Tony Curtis' Stories

Love him.

Debbie Reynolds was one of those people who seemed to blow cold, then hot, and then cold again. To be fair to Debbie, she started to treat me badly when she and Eddie Fisher started having problems in their marriage. It was a time when Debbie was very hostile toward men, sparking rumors that she was gay, but I never saw any evidence of that.

While they were married, I felt bad for Eddie. Debbie was a lot like Jerry Lewis, very demanding and always wanting to be in control...When Janet and I threw our parties, her friends invariably outnumbered mine. That was fair. She had a lot more friends than I did. Sometimes Frank Sinatra would come join us, but you had to be careful not to push him..... To tell you the truth, I wasn’t that nuts about parties, but I realized that Janet’s social networking was good for both of us.

Janet, meanwhile, was becoming very critical of my behavior in public. We’d go to a party, and she’d watch me very carefully wherever we were. From a distance of fifteen feet, she would nod her head yes or no to approve or criticize the way I held my glass. She’d point to her own glass, and she’d mouth the words, Hold it like this. She was trying to teach me etiquette, and I began to resent it.

One night Janet and I were invited to have dinner with Cole Porter at his New York City apartment. I had never met Cole, so I was looking forward to getting to know him..... We all sat down and began the meal. I was sitting next to Janet, and I didn’t know which fork to use, whether to use the big spoon or the little spoon for soup, that sort of thing.

My lack of sophistication bothered Janet, always the perfectionist. She began poking me and whispering to me, making sure I didn’t embarrass her with my inadequate manners. Her nagging pissed me off so much that I deliberately used the wrong knives and forks, which was childish but effective.

As we were sitting there, Ethel Merman picked up one of the wineglasses and gently squeezed it at the top. The wineglass was so delicate, and her touch so assured, that she could change its shape from round to oval without breaking it. I picked up my glass to inspect it, and Ethel said to me, “Go on. Try it.” I squeezed, and this beautiful, delicate wineglass shattered in my hand.

Ethel, who was dear and kind, said, “Don’t worry, kid, it could happen to any of us,” and then she took her own glass and shattered it just to make me feel better. I looked over at Cole, and he was laughing, but Janet was furious.

Janet’s obvious discomfort with my manners and my New York accent didn’t do much for my insecurity. She wanted to change me into Laurence Olivier, whose charm and polish were legendary. That was never going to happen. I was always going to stand out in a crowd, for better or for worse. And as time went on I got a stronger and stronger feeling that Janet thought it was for worse.

Janet and I had been nuts about each other when we first started going out. We loved the sex, and we loved the companionship; but it wasn’t long before the differences between us that had seemed so exciting at first started to create friction. In many ways, I was the naive one in the relationship. I had never been married before, but for Janet I was husband number three—and she had been only twenty-three years old!

She had already lived a lot in that time, and she had developed very firm ideas about how everything should be. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before she started trying to change me to conform to those ideas From my point of view Janet was bossing me around, just as my mother had bossed my father around.

I could see signs in myself that I was becoming subservient, which only made my flashbacks to childhood more intense. Janet and I would go to a party together, and if I lit my cigarette without offering to light the cigarette of the person I was talking to, Janet would poke me with her elbow. She would always wait for me to introduce her to my friends, but I rarely did, because I never knew who she knew and who she didn’t. This upset her every time.

She also had difficulty dealing with the attention that came with fame, whereas I enjoyed it. One time a studio hired a car to take us to a movie premiere at the Egyptian Theater in LA. When I got out of the car at the theater, screams erupted from the fans standing in the street. I reached into the car to help Janet out, and then we walked up to the entrance to the theater. On either side ropes kept the fans and the photographers from getting too close.

The cameras were flashing, so I stopped to allow the photographers to take their shots. All the while, Janet was pulling on my arm to get me to go on in. Then she gave me a shove, and when I still didn’t move, she pinched me in the back.

I turned around and looked at her. With her teeth clenched she said, “Don’t stop and leave me out here like this. Get in there.” I looked her in the eye. She was furious.

