language I barely understood, I was treated like an outsider. I started to learn English in elementary school, but I spoke it with a thick Hungarian accent.

  When I think of my childhood, I can feel the chill weather at night in the fall and winter. We never seemed to have enough heat. As I walked through my neighborhood on the way home from playing in the streets, I saw fathers coming home from work—tailors, icemen, milkmen, and shopkeepers. These were the lucky ones. I also saw a lot of fathers who were coming home after a day of trying unsuccessfully to find work—of any kind. The Depression made it hard for everyone, and we were no exception.

  My parents were neither intellectual nor artistic. They never read books, either to us or on their own, so Julie and I never got into the reading habit either. We had some toys, but I didn’t play with them much. Our family did have a radio, though, and we boys would sit in the kitchen glued to the sounds of The Lone Ranger or Superman. It was almost as good as going to the movies.

  When I came home in the evening, after playing outside, I always had to be quiet. My father would quit work at seven or eight, but because he had to get up early, he went to sleep right after dinner. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment, so any little noise would wake him up. When morning came, I had to be quiet all over again while my father got ready for work. My mother enforced the silence with lots of slaps and whispered threats. I don’t think my parents intended to make us feel bad, but they gave Julie and me the feeling that we were mostly just in the way.

  And so it was that I figured out early in life not to depend on my parents—or anyone else, for that matter. By the time I was twelve I was going out and earning my own money. I’d seen other kids selling newspapers, so I followed one of them to his supplier and started my own paper route. I also shined shoes. My father helped me by making me a shoeshine box. I bought shoe polish, black and brown, and I had a big brush and a small cloth that I would use to slather the polish onto the shoes. Then I had a big strap for taking off the excess polish and another strap to polish the shoes. I had to be careful to use the right polish for the right shoes.

  My father gave me a whiskbroom and told me it would be a good idea to use it to brush the customer down after shining his shoes. One time a customer slapped my hand away and said, “Don’t bring that thing near me.” I felt demeaned, and not for the first time. It’s an occupational hazard when you’re poor, and I was particularly sensitive to it as a kid.

  Every now and then my father would hand me a pile of secondhand clothes to take to Welfare Island, which was below the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, which went over to Queens. I was supposed to deliver the clothes, get a ticket in return, and then take that ticket to a window where I’d hand it over and get fifty cents or a dollar. At times I’d feel so uncomfortable about this that I would come back home without it.

  My father would ask me, “Where’s the money?”

  “I didn’t hand in the paper.”

  “Where’s the paper?”

  I’d say, “I have it right here.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to them?”

  I’d shrug sheepishly.

  He’d sit quietly for a moment. Then he’d say, “Next time don’t forget.”

  “Okay, Dad.” There was no discussion. I was incapable of telling him how I was feeling, so I couldn’t share my humiliation. But he must have sensed it, because he never got after me for coming home empty-handed.

  I delivered groceries, and I worked for a pharmacy in the neighborhood, delivering prescriptions to people. I enjoyed doing these jobs because I was making money. It was only nickels and dimes, but it meant I could buy myself hot dogs and doughnuts and go to the movies. I was never broke. I always had a few coins in my pocket.

  Even as a kid I was always very picky about my relationships. I was like the Lone Ranger, only without a sidekick like Tonto, unless you counted my little brother. I didn’t have a crowd of guys I regularly hung out with. I’d do stuff with whoever was around. There was no one I really considered to be my best friend.

  I remember one childhood friend, Frank Vitucci. The few times I went to his home, his mother would take me into his bedroom and pull down the sheets to show me how Frank had wet his bed. Right in front of him, she’d say to me, “Look what he’s done. Look how he pisses in his bed.” I would nod uncomfortably. Then the same thing would happen when Frank came over to my house. My mother would pull the sheets down to show him how I had peed in my bed, and Frank and I would look at each other. It went without saying. We’re both fuckups.

  My other, happier memory of going over to Frank’s house was that his mother would make wonderful Italian bread. She’d take a fresh, hot loaf from the oven and spread garlic and butter on it, and I’d never tasted anything so good. I envied Frank because when I brought friends home, my mother didn’t put any effort into making them feel welcome. She was very suspicious of people, especially strangers. She didn’t trust anybody, a feeling that must have rubbed off on me.

  The only person I can honestly say I liked was my brother Julius, who was four years younger than I was. When I was six or seven, my parents let me know I was responsible for Julie, and I took that very seriously. I knew I was his surrogate father. If he came home late from school, I would get angry, but it was because I was genuinely worried about him. When I saw him someplace where he wasn’t supposed to be, I’d ask him, “Why are you hanging out with those guys?” It was my job to protect Julie.

