American Prince

by Tony Curtis

  I said as much to Lew Wasserman, who replied, “Don’t worry about it, Tony. They’re not ready for you yet. You need a few more pictures.”

  But I was angry, and disappointed in my profession. I felt The Defiant Ones was making an important statement about the times we lived in. I also felt my own time had come. I was making important pictures, and I felt I deserved some acclaim from my peers. But Lew was right. The Defiant Ones was ahead of its time, and I needed to wait my turn.

  My next movie, directed by Blake Edwards, was The Perfect Furlough, the story of a soldier who wins a date with a femme fatale, played by Linda Cristal. I played the soldier. To keep me in check on my date, the army sends two chaperones along, one of whom was played by Janet. I climb out my window to go into what I think is Linda’s room, but it turns out to be Janet’s room. It was very amusing. Blake did a good job with it.

  The next big event in my life was personal. In September 1958 I got a phone call from my brother Robert, who said, “Daddy has gone to sleep.” I knew what that meant. Janet and I jumped in the car and raced over to my parents’ house. We walked in and found my father lying on the bedroom floor, next to the bed. He was dead.

  My mother said, “He came to me, and then he just fell off.” I decided that must have been her roundabout way of saying he was having sex with her when he died. I thought, That’s nice for him. What a perfect way to go.

  My family and I sat shiva for my father, and a lot of family friends showed up to offer their condolences and to tell stories about the old man. After the funeral, I bought my mother a house to live in. Things were good for me financially, but my father’s death triggered one of my major depressions. Despite my prosperity, my endless struggle to build on my success didn’t seem worthwhile anymore. No matter what I did, I still felt like the same mixed-up kid I had been when I was growing up on the East Side of Manhattan.

  Then things went from bad to worse. As long as Lew had been my agent, I felt that my career was in the best hands possible and that everything would be okay. But then MCA, Lew Wasserman’s company, bought Universal Studios. Now Lew was going to be a studio exec, which meant he was no longer going to be an agent. I asked him how I was going to be affected.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I can’t represent you anymore, but now I can see to it that you’re free to go and do your outside movies whenever you want.”

  So I gained a sympathetic new head of the studio that owned my contract, but I lost my agent, and the trade-off was not a good one. I had thought Lew and I would stay together forever. Losing him as my agent was devastating—and it would be another couple of years before I would feel the full impact of our parting.

  Some Like It Hot

  A publicity shot with Jack Lemmon, 1959.

  Iwas walking down Beverly Drive one afternoon when a man stopped me in the street.

  “You don’t know me, do you?” he asked. I shook my head.

  “I’m Harold Mearish. I produced Beachhead.” This was the film I had made in Hawaii several years earlier, with Frank Love joy and Mary Murphy. Harold was a Jew who had made a fortune selling chocolate bars in the movie theaters of Milwaukee. He had wanted to get out of the chocolate business and into the movie business, so he approached studios and got them to agree to make his films if he would finance them. Howard Koch had line-produced Beachhead, but Mearish had put up the money.

  Harold said, “You know, in the first two months of release we made back all the money we spent on that film, and it was all because of you.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

  After we met, Harold Mearish started inviting me over for dinner or a screening. I think he enjoyed my exuberance. One afternoon Harold called and said, “I want you to come over to my house. Billy Wilder is here, and he wants to talk to you.”

  Billy Wilder had gotten his start as a screenwriter in the German film industry. When Hitler came to power, Billy left Germany and came to Hollywood, speaking no English whatsoever. That didn’t stop him from making some of the most memorable movies in the history of film, including Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, The Seven Year Itch, and Irma la Douce. Much later he even worked on the script of Steven Spielberg’s extraordinary Schindler’s List.