When we got home that night, I decided to ask her about the incident. She said, “Don’t ever do that again. How dare you embarrass me in front of all those people? You made me look like a fool. How dare you treat me like that?”

When I cruise down Sunset after a nice evening meal, I call it my "After-Dinner Mince."

He could never shake that Brooklyn accent. Which kind of got in the way when he was doing those historical epics. I liked him though. Didn't realize Janet was such a control freak.

In 1955 Janet joined the cast of My Sister Eileen, along with Jack Lemmon and Betty Garrett. She had always wanted to be in a musical, and now that she was in one, she trained every day so her dancing and singing would be up to snuff. Her choreographer was Bob Fosse, who had a reputation as quite the lady’s man, even though he was married to actress Joan McCracken.

While Janet was making her movie, I went off every other weekend to spend time with Frank. Janet was okay with that, since she wasn’t around home herself. Then one weekend I came home and found a letter from Fosse to Janet. “I can’t wait to see you,” it said. “When you’re coming, please let me know.”

I couldn’t be absolutely sure, but it certainly looked like Fosse had written a love note to my wife. I was wrecked. Even though Janet and I were distant, I became obsessed with the thought of Janet and Fosse in bed together; I imagined it over and over again, getting more upset each time. The letter brought back the feelings of jealousy I’d had when I pulled up at the studio to pick Janet up and saw Howard Hughes lurking in the shadows.

To make matters worse, Janet was working with Fosse day in and day out, so I got no relief from my jealousy. I decided not to confront her about the note, fearing that Janet would tell me she wanted a divorce. But that didn’t mean I was going to be cuckolded and sit idly by. Sure, I had had affairs myself, but for one thing they always made me feel very guilty, and for another I made damn sure that Janet would never find out about them. I always hoped that if she ever got involved with anyone, I’d never know. Knowing changed everything, or at least that’s what I told myself.

I decided then that I was going to get more out of life. I was thirty years old, in my prime, and I was at a stage in my life and my career when beautiful girls with fabulous figures were constantly throwing themselves at me. In the past I had turned down a lot more advances than I’d accepted, but I decided that from that point on I would partake more fully of the bounty being offered me

By this time Hugh Hefner had become a good friend of mine. To get away from Janet and Fosse, I flew to Chicago to visit with Hef. That weekend I met some very friendly Playboy bunnies, and I had not even the slightest pangs of guilt about having sex with them. After a week of debauchery in Chicago, I knew I was going to be all right..

Of the three leads, Burt Lancaster was an established star, Gina Lollobrigida was a certifiable Italian dish, and I was the up-and-coming kid.....The only time I got upset was when Gina wanted me to cut my hair. She talked to Burt and Harold about it, so they came to me and asked me if I would mind going to the barber. I grudgingly went along. Gina was some dish, but after that I lost my appetite for her. Every time I saw her on the set I couldn’t help but think about how much I missed my hair. If it sounds petty, I can’t argue with that. I’m just reporting events as I experienced them.

I had expected Janet to join me in Paris, but she had signed to do a picture called Safari, which was going to be filmed in Africa. What’s more, she had to go to England right away to do wardrobe and other pre-filming preparation. It had been too long since Janet and I had spent any good time together, and I found myself missing her, so I flew to London for three days before Janet left for Africa.

My arrival in London made all the news papers, which always made me feel good. And Rex Harrison and Marlene Dietrich hosted a dinner party for me. Rex, later the star of My Fair Lady and Dr. Dolittle, had a crazier married life than I did.

After dinner Janet and I went to a party with a lot of English celebrities, and Marlene was there too, leaning on a mantel with a drink in her hand. We started talking, Janet wandered off somewhere, and Marlene said, “How do you like London?” I said, “I like it fine, but I’m going back to Paris in a couple of days. She said, “I’m in Paris a lot, and I stay at the George Cinq. Why don’t you call me when you’re there?” I didn’t know what to say. Janet was just in the other room, and Marlene was about fifty-five. I must have paused a little too long, because she said, “Don’t be concerned.”

I said, “Why would I be concerned?” She said, “I’ll treat you well.”