  Julie was a gentle boy, and very careful not to offend me. He was probably a little intimidated by me. I never laid a hand on him, but he knew I had a temper, so he was careful not to get me started. Despite my affection for Julie, I rarely took him with me when I went out to play. When you’re twelve, a four-year difference in age is as wide as the Grand Canyon. Mostly when I went out, I went alone. I didn’t want to be held back by anyone, includ
ing Julie, and he understood that.

  The time Julie and I had the most fun together was when we went to bed. We’d be lying in our separate beds, close to each other, and we’d talk about whatever came to mind. Not that we talked about anything of substance. He was too young for me to share all of my feelings. Still, this was as close as I got to intimacy during my childhood, and it felt good.

  When I was ten and Julius was six, things got so bad financially that my mother and father put Julie and me in the Sycamore House, a government-sponsored orphanage in Manhattan, down on Sixty-second Street. During that time, at the height of the Depression, a lot of parents were forced to take extraordinary steps like this, just to survive. My parents brought us to this institutional-looking building, but they didn’t tell us it was an orphanage. They just looked at us, kissed us, and said, “We’ll be back soon.” And then they left.

  I had no idea where they were going or why, and it frightened me to death. I had no way of knowing that they were broke and needed to park us somewhere safe while they figured out what to do next. To make things worse, Julie and I were separated that very first day.

  When the people at the orphanage took Julie away from me, I went into a panic. It was terrible. Where’s Julie? I didn’t know where they had taken him, or what they had done to him, and I was really upset. I remember a kind woman coming over and talking to me, and after I told her what was bothering me, she explained that Julie had been put with the younger boys. Then she took me by the hand and brought me over to see him. It was very nice of her, and it calmed me down.

  I didn’t have much appetite at mealtime, and the counselors were worried about me. They weren’t sure what my problem was. It didn’t seem too hard to figure out, when I look back on it. My problem was that my parents had dropped me and my brother off in a strange institution, acting as if they’d be back in twenty minutes; here it was, four days later, and they still hadn’t returned.

  Besides not eating, I expressed my feelings by peeing. I’d wet my bed at night, and during the day I would urinate in my pants. I just pissed my way through that whole period. Julius also wet his bed. I remember they refused to give Julius and me hot chocolate at night, because they didn’t want us wetting our beds. One more humiliation for a thin-skinned kid.

  At the orphanage there were twelve to fifteen other boys who were approximately my age. We all slept in one big room. One of the kids would moan and groan when he slept—not just occasionally, but all night long. The rest of us had a hard time sleeping as a result, but nobody dared complain. Another kid was always coming over and touching us. He’d be sitting across from you, then without any warning he’d reach over and touch you on your arm or on your back. He just didn’t have any sense of what was appropriate. Some kids ignored him. Others kids refused to let him near them.

  To make matters worse, while Julie and I were in the orphanage, we were never allowed out of the building. I badly wanted my freedom. One of the things I missed most about it was not being able to play stickball. I was an avid stickball player. When I hit a Spaldeen solidly with a broom handle, I could almost drive it up to the roof. I also liked to take bottle caps, put wax on them, and then play a game where if you hit the other guy’s bottle cap, you picked it up. We’d take cheese boxes and cut holes in the bottom, and try to shoot marbles in the holes. Some wise guys would make the holes too narrow to let the marble get in. Ah, chicanery! I was schooled in it at an early age.

  In the wintertime, when the snowplows would push the neighborhood snow into tall piles by the side of the streets—five, six, even seven feet high sometimes—we would carve out passageways and make rooms inside the snow. One of the guys would stand guard in front, so nobody could come in except the four or five members of our little club.

  Julie and I lived at the orphanage for about two weeks, but it seemed like an eternity. I’ll never forget the day my parents finally came to get us. I was grateful they had come and got us out of there, but I was also absolutely furious that they hadn’t told us what they were doing when they dropped us off. Talk about feeling conflicted!

  Unfortunately, when Julie and I got back home, nothing had changed. My parents continued to fight, and we continued to be trapped by poverty. I sometimes had the feeling that my brother and I were like little lightning rods, waiting for some miraculous force to hit us and break open our lives. Meanwhile we just tried to keep it together.

  At least we weren’t alone. During the Depression the whole country was mired in hopelessness. One afternoon my father took me for a walk in Central Park. I saw a sea of canvas tents and corrugated huts, extending in all directions. My father told me this was called Hooverville, and that the people living here had once been stockbrokers, lawyers, and accountants, but now they were homeless, without jobs, completely broke. As a kid I couldn’t figure out what had happened to them. How could you be rich one day and poor the next? I didn’t know anything about the stock market or about investing. But I did get the message loud and clear that poverty could strike anyone, anywhere, anytime.

