by Tony Curtis
In the fall of 1965, George Pal, my director in Houdini, introduced me to several executives at Hanna-Barbera—the company that had created the cartoon The Flintstones—to explore the possibility of using my voice on the show. Was I interested in helping to create a new cartoon character named Stony Curtis? I said, “Let’s do it.” I loved the idea, plus The Flintstones was one of the most popular shows on television. Later, people asked me why I did it. I did it because I was invited to, and because it looked like it would be fun! And it was.
My next film, which I did for Paramount, was called Boeing Boeing. It was about a newspaperman who has three stewardesses living with him. Because of their busy schedules, the stewardesses don’t know about each other. Jerry Lewis plays my roommate, and Thelma Ritter plays the housekeeper who screws up the scheduling and causes all hell to break loose when the girls find out about each other.
The film did very well, and I was very pleased with it. The only problem I had was that Jerry, being Jerry, was tirelessly moving from one crazy gag to the next. I remembered how this used to infuriate Dean Martin, and it was starting to get on my nerves too. We’d be standing around waiting for the lights to be readjusted for a scene, and Jerry would take his cigarette and drop the ashes on the shoulder of my suit. I had put together a really beautiful wardrobe in this picture, and I didn’t want this schmuck setting me on fire. I’d brush the ashes off, and I’d seethe, but I wouldn’t say anything.
When I was in a scene with Jerry, he’d take things and put them in my pocket as a joke. He was completely unrepentant when his gags ended up disrupting an entire scene. It was his way of showing off on the set, and he thought it was funny. The director, John Rich, wasn’t much good at reining Jerry in, but you could hardly blame him for that. After all, this was Jerry Lewis we were talking about, so everyone, including John Rich, let Jerry be Jerry.
Working with Jerry was like working in a jungle: you never knew what was coming at you next. It was the total opposite of working with Jack Lemmon, for instance, who was so gracious and steady and generous. When I was making Operation Petticoat with Cary Grant, I would have nailed my shoes to the floor to make sure I was standing still when Cary was delivering his lines. I would have done anything to keep from distracting the camera. But Jerry couldn’t help himself. He thought he was the greatest comedian who had ever worked in movies, and he made sure everyone knew it.
After I made Boeing Boeing, I was spending some time in New York with a friend of mine, Richard Feigen, a prominent art dealer. My childhood interest in art had only grown stronger over the years, although my movie career didn’t allow much time to explore my desire to paint. One day Richard said to me, “Let’s go see Joseph Cornell.” Cornell, a reclusive artist, had confided to Feigen that he would like to have been a movie star, and I had told Feigen I wanted to be an artist, so Richard figured the two of us had to meet. He took me out to Queens, where Cornell lived with his brother and mother, off Utopia Parkway.
Cornell’s brother, Robert, had cerebral palsy. He was confined to a wheelchair and had difficulty speaking, but like Frank Sinatra he loved electric trains. After I met Robert, I would send him an engine or a boxcar here and there for his collection. Joseph Cornell made the most incredible wooden boxes for his brother. He’d take one of his mother’s empty powder boxes and glue slivers of mirror to the outside in beautiful patterns. On the bottom of one box he stuck a couple of dozen pins, and on top of those pins he placed thimbles. He cut one hole in the side of the box and another in the top so light could get in. When you held the box up to your eye, you saw a thimble forest. The effect was surreal.
Meeting Cornell and seeing his boxes reminded me of some of the artistic impulses I’d had as a kid. I used to ask my dad for his empty cigar boxes and use them to store all kinds of crazy stuff—skate keys, chewing gum wrappers, stamps, marbles—whatever I could think of. Whenever we moved, I made sure to take those boxes with me. Joseph Cornell’s fascination with his mother’s powder boxes reminded me of my father’s cigar boxes, and I decided to start using them again.
Cornell was a loner, and in my heart of hearts so was I, so we got along very well. Like me, he also had a fascination with female beauty. Cornell had an extensive collection of still shots of movie actresses, some of which he placed inside his boxes. He was delighted to meet Christine, and he asked to shoot a whole series of photos of her. I suspected the photos might also provide him some sexual excitement, but I didn’t question him about it. If that made him happy, so be it.