  I didn’t know what Harold had in mind, but I was hoping Billy might have some work for me. After Trapeze I had half-expected that all sorts of important directors would think about using me, but it hadn’t turned out that way. So I kept working on my craft and on polishing my rough edges, both as an actor and as a player in Hollywood’s social game. I was getting better about which fork to use and how to make conversation at parties, but that didn’t stop some people from looking down on me. I was nuts about Phyllis Kirk, a raving beauty who starred with Vincent Price in the movie House of Wax, but she wouldn’t even spit on me. But I was still young and I was still learning, and today I was driving to meet Billy Wilder, who wanted to see me.

  Starring in a Billy Wilder film would be a great coup, putting me in Hollywood’s most rarified air. Billy was an Academy Award–winning director who was also a brilliant screenwriter. He had the skills to make movies that looked nothing like the typical run of the Hollywood mill. Most Hollywood movies were conceived primarily by producers, who might say, Why don’t we make a movie called All American? We can get this Italian kid who’s rough, put him in a fancy school, cut his hair, and show how he can become an American too. That was actually a movie I made at Universal; in real life I was Jewish instead of Italian, but Universal’s producers didn’t care about that.

  There were a lot of things that most producers and directors didn’t care about, but Billy was different. Double Indemnity is a prime example, as you can see from just the story alone. This guy who’s an insurance salesman on the road comes to a house where a beautiful woman is living with her husband, an older man who’s an oil executive. The guy and the wife get to know each other and plot the murder of the older husband. They almost get away with it, but the insurance agent kills the wife; he then confesses and is sent to the electric chair. That’s Billy Wilder’s idea of a movie. To put it simply, it’s got depth.

  Harold Mearish’s house was on a nice quiet street in Beverly Hills behind the Beverly Hills Hotel. Harold had created a beautiful projection room in his home, where I’d seen a number of screenings. I parked my car, came inside, and Harold introduced me to Billy Wilder. Shaking Billy’s hand I felt like a prize fighter who wanted to be a contender. I just needed to get a big part in a Billy Wilder movie to show everyone that I was the real thing.

  Billy took me into a small room and shut the door so we could talk privately. I was so nervous to be in his presence that when we sat down I thought to myself, Are we sitting all alone because he’s embarrassed to be with me?

  That wasn’t it at all, as it turned out. Billy was indeed offering me a part in a movie. He said, “I’m making a picture about two musicians who are working in a speakeasy during Prohibition, when the place gets raided. They escape, but the man who owns the place loses his business because a rat blows the whistle on him. So the mobsters who run the speakeasy find the rat and kill him. But the two musicians witness the murder, so now the mobsters want to kill them too. To escape, they dress up as girls and join an all-girl band.” That was the hook, the Billy Wilder touch that set this film apart. The title? It would become Some Like It Hot.

  Billy said, “I want you to play one of the musicians, the one who gets involved with one of the girls in the band, and I’m going to get Frank Sinatra to play the other one. And Mitzi Gaynor is going to play the girl.”

  I thought, Get whoever you want to play the other parts. It makes no difference to me. I was thrilled just to be sitting in a quiet room with Billy Wilder, and absolutely stunned that he was offering me a big part in his next movie. There were dozens of talented actors who would kill for this part, but I was the one he wanted!

  Of
course I told Billy I’d do it. About a week later Harold invited me to a screening at his house, and Billy was there too. Billy called me over and said, “I’m not going to use Sinatra. He’s going to be too much trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I said.

  Billy said, “He’ll have to dress up as a woman every day, and I just can’t see Frank doing that.” I knew what he meant. Along with Frank’s arrogance came oversized insecurities, and there was no way he was going to dress up like a woman for a movie role. Billy said, “I’m going to use Jack Lemmon instead.”

  I was delighted to have Jack as a costar. He was a good friend and a wonderful actor, and for some reason I never felt the slightest twitch of competitiveness from Jack. Perhaps it was because he was so comfortable in his own skin. I loved the work he did in Some Like It Hot, and much later he was totally amazing as Felix Ungar in The Odd Couple.

  Mitzi Gaynor never got the part. When I ran across her a number of years later, I asked her, “Did you know you were going to play Sugar Kane Kowalczyk?”