  As a kid I thought a lot about death. When my grandparents died, I started to wonder how long it would be before my parents died too. They assured me that they had lots of good years left. Mostly I believed them, and it helped that the only people I knew who had died were old. As kids we never saw a young person die. It was always somebody’s grandmother or grandfather.

  I found reassurance in routine as well. My brother and I would get up in the morning and we’d eat whatever breakfast was available. We’d take our schoolbooks and our marbles, yo-yos, pencils—whatever we needed for the day’s work plus what few coins we had—and then we’d tromp off to school. P.S. (Public School) 28 was four blocks from our home. Inside the school, one big room was divided into four classrooms using movable walls. Whenever there was an event for the whole school, we’d move back the walls. It was simple and economical.

  I never studied at school or did my homework. I guess I just didn’t see the point. I had no sense of the future, much less how schoolwork could possibly prepare me for it. And my parents didn’t do anything to enlighten me. As far as they were concerned, school was just a place Julie and I went to every day where they didn’t have to worry about us.

  We lived in Manhattan for my first twelve years, moving from place to place when we got too far behind on the rent. In those days living in New York City meant living in ethnic neighborhoods—Italian, German, Spanish, Hungarian, and Jewish. If you had a name like Schwartz, Goldberg, Epstein, or Birnbaum, you were Jewish. Some of these names had been given to Jews when they first settled in Europe. If someone was Jewish and big, for example, they might be given the name Gross. My father’s family originally came from the Middle East, and they must have been dark-skinned, because when they came through Germany, they were called Schwartz, which means “black.”

  When I was in elementary school, there was a nasty bully there named Frank Weber, who loved to curse at me. He’d see me and he’d yell, “You Jew cocksucker. You motherfucking Jew.” He kept this up relentlessly. Whenever I walked past him on the sidewalk near school, he’d try to shove me into traffic.

  Frank Weber was the enemy. He was tall and wiry, and he had a narrow face with piercing eyes that burned with hatred—at least when he turned them on me. Whenever my class rolled back the movable walls to make individual classrooms, I tried to make sure Weber wasn’t around, because if he saw me he would walk by, slap me on the back of the head, and keep walking. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I became so distracted that I even lost interest in throwing spitballs and paper airplanes in class. I couldn’t think of a way to keep Weber from coming after me, so I just waited for something to happen. Somehow I knew the situation couldn’t last.

  There was only one other Jewish kid in school, and he didn’t help me. He was older, and either he didn’t know what was going on or he didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t hold it against him, and later we even got to be friends.

  One d
ay things changed in a way that would affect me for the rest of my life. That morning on the way to school Frank Weber had screamed at me in front of everyone, “Hey, Jew. Hey, Jew. Hey, faggot Jew.” Now we were walking into the main school auditorium, and there he was. He turned and glared at me, his eyes heavy with unspoken malice.

  I had never even considered raising my hands to him, but suddenly I found myself filled with a fury I couldn’t control. Weber turned away from me, and when he did, I ran over and leaped on him, grabbing him around the neck with my left arm and punching him in the head with my right fist. He struggled, and we fell down. As he started to get up, I kicked him in the ribs, really got him good, and then again, and then I found myself—all of a sudden—in a place I’d never known before. I had always thought of myself as sensitive and easygoing, not someone who would take pleasure in someone else’s pain. But in that moment that I was punching Frank Weber and realized he had no appetite for fighting back, I felt a kind of joy that I can’t adequately describe.

  I was called into the principal’s office for a lecture. Fortunately for me, the principal, Mr. Driscoll, seemed to understand what had happened and why. He said to me, “Bernard, I can appreciate how you feel, but I cannot tolerate fighting on school grounds. When you have a problem with one of your peers, you have to speak to a teacher or come to me. You cannot resolve it with your fists. Do you understand?”

  The principal couldn’t take sides, but he must have known what a bigot and a bully Weber was. I knew from Mr. Driscoll’s tone of voice that I wasn’t going to get into big trouble, and I was right. He didn’t even call my parents.

  Weber never came near me again. And from then on I was determined that if anyone gave me shit, I would be ready to battle it out. Once I made that decision, I learned how to defend myself, and I became an excellent boxer and wrestler. As I walked down the street I would skip and throw punches like the boxers I saw in the movies. A guy would call me a “dirty Jew,” and I’d say, “Fuck you.” He’d throw a punch at me, but by the time he threw it, my left hand was up to protect my face, and my right was counterpunching. Once I found out I could defend myself, no one ever beat me up again. I realized that if I was in a position where I had no choice but to fight, I should become the aggressor and try to end the fight quickly. It worked. And if the guy was too much bigger and older, I’d pick up my books and run.