Marlene Dietrich was a huge star, and I loved the way she talked and sang, but she was too old for me. I didn’t have many firm rules, but not dating my mother (much less marrying her) was inviolable. Okay, Freud might argue that every man dates his mother in some form, but this was getting much too close.

He was from The Bronx not Brooklyn. He had a Bronx accent.

Ok, he lost me when he justified his infidelities and criticized Janet for her perceived infidelities.

I pleaded with Janet not to go and do the film in Africa. With Bob Fosse’s note still lingering in my mind, I was afraid that we were drifting so far apart that our marriage was becoming irreparable. It was far from a perfect union, but for some reason I didn’t want to let it go. “Why are you doing this picture in Africa?” I asked her. The reason was simple: she wanted to work. It was a modest opportunity, but she liked acting. I was hoping she’d take this chance to choose me over her own work, but she refused.

Here I was in this important movie, which gave her an opportunity to join me in a beautiful, romantic city, but she was running off to Africa. But there was no moving her. I understood Janet’s choice only too well, but it was still painful when we went our separate ways and got to work.

During the evenings in Paris I was very lonely. Sometimes I’d go out to dinner with the movie crew, and the emptiness I felt was unbearable. There were also evenings when I sought out the company of beautiful French girls. They didn’t mean anything to me, but for the short time we were together they managed to keep my mind off my loneliness.

Burt Lancaster and I stayed at the George Cinq, and Burt had the suite directly above mine. I would step onto my balcony, climb a lattice up to his balcony, and knock on his window. Burt would open his window and let me in. We’d talk and get loaded, and I’d stagger downstairs to my room. One night, after I returned to my room from dinner, Burt leaned over his balcony and called down to me: “Come on up here, Tony.” I climbed up, and there he was with two French girls...

Despite these diversions, I really missed Janet during my stay in Paris. She was in Africa, and there were only certain times during the day when I could call her because she had to travel from wherever they were shooting to where there was a phone. I hated being separated from Janet at this difficult time in our marriage, but she hadn’t been willing to give up her work to spend time with me, and I wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice for her, either. I knew that doing this movie was definitely the right thing for my career.

Around this time I was still spending a lot of time with Frank Sinatra. Frank didn’t serve in the military during World War II, and his critics accused him of being a draft dodger, so he was constantly veering from being defensive to being pugnacious. On the one hand, he avoided getting into fights, especially about his patriotism, or lack of it, but on a lot of occasions—especially when he was drinking—he provoked them.

Someone would stare at Frank, who after all was a huge star, and his response would be What are you looking at me like that for? The next thing you knew, Frank’s friend and bodyguard Jilly Rizzo, who was a strong little motherfucker, would be busting heads At the time,

Frank was King Kong in Hollywood, and I admired him for that. A lot of people hated him because so many people kissed his ass. Frank didn’t give a shit. He had plenty of power, plenty of money, and plenty of muscle. He always had a couple of tough-looking guys around who looked after him, traveling wherever he went.

One night Frank and I were having dinner at a restaurant in Palm Springs, and some guy looked at Frank and yelled out something nasty. Frank got up out of his chair and started toward the guy. I could see from the guy’s face that he wasn’t afraid of Frank at all, but then Frank’s two musclemen got up and took matters in hand, literally. One of them grabbed the guy by the throat, and the other pulled back his sports jacket and let the guy see he was packing a piece in a shoulder holster. They didn’t even have to hit the guy. He got the message instantly. Those guys weren’t fooling around.

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

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

In 1958 I did a wonderful movie called The Vikings with Janet, Kirk Douglas, and Ernest Borgnine. 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.

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 feel better about myself.

Ironically, Kirk suffered from moods as black as mine, although he seemed to shake his off faster than I did.

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.

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

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

We’d been faking it for years now. We had two beautiful little daughters, Kelly and Jamie, but the relationship between Janet and me was miserable. We fought all the time. We had lots of reasons for disagreements, but having Janet’s father handling her business affairs was a constant thorn in my side.