  “I heard,” she said. “Do you know what happened?”

  “When Marilyn became available, Billy said he was going to use her, difficult as she was,” I said. Billy was certainly right about Marilyn being difficult, and he was even more right about casting her for the part. Can you imagine anyone else playing that role?

  The script for Some Like It Hot was written by I. A. L. Diamond, who had worked with Billy before. Izzy understood the New York idiom, and he had a great sense of humor. When you took his jokes, combined them with the great storyline, and then threw a girl like Marilyn into the mix, you got a perfect movie. At least you did if you were Billy Wilder.

  Billy also showed great judgment in his choice of his supporting actors. He was a big fan of the movie Manpower, which had starred George Raft and Edward G. Robinson, so he wanted both of them to play gangsters in Some Like It Hot. Unfortunately, Robinson and Raft had gotten into a fistfight while making Manpower, and Robinson had sworn he would never work with Raft again. In an effort to get Robinson to take the part, Billy signed Robinson’s son, Edward Jr., to play in the movie, but Robinson still turned Billy down. By the way, you can see Edward G. Robinson Jr. in the scene where he’s flipping a coin in the air. When George Raft grabs the coin in midair, he says to Edward Jr.’s character, “Where’d you learn to do that cheap trick?” The re ply? “I saw George Raft do it.” That was a typical Billy Wilder touch.

  To play the part of the yacht-owning millionaire who falls in love with Jack Lemmon in drag, Billy selected Joe E. Brown, a great character actor. Even though Joe had been in the movies since the 1930s, he treated me as an equal, which totally won me over.

  To my surprise, I was very uncomfortable the first time I put on women’s clothing for the movie. I was in the dressing room putting on a jacket that looked like it belonged to Eve Arden and a garter belt that looked like it belonged to Loretta Young. Not to mention the shoes with the three-inch heels. Jack Lemmon was in there too, just screaming with laughter, which didn’t help. I re fused to come out of the dressing room.

  Billy Wilder came in and looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, Tony?”

  I said, “Billy, look at me.” Even as a woman, I wanted to look good, and these clothes were not doing the trick.

  Billy said, “Don’t worry, Tony. We’ll get some clothes made for you. Come on out.” Gradually, he coaxed me from the dressing room. After all those years of putting up with guys coming on to me and hearing rumors about my own sexuality, dressing like a woman felt like a real challenge to my manhood. To calm myself, I recalled a lot of tough experiences I’d been through in life, and I told myself this couldn’t be any tougher than those.

  As I stepped outside the dressing room clutching my purse, I was horrified to see a crowd; there were some fifty members of the crew standing there waiting to see what I looked like as Josephine. I felt deeply embarrassed, but actor that I was, I turned that into material for my performance: I blushed and put my hands over my face, coyly acting the part of the reluctant diva.

  Jack, on the other hand, had no such reservations. When he emerged from the dressing room for the first time, he came out fully in character, shrieking, dancing, prancing, looking cute, and exaggerating his femininity. I watched him with envy. I couldn’t imagine doing that.

  Billy Wilder had hired a female impersonator to teach Jack and me to move like a woman, and I worked with a voice coach who trained me to speak in a softer, higher voice. Some Like It Hot was a real acting challenge for me, because, in effect, I played three characters: Joe, the sax player; Josephine, Joe’s identity when he’s in drag in the all-girl band; and Junior, an identity Joe assumes to help him woo Sugar. Junior is supposed to be a millionaire who owns a yacht. For my scenes as Junior, I was dressed in a blue yachting blazer, white trousers, open shirt, and a captain’s hat. The big question in my mind was, what should Junior sound like? As Joe, I was harsh and tough, a guy who had been around and who had fucked every vocalist in any band he was in. Josephine, of course, was softer and more demure. When I played Junior, I could have used a variation on the same voice and mannerisms that I used for Joe, but I wanted to do something more interesting.

