American Prince

by Tony Curtis

  Frank wasn’t afraid of throwing his weight around, but he was also capable of great kindness. Paul Horn had taught me to play the flute for Sweet Smell of Success, so sometimes I’d come over to Frank’s house and practice playing my flute for him. Frank was impressed that I was learning this new skill for my part in the movie, and he noticed that I was playing a cheap flute I’d picked up. So without telling me, he went out one day and bought me a magnificent flute, a priceless gift that I cherish to this day.

  Frank used to call me up and ask me if I wanted to go to Vegas with him that weekend. He’d come by my house in his Karmann Ghia, and off we’d go. It was Frank who put the Sands Hotel on the map. When Frank started showing up at the Sands to perform, the Sands became the place to be seen. He sang there without a contract. When he was finished with his gig there, Frank would return home carrying a duffel bag full of cash.

  I don’t know how they did it—there were no mobile phones in those days—but whenever Frank and I drove up to the Sands, a greeting party was always standing outside waiting. They’d take our luggage up to our rooms while Frank and I went right to the tables to play blackjack or craps. Then Dean Martin would show up, and Frank and Dean would sit in the lounge and drink Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. I wasn’t much of a drinker, and certainly not in their league. One night they insisted I drink with them, and by the time I had downed two Jack Daniel’s, I was practically unconscious. I had a vague memory of Frank and Dean taking me by the arms and marching me outside, and the next thing I knew I was in the swimming pool, fully dressed!

  I climbed out of the pool, dripped my way upstairs to my room, changed clothes, freshened up, and went back down to the casino. I was still a little dizzy, but at least I was keeping my eyes open. When Frank saw me, he said, “Where have you been?”

  “Somebody threw me in the pool,” I said. “I had to go upstairs and change.”

  Frank said, “Who in the world would do that?” I told him I thought he might have had something to do with it, but he denied it, and I couldn’t be sure I had remembered it right.

  Those were fun times, very carefree. My career was rolling right along, and when I was with Frank and Dean and the guys, I could forget about the sorry state of my marriage. They were all ten years older than I, and more experienced. Frank and the boys didn’t even start functioning until late in the afternoon, so to fit in with their schedule, I would sleep late too.

  Sometimes Frank asked me to be his beard. He’d meet a showgirl at one of the other casinos and arrange to have me come over at the end of her show and escort her back to the Sands. I would wait for her until after the show, and when I met her, I’d say, “Why don’t we bring a few of your girlfriends as well?” Then we’d all crowd into a cab and drive to the Sands.

  One time when Frank saw me coming with this bevy of beautiful girls, he said to Dean, “That’s my boy. Look at that. I send him to get one girl, and he comes back with four.”

  Frank liked to have fun in Vegas, but his belligerence surfaced there just like it did in LA. I remember one night at the Sands when he got very drunk. He said something nasty to Carl Cohen, who was in charge of gambling at the casino, and Carl belted him so hard that Frank flew into the pit between the tables, and onto the floor. He was out cold. To his credit, Frank never held it against the guy. Or maybe he was just too drunk to remember it.

  Frank was part owner of a casino called the Cal-Neva Lodge. It had lots of bungalows on Lake Tahoe, and as its name indicated, it sat on the California-Nevada border. The truth is that Frank bought his piece for Sam Giancana, who ran the Chicago mob. The state of Nevada had barred Giancana from even entering a casino, so Giancana found a way to “own” the casino through Frank.

  While I was up there, Frank came over and said, “I want to introduce you to somebody, but don’t bring anybody with you; come alone.” I walked into this opulent suite at the hotel, and sitting there on a couch was a man wearing glasses. He got up, and although he was diminutive I could sense by the way he carried himself that he was important. Frank introduced me to the man, who was Sam Giancana.

  Sam said, “I love the movies you make. Keep it up.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir,” I said. Later, FBI wiretaps caught Giancana at the Cal-Neva, and as a result Frank was forced to sell his interest in both the Cal-Neva and the Sands. Giancana never forgave Frank for the loss of the Cal-Neva. Frank was lucky Giancana didn’t have him killed. Disappointing friends like Sam Giancana could be a very dangerous business.