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• • •
Things took a lucky bounce for me in 1966. The Keck family had discovered oil in the Los Angeles area, and their oil field lay right behind MGM’s studio lot. The Keck family estate was a twelve-thousand-square-foot mansion, complete with eighteen rooms, an Olympic-size indoor swimming pool, a projection room, an elevator, and a massive wine cellar. There was even a secret room hidden behind a carved wooden panel in the den. The estate sat on four acres of land overlooking the Los Angeles Country Club. Originally, Joe Schenck, a cofounder of Twentieth Century Fox, had bought the house from the Kecks. When I was going out with Marilyn Monroe, this was the house where she stayed with Joe Schenck on weekends. It was for sale again, and the asking price was three hundred thousand dollars.
My attorney, Marvin Meyer, came to me with the news that the Keck house was available, and then he said, “I just found out that the government wants to encourage wealthy people to spend their money, so they’ll let you buy property with prepaid interest.” The prepaid interest was five percent. He said, “You can live in the house for five years for just the cost of the prepaid inter est, and after five years you can either buy it or give it back to the seller.” I paid the fifteen thousand dollars in interest, and Christine and I moved in. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. When my friends in LA saw it, they asked me, “When did you become a multi millionaire?”
I said modestly, “I just caught some lucky breaks.” Christine loved the house as much as I did, and for the next few years we lived like royalty.
Downward Spiral
With Judy Garland, 1969.
I’m not sorry I married Christine, although that doesn’t mean that in retrospect I think it was a good idea. The problem was that I married her for the wrong reason: her youth. I had never been seventeen in the ordinary way, and by the time I was twenty-two I was already immersed in a career. When I met Christine, it looked like I was being given a second chance to experience all those things I had missed out on. We went to the malt shop; we went to movies together and snuggled in the balcony; we went to the beach; we even went to rock concerts together.
Being married to me was good for Christine, too, because as Mrs. Tony Curtis she was granted access to anyplace she wanted to go. She’d go to an exclusive club, and they’d let her in as one of the beautiful people. We were having so much fun; I just wish it had lasted a little longer.
In 1966 I appeared in a picture called Not with My Wife, You Don’t! Made by Warner Bros., it starred George C. Scott, Italian film star Virna Lisi, and me. It was the story of two pals. I’m married to Virna, and while I’m stuck in the Army, George C. Scott begins wooing her. I thought the movie was badly cast, but that was out of my control. To my way of thinking, the roles should have been switched. I should have played the gigolo, but George was a very powerful actor, and they wanted him in that role. It worked out okay, but the picture wasn’t as good as it could have been. Virna was a very good actress, though, and a beautiful woman, very aristocratic. I liked her a lot.
Over the years I had a powerful tendency to fall for my leading ladies, and usually I found some way to make my feelings known. If a woman seemed receptive, I might make an advance, and if I got a good response to that, I would keep pressing my case. There’s no question about the fact that I was driven to conquer every woman I met. I liked to think of myself as quite a ladies’ man, and I felt compelled to prove it.
Oddly enough,
perhaps, sometimes I respected the women who didn’t fall for me more than the ones who did. Virna Lisi was one of the former; she kept me at arm’s length. She was married, I don’t know how happily, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to fall in love with me, or run away with me for a weekend. Not only did I admire her for that, but in this case it made it a lot easier to get the picture made. I didn’t have to stay up until four in the morning waiting up for her. At the end of a day of shooting, I would go home, and she would do the same.
I didn’t stray in my next picture either, but this time it wasn’t so easy. The film was originally called Arrivederci, Baby, but after it was finished Paramount decided the title was too vague and too Italian, so they renamed it Drop Dead Darling. I took the job because of the excellent script by Ken Hughes. I played a cad who searched through fashion magazines looking for wealthy women to marry for their money. I had not one but four love interests in the movie: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Nancy Kwan, Anna Quayle, and an Italian actress named Rosanna Schiaffino. Although I wanted to chase them all, I limited myself to the romantic activity called for by the script.
