{"id":9261,"date":"2010-09-30T16:54:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T15:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=9261"},"modified":"2010-09-30T16:54:06","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T15:54:06","slug":"tony-curtis-1925-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2010\/09\/30\/tony-curtis-1925-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Curtis (1925 – 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The actor Tony Curtis<\/a><\/strong> has died from a heart attack at the age of 85.<\/p>\n

He was best known for his roles in Hollywood classics such as Sweet Smell of Success<\/a> (1957) and Some Like It Hot<\/a> (1959), as well as performances in The Defiant Ones<\/a> (1958), Spartacus<\/a> (1960) and The Outsider (1961).<\/p>\n

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Born Bernard Schwartz in 1925 to Hungarian-Jewish immigrants in New York, his early life was beset by poverty and family problems (his mother and brother both suffered from schizophrenia).<\/p>\n

After serving in the Navy during World War II, where he witnessed the official Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay, he enrolled in acting classes in New York and got a contract with Universal Studios in 1948.<\/p>\n

In 1949 he dated Marilyn Monroe before marrying\u00a0actress Janet Leigh, who he starred alongside in Houdini<\/a> (1953), but his early years in Hollywood were marred by formulaic supporting roles, despite being an attractive star hugely popular with teens and fan-magazine readers.<\/p>\n

His major career breakthrough came in 1957 as a Broadway press agent opposite Burt Lancaster\u2019s Broadway columnist in Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Finally achieving the critical acclaim that had eluded him, he went on to star in The Vikings<\/a> (1958) with Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kramer’s social drama The Defiant Ones<\/a> (1958) alongside Sidney Poitier.<\/p>\n

By 1959 he was a major star and that year saw his most famous role in Billy Wilder\u2019s Some Like It Hot<\/a>, a comedy which cast him and Jack Lemmon as struggling musicians forced to dress in drag whilst fleeing the mob.<\/p>\n

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His next films, Operation Petticoat<\/a> (1959) and Spartacus<\/a> (1960) cemented his success but this golden period was soured by the box office flop of The Outsider (1961) and his divorce from Janet Leigh<\/a> in 1962, following an affair with the 17-year-old German actress Christine Kaufmann<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In retrospect his career never recovered, and the 1960s saw him appear in a succession of unsuccessful comedies such as Captain Newman M.D.<\/a> (1963) and the widely panned Wild and Wonderful<\/a> (1964).<\/p>\n

By the late 1960s his career was in severe trouble and an attempt at a more serious role in The Boston Strangler<\/a> (1968) earned some good reviews, despite being attracted controversy.<\/p>\n

Some bizarrely titled failures followed with Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies<\/a> (1969) and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came?<\/a> (1970) before he came to Britain for the 1971 television series The Persuaders!<\/a> alongside Roger Moore.<\/p>\n

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Although it never cracked the US market, it is still regularly repeated around the world.<\/p>\n

The 1970s saw him crop up in a variety of guest appearances on TV shows, such as Vega$<\/a> and by the late 1970s he had seen his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis become a star with the low budget horror Halloween<\/a> (1978).<\/p>\n

His colourful private life had always kept him in the public eye and by the 1990s he was on his sixth marriage and published his autobiography in 1994, with a second volume in 2008.<\/p>\n

Two years ago he gave a fascinating interview on the UK show Shrink Rap<\/a> where he talked to Dr Pamela Connolly<\/a> about his life in often searing personal detail, discussing his violent mother, his guilt over the death of his brother and his various relationships down the years.<\/p>\n

UK viewers can watch it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

> Tony Curtis<\/a> at the IMDb
\n> Various tributes and retrospective links at MUBi<\/a>
\n> Jeffrey Wells pays tribute to the actor he knew at Hollywood Elsewhere
\n<\/a>> GQ interview from June 2010<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The actor Tony Curtis has died from a heart attack at the age of 85.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1573],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9261"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}