  In 1958 I did a wonderful movie called The Vikings with Janet, Kirk Douglas, and Ernest Borgnine. We shot our boat scenes on the fjords in Norway, we did our interior shots in Germany, and we filmed our castle scenes in Belgium. We also shot some scenes in France on the Loire River. Kirk Douglas’s company produced the movie under the auspices of United Artists. Kirk had made a lot of excellent movies, and he was tough, both as an artist and as a businessman. You couldn’t get a nickel out of him, and you also had to be careful not to upset him or he would cut your lines out of the script. And since he was making the picture, he always made sure he was the most important actor in the movie.

  Eventually Kirk and I got to be excellent friends, although it took a little doing. We first met at a party, where I was talking with him and Burt Lancaster. I made some kind of little joke, and in response Kirk made a move like he was going to knee me in the balls. I just looked calmly at Kirk and kept on talking. I think Kirk respected that he couldn’t intimidate me. Once we started working together, we got along very well, which wasn’t always easy with Kirk.

  Three months before The Vikings started filming, Kirk gathered all the male actors together and said, “I’ll give every one of you a two-hundred-dollar bonus to grow a beard.” We all took him up on it, and three months later, I was in the company of “Vikings” who all looked like I did. Kirk was the only one who was clean-shaven.

  Kirk was a perfectionist on the set of the picture. He wanted every shot a certain way, and the cameraman, an Englishman, had to do exactly what he was told. Kirk also took over the production company, which became a problem when he decided to pay no attention to the production manager, whose job it was to monitor how long it was taking to shoot the movie.

  It took three months all told to shoot The Vikings. My two-year-old daughter, Kelly, was in it, along with Kirk’s son Peter, who was three. During filming I received an unexpected—and unwanted—visit on the set from my brother Bobby, who was thirteen. He stood around the set, performed his usual array of eye-catching tics, and engaged me in endless, inane conversations.

  He’d say to me, “Are you my brother?”

  I’d say, “Yes, I am.”

  He’d say, “Are you really my brother?”

  I’d say, “Yes, Bobby, I’m really your brother.”

  He’d reply, “How do I know you’re really my brother?”

  You get the idea. Bobby was only on the set for about a week, but I have to admit I hated every second of it.

  Off the set, Janet and I weren’t fighting, but things weren’t good between us, either. I should have been happy that Janet was working alongside of me, but I wasn’t. My feelings had changed drastically after I got home from making Trapeze. I had started feeling that my marriage had become a trap. When I look back on it, I wonder why I had such a strong urge to be free. I think I just wanted to live my life the way Frank was living his, and Frank was nothing if not free. To complicate matters, when Janet and I returned home to California, she informed me she was pregnant again, which was good news, but it made me feel even more trapped in my marriage.

  I found that Kirk was a good person to talk to about my difficulties. Kirk was demanding professionally, but he was a very kind man. If someone around Kirk was having problems, Kirk would always do what he could to help that person out. I was looking for a brother figure, someone to fill the hole that Julie’s death had left in my life, and Kirk became that for me. He was a person who could always make me fee
l better about myself.

  Ironically, Kirk suffered from moods as black as mine, although he seemed to shake his off faster than I did. One day Kirk and I were sitting under the set of a wooden ship in the Hardanger Fjord while it was raining, which happened frequently there. We’d been shooting nicely when it started to pour, so we just took a break, stayed in costume, and waited for the deluge to end. Half an hour later, it was still raining. Kirk looked at me and said, “You want to buy a movie company cheap?”

  My next film was Kings Go Forth, a United Artists production with Frank Sinatra and Natalie Wood. Frank very much wanted me in the picture, and anything he asked for, he got, so there I was in the film. Despite the fact that we were friends, I wasn’t sure how well we’d mesh as actors because of his reputation for being difficult. If Frank didn’t want to work, he just didn’t show up. If he wanted to bust the director’s chops, he did. Even the toughest production manager was afraid of Frank; people worried that if they pissed Frank off, he might have them bumped off the next day. Everybody tiptoed around him. Despite all that, I have to say that Frank was always nice to me. We were pals. Frank called me “Boinie,” and I called him “Francis Albert.”