Nancy Kwan was a sensitive beauty, with a wonderful, saucy smile, and we became great friends. I was attracted to her, but she was in a very involved relationship off the set, so nothing happened between us. Anna Quayle and I didn’t really get along, so nothing happened there either. Then there was Zsa Zsa. When it came to some things, Zsa Zsa wasn’t too sure what was going on, but when it came to men she knew exactly what she was doing. She knew exactly which guy she was going to bed, and how, and when. She was quite a bit older than I was, though, so I was lucky.
Rosanna Schiaffino had an impressive support system of family members, all of whom were dedicated to making her a star. Her husband was her manager, and her uncle ran the business. I had a great time with Rosanna. She had a wonderful sense of humor, and we laughed through the whole movie. Her sister came onto the set one day, and she seemed a little ill at ease, so I brought her some coffee, and we started to talk. I said, “I’m so happy to be here working with your sister. She’s a wonderful girl.”
Rosanna’s sister said, “Do you like her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“If you’re sensitive enough, perhaps you two could become lovers.”
“Do you think so?”
“Not a chance,” she said. “If you have any ideas about that, don’t.”
I laughed and said, “You know, it’s not completely up to me.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s up to my sister. And she has to be careful, so please be kind.”
“What do you mean, ‘kind’?”
“Don’t go near her,” she said.
The dialogue between Rosanna’s sister and me was at least as good as the dialogue in the movie. She and I bantered all through the making of the movie. I’d be standing there with my arm around Rosanna’s waist, like you do with a friend, and her sister would walk by us, and when she got out of Rosanna’s line of sight, she’d make a face at me, as though to say, Take your hands off my sister.
At one point, Rosanna’s sister said, “Go ahead and do it.” I wasn’t sure if she was serious.
She said, “Shall I help you?”
“How?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what makes Rosanna crazy: the back of her neck and her tummy.”
“How am I going to get close enough to touch her in those places?”
“Get her alone in her dressing room, of course.”
In the movie, Rosanna is the last of my conquests, and we end up in Naples, Italy. The camera pans to a neighborhood where the laundry hangs outside the windows, and as the shot comes closer to a house, the audience can see that I’m inside it with Rosanna, and we have six children. I look out directly at the camera, and I say, “What are you looking at?” before I close the window.
The problem with the picture was that it was disjointed. The individual scenes were funny, but the production company couldn’t figure out a way to link them all together. It was around this time that I began to feel the full impact of parting ways with Lew Wasserman. I missed Lew terribly. He had treated me so wonderfully. I really enjoyed his company, and when I feel that way about a person, I can be free and easy and have fun with them. And Lew had been busy doing great things for my career to boot. Did I want to make a submarine picture and have Cary Grant play in the movie? Lew arranged it. Did Burt Lancaster want me in Trapeze? Lew arranged it.
But once Lew left agenting to run Universal, I was on my own, figuratively and literally. Yes, I had hired Swifty Lazar to replace him, and Swifty certainly had his strong points, but he didn’t have the clout Lew had, or Lew’s experience in the world of film. In fact, Swifty turned out to be a terrible choice.
If you combined Swifty’s shortcomings with the fact that a lot of influential Hollywood people were pissed off at me for divorcing Janet and marrying Christine, you’ll understand why, in 1966, I started accepting movie roles I never would have taken otherwise. That’s before you factor in the hefty alimony and child support I was paying to Janet. When my accountant told me I needed to make some money, I took whatever movies I could find.
The first of these was a picture called Chamber of Horrors, made by a small, independent studio. It was about a killer who strangles his victims. I don’t remember much about it except that the studio’s check cleared. My next film, Don’t Make Waves, wasn’t much better. It was a film version of the book Muscle Beach in which I played a professor, and I had two beautiful co stars, Claudia Cardinale and Sharon Tate. The plot was utterly ridiculous, but I agreed to appear in the film because I got a percentage of the gross. When Martin Ransohoff of MGM asked me to recommend a director, I suggested Alexander Macken drick, with whom I’d worked on Sweet Smell of Success, and when MGM decided to use Sandy, they also gave me a producer’s credit for bringing him on board.