  I thought about it and I decided that the voice I liked best for the part was Cary Grant’s, but I chose to exaggerate it to the point of caricature. I played it saucy. I kicked up my voice a little bit higher, and I extended certain words and made them a little longaaah, but I didn’t swallow the g like the British did. By putting more emphasis on the “gaaaa,” it came out as a mix of London and New York, which told you right away, This guy is not English. He is a New Yorker trying to sound English.

  In the first scene I shot as Junior, I was sitting in a deck chair on the beach when Sugar walked by. Billy said to me, “When she runs by you, trip her.” I complied, and Marilyn took a great fall onto the sand. She turned around and looked at me with surprise. In my exaggerated Cary Grant voice, I said: “I hope I didn’t hurt you. Are you all right? When people find out who I am, they sue for a bundle of money.”

  Billy yelled cut. I said, “Billy, was that all right?”

  He said, “It was great.”

  “Did you hear the accent?” I said.

  “What accent?”

  I said, “I was doing a little bit of Cary Grant.”

  He said, “If I had wanted Cary Grant to play the part, I would have gotten Cary Grant.” That was all Billy had to say about the accent, but he didn’t tell me not to use it, so I kept it up. The accent helped me establish a character whom I had an absolutely wonderful time playing.

  As I got more into the character of Josephine, I began to enjoy playing that part too. I imagined myself as Eve Arden or Grace Kelly, or sometimes even my mother. I learned that in order for a woman to walk like a woman, she didn’t have to try to tighten her ass or maintain good posture. She just walked easily, which I tried to emulate.

  I had a great time working with Jack Lemmon. He was very friendly and easygoing with everybody, and he never played the prima donna or did things to make himself look good at the expense of the other actors. Jack was smart and fun, and he was a very positive guy. He was fairly reticent on the set and wouldn’t talk much about his personal life, but when I met him at one of Billy’s parties, he was much more gregarious and open. I had the feeling that Jack was never satisfied with anything, even with his performances, which may explain why he drank a lot. Drinking allowed him to relax and quiet that critical inner voice.

  On the set, Jack’s performance was spot-on, and in this case that meant being very theatrical. He had a funny way of reaching into the words and exaggerating them for effect. He was always very animated, so his characters sparkled with life.

  Marilyn was perfect in the movie that was our final product, but on the set she was a loose cannon. Part of the problem was her relationship with Lee and Paula Strasberg, who ran the Actors Studio. Marilyn wanted to be an intellectual, and they playe
d to that desire by treating her as one of them, which made Marilyn very dependent on them. She had completely succumbed to the Actors Studio philosophy that it’s better to mumble your words, what I called the Marlon Brando style of acting. The problem was that only Marlon could do that.

  I came to hate the Actors Studio for what they did to Marilyn. Lee Strasberg was a great acting coach; in my opinion the problems came from Lee’s wife. Paula’s presence made things harder for Marilyn, because she felt torn between Paula and Billy. Marilyn played the ding-dong for Paula, and she played the diva with Billy, giving each of them what she thought they wanted, because that was how Marilyn was wired.

  At the time that Some Like It Hot started shooting, Marilyn had caused so many problems around town that some studios were refusing to hire her. Twentieth Century Fox had put her on the shelf. Fox’s executives figured that if she sobered up and got herself together in a couple of years, then maybe they’d be able to work with her. They weren’t wrong in their assessment of Marilyn’s problems, but Marilyn also had an incredible gift. She really was a first-rate comedienne. Billy may not have been sure about Marilyn when he signed her, but he quickly saw that she was exactly what he wanted.

  Still, taking on Marilyn meant taking on Marilyn’s problems. Lew Wasserman was still her agent at this point, so Billy worked with Lew to try to keep her under control. As a backup plan, Billy and I discussed a list of actresses who we thought could play the part if Marilyn didn’t work out. Billy knew she was perfect for the role, but he made it clear to me that he was willing to replace her. “This is not the story of Sugar Kane,” he would say. “It’s the story of two musicians who have to dress up like women, and one of them happens to fall in love with a beautiful girl singer.”