  Frank had a unique way of working. He liked to do a scene in one take. He liked it so much that he wouldn’t give the director another one. I knew how Frank worked before we started shooting Kings Go Forth, so I made a decision: I will give them the very best I have in the first take. That helped, but there was only so much I could do on my own. There still would be times when Frank would blurt out his lines, and if they didn’t come out right, too bad. He’d say to the director, “Look, you have other film you’re going to shoot, so just cut to Tony, or cut to the dog.” Having Frank around complicated a moviemaking process that was already complicated by its very nature. If things got too difficult for him, all of a sudden fun-loving Frank would disappear, to be replaced by the New Jersey kid with a mean streak.

  In the movie, set near the end of World War II, Frank loves Natalie Wood, and at first it looks like she loves him, but then she sees my character playing the trumpet in a club in Paris, and I captivate her from afar. I start taking her out, and Frank stops pursuing her because he sees she no longer loves him. Then she gets pregnant, and we find out her child is black, and that changes everything. She tries to kill herself. Frank and I are soldiers, fighting together in France. I’m shot, and he cradles me in his arms as I die. He comes back to France many years later, and Nata lie’s character is teaching school.

  Natalie was a wonderful actress. She had been training since childhood, and she brought real artistry and insight to bear on even the most ordinary part. I was attracted by her intellect, but I didn’t feel any romantic attraction for her. Frank didn’t become involved with Natalie, either. I knew this because Frank didn’t take any days off during shooting.

  United Artists wanted to have the premiere of Kings Go Forth in Hollywood, but Frank said, “I’m not coming back there. I’m in Monte Carlo.” So, presto, the premiere gets moved to Monte Carlo. The next thing I know, I’m on a Constellation prop plane flying sixteen hours from New York to Monte Carlo. I hated those prop planes because the vibration drove me crazy.

  The highlight of my trip was meeting Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco. I had known Grace Kelly from a couple of parties we both went to in LA. At one party, she and I had been talking shop about the movies, then we went somewhere quiet and we started kissing. In person, Grace was a lot earthier than her ethereal screen persona, and she spoke with a Philadelphia accent that belied her delicate features. After necking with her, I wanted her badly, but I never got that far. When I saw her again at the premiere in Monte Carlo, all I could think of was how lucky I had been to have had her alone for even a couple of minutes.

  The Defiant One

  With Sidney Poitier, 1958. © bettmann/corbis

  After making Kings Go Forth, I let Lew Wasserman know that I wanted another dramatic role and, as always, he came through for me. My next movie was The Defiant Ones, another United Artists project. The movie was about a white man and a black man who break out of prison in the South, but they’re still chained together as they try to stay ahead of the law. When I read the script, I thought it was a little too intense in some parts, and it needed a stronger sense of location, but I liked the fact that the two lead actors were chained together until almost the end of the movie. My part was well written, I would make a nice chunk of dough, and Lew arranged it so I had approval of who the black actor would be.

  My first choice to play the other lead would have been Harry Belafonte, because of our friendship and because I felt he would have been good in it, but his name was not on the list the studio gave me. Sidney Poitier was on the list, and I was very impressed with him when he was introduced to me. He was just starting out as an actor, but he was my choice for the part. I insisted that he and I share top billing, because I felt that if my name was on top of the title and his name ran below it, that would contradict the entire premise of the movie: that these two convicts from different races had to accept each other as equals.

  For a while it looked like the director, Stanley Kramer, wasn’t going to be able to raise enough money to make the film. He told me he was short about a million dollars. Fortunately, I knew a guy who invested in movies, a fellow Hungarian Jew whom I liked a lot, so I figured I’d give him a try. Al Hart was a sweet man, but I wasn’t sure if he would be able to help us because this was 1958, years before the start of the civil rights movement; the topic of race guaranteed that this film would be controversial. But not only did my friend Al come on board, he helped us get the money we needed from a number of different investors.