As a result, Sandy had his first chance to direct in six years. I liked him because he was so good with his actors. Like a lot of actors, I needed constant reassurance that I was good at my job, and Sandy was great at that. While we were working together he would call me up and say, “Tony, I’m so happy you’re working on this picture. You are the finest American actor I know.” Sandy always managed to give me the sense that perhaps I was a better actor than I realized. It didn’t take much for me to get down on myself, and he always helped to counteract that tendency.
I was sure that with Sandy directing, this would be an interesting, different kind of film. Marty Ransohoff was enough of an avant-garde producer to appreciate Sandy’s style. My only reservation about Sandy was his famous perfectionism, and sure enough, once again we ran into problems with the schedule and the budget. Ransohoff complained that Sandy wasn’t working fast enough, and Ransohoff also didn’t like the way the picture was coming out. Here too Sandy was focusing on details no one else had even considered—details about the decor inside a car, the titles of books I was carrying, you name it.
Claudia Cardinale was gorgeous, but her boyfriend at the time was rumored to be an important politico, so Ransohoff delicately told us, “Hands off.” Sharon Tate was living with Roman Polanski—whom she married in 1968—and I was a good friend of Roman’s. We would meet at parties, after which I would go over to their house and make myself comfortable there. A few years after we made Don’t Make Waves, Sharon was brutally murdered by Charlie Manson and his “family.” Roman had gone to London to shoot a movie, and while he was away, Manson’s band of killers invaded his house and murdered Sharon and the baby she was carrying. It was a terrible tragedy.
By 1967, it was clear to me that I might be on somebody’s shit list, or maybe on more than one list. I simply wasn’t getting any good offers to make movies in Hollywood. Swifty said to me, “Go do pictures in Europe. Clint Eastwood did it when he made those spaghetti westerns. Those pictures will give you great exposure all over Europe, and you’ll come away from the work more bankable than ever.” So I went ahead and made The Chast
ity Belt in Italy with Monica Vitti. The plot was simple: a husband locks his wife in a chastity belt before he goes off to the Crusades. I played the husband. I made a lot of keys and gave them away to my friends.
I loved filming in Italy. I enjoyed hearing Italian spoken all around me, and in Europe people treated me with a lot more respect than they did in Hollywood. Monica Vitti, though, made things very difficult. She was being romanced by the cameraman, so she felt that gave her some entitlements. For one thing, she insisted that she not be filmed in profile, because she was convinced her ass was too big. For another, she almost always showed up late. She did everything a leading lady shouldn’t do. Next to this woman, working with Marilyn was wine and roses.
I went to the line producer and said, “Don’t take her shit. She’s putting the production at risk. Somebody from Warner Brothers is going to come along and close down the movie because of all the delays and added costs, and we’ll never get it released. We’ve all got too much invested in this, too much time and energy. If she keeps this up, why don’t you just ease her out of the picture?” They took my advice. The director, Pasquale Campanile, began to cut her scenes.
As part of the deal for making that picture, I insisted I be paid by certified check. When I arrived in Italy, they said they couldn’t do that, so I said, “I’m leaving.” I went to the hotel and started packing my luggage. The producer, Francesco Mazzei, followed me to my hotel room and begged me not to leave.
“How am I going to get paid?” I said.
“We’ll pay you in cash,” he said, and they did. They gave me the money in a suitcase. I locked it, took it down to the concierge, and said, “Here. Hold on to this for me.” When the picture ended, I took the suitcase through customs, showed the customs agents my papers indicating what I was owed, and said, “This is my salary.” As soon as I got to LA, I asked my accountant how much I owed the IRS on that money, and I paid it. One thing I had learned way back when Bob Goldstein had insisted I set aside money for my SAG dues was that I never wanted to get behind on payments for anything.