  Director Stanley Kramer was the rebel in town, who wanted to make socially conscious movies. He also wanted to send a message to supporters of the late senator Joe McCarthy that he wouldn’t be intimidated by the senator’s anti-Communist rampage, so he hired Nedrick Young, who had been blacklisted, along with his partner, Harold Jacob Smith, to write the script for The Defiant Ones. Ned and Harold also played bit parts: they were the two guys in the bus taking Sidney Poitier and me to prison at the beginning of the picture.

  Since I played a convict in the movie, I decided I needed to change the way my face looked. I had never done this before, but I knew that Larry Olivier and a couple of other actors I admired had done it, so I put on a fake nose. Costuming helped too, of course; I wore a shirt open at the neck, jeans, heavy boots—clothes that were perfect for the character I was playing.

  We shot the movie in the Kern River Valley in California. In one scene Sidney and I, chained together, had to cross a fast-moving river. Sidney didn’t swim, so his stand-in did the swimming. Stanley Kramer wanted my stuntman, Davy Sharpe, to swim for me, but I said, “Stanley, you don’t need Davy. I can do that.”

  Stanley was skeptical. “Tony, it’s too dangerous,” he said.

  Davy said, “No, Stanley, let him do it. I know he can.”

  I was delighted that Davy came to my defense. I did the scene with no mishaps, and I was always grateful to Davy for that.

  The Defiant Ones was a groundbreaking movie for its time. It also made me much more aware of racism in America. Sidney and I would sit and talk about the inequities that he had suffered from his whole life. As a Jew who’d dealt with plenty of anti-Semitism, I had some understanding of his situation, so we got along really well.

  Sidney Poitier was to the movies what Jackie Robinson had been to baseball, but at the time no one talked about it. Sidney and I wanted to speak out against racism, but our views were printed only in obscure black magazines. Sidney’s name would never even come up on national television talk shows, which really offended me. I wanted to kick up a fuss, but I realized the best thing I could do was to make the movie and let it speak for itself. So that’s what we did, although the picture didn’t play in the South at all.

  One of the members of the cast was Carl Switzer, who had played Alfalfa in the Our Gan
g comedies, one of the first integrated movie series to feature blacks who weren’t just playing servants to whites. The producers knew they could get away with it because the actors were kids. Carl didn’t get much work after he played Alfalfa, so he was happy to be part of the cast. We used to play poker a lot between shots, and he’d pass the time by telling me stories about filming Our Gang. There was one scene in the show where a bear was supposed to come over and take a bite out of Carl. Carl said, “I ain’t gonna do it.” The director said, “Believe me, there’s no way you’ll get in any trouble. He’ll open his mouth and yawn.” Carl said, “I don’t want to do it.”

  The guy who owned the bear said, “Carl, there’s nothing to worry about. He’s a very gentle animal.” And in front of the cast and the crew, he went up to the animal. He said, “This is what I want you to do.” He put his face up to the bear’s mouth, and the bear bit his cheek off. Needless to say, the bear scene was edited out.

  Tragically, Carl was shot to death not too long after we finished shooting The Defiant Ones. He got into an argument with a friend over borrowing a hunting dog, and when he barged into his friend’s house in a drunken rage, the other man shot him to death. Carl was thirty-one years old. The bitter irony was that in The Defiant Ones, Carl played a hunter who got in an argument with a police sergeant over his hunting dog.

  I was sure The Defiant Ones was going to be a huge hit, but it wasn’t. At that time United Artists didn’t have the promotion budget or distribution of some of its bigger competitors, so its movies never hit the way they should have. UA would spend two hundred thousand dollars on a film and make two million, but if almost any other studio had made the film, it would have been much bigger.

  The Defiant Ones was important to me, because I was still building a case to be seen as a serious actor. Obviously I’d made the right choice with this movie, because Sidney and I were nominated for Oscars. But this year they weren’t going to give an Oscar to a black man or a Jew. The winner for best actor that year was David Niven for Separate Tables, a movie about an Englishman with very little money who goes to a resort and meets a lady who becomes infatuated with him. I thought, What the fuck is the Academy doing? But hey, I was prejudiced.