Truth be told, Janet and I still lived under the same roof, but that was about the extent of it. In the evening, she went out with her friends, and I went out with mine. I’d go to parties with my buddies, or go visit Hef in Los Angeles. Sometimes I’d fool around with one of Hef’s bunnies, but by now I no longer had feelings of guilt about my extramarital escapades. Quite the opposite; I knew these short-lived pairings actually made it easier to stay in my marriage.

I could pay attention to someone other than my wife, who clearly didn’t love me anymore..

After Psycho came out, all the press wanted to talk about was the murder scene. Janet had never enjoyed media attention, and when the pressure of this new celebrity began to get to her, she started to drink a lot. And when Janet had a few drinks in her, she became a different person: belligerent, accusatory, and down right nasty.

I didn’t want to provoke her rages, so I started staying away more and more. Eventually I decided I needed another life, but I had no idea where I was going to find one..

If my movie career was going great guns, my personal life was a shambles. Janet was drinking heavily, and her love affair with the bottle was poisoning her life and our marriage.

I wasn’t sure exactly what she was going through. Perhaps she was having a midlife crisis; after all, she had married me when she was very young. These days her career was going well, and her roles were getting better and better, but the bigger she became, the more discontented she was. She knew that no matter how successful she was, she could never compete with actors like Elizabeth Taylor, and it drove her insane. I certainly related to that. I could never compete with Marlon Brando, and sometimes that drove me crazy too.

One afternoon in August of 1961, Janet’s mother, Helen, called me. She and Janet’s father, Fred, had divorced acrimoniously, but at this moment she was worried about him because she’d been trying to reach him all afternoon at his office without success. I didn’t see what the big deal was, but she asked if one of us could go look in on Fred. Janet wasn’t around—she was somewhere in the south of France, attending a film festival with Jeannie Martin, Dean’s wife, and the Kennedys—

Privately I thought Fred might be with his mistress, who just happened to be his ex-wife’s sister, but needless to say, I didn’t mention my suspicions. I hung up with Janet’s mother, hesitated for a moment before calling the police, and drove over to Fred’s office.

I got there before the police did. I saw a light on in the office, and the door was unlocked. There was Fred, slumped over his typewriter, dead. I couldn’t tell how he’d died; there was no blood, no pills, and no gun. But in the typewriter was a note that read, “I hope you’re satisfied, you bitch.”

I pulled the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and stuck it in my pocket. I lifted Fred off the typewriter and leaned him back in his chair. Then I called Helen and told her that her fears had been confirmed. Five minutes later the police showed up. They called an ambulance and took Fred away. Maybe I shouldn’t have removed that letter, but I didn’t want Janet’s mother to see it.

My next movie was Taras Bulba with Yul Brynner. The movie was going to be filmed in Argentina, and because I hated to fly, I booked passage on the S.S. America, which took three days to go from Miami to Argentina. Janet, the two girls, and I took the train from LA to Miami. Getting Janet to make the train trip was a major coup, because she didn’t like to do anything unless it happened quickly.

Once we got to Miami, Janet and I started drinking in our hotel room, and she got very angry with me in front of the girls, screaming at me and complaining that my neuroses had forced her into this boat trip instead of going by airplane. Kelly and Jamie looked on as Janet raged at me and threw things.

I didn’t say a word. I didn’t realize how strongly she felt about having to take our boat trip until we arrived in Florida, when it was too late to change our plans. But as Janet stood there showering me with abuse in front of my children, something shifted inside me; I realized I couldn’t take her outbursts anymore.

The next morning, the four of us went down to the pier and boarded the boat to Argentina. Our time on board allowed me to have a lot of fun with Kelly and Jamie, who were five and three. We swam together every day in the pool. I loved this opportunity to be with the girls without any outside distractions, and I couldn’t help wishing I had spent more time with them instead of letting my work schedule keep me far from home.

After we arrived in Argentina, Janet and the girls stayed for five or six days and flew home. After they left, I resolved that it was time for me to move out and move on. My marriage was over. Janet left Argentina because she had a movie to make, but the reason for her leaving as quickly as she did may have been jealousy of my beautiful young costar, Christine Kauf mann, who played my love interest in Taras Bulba

What no one knew at the time was that I didn’t have to act in my love scenes with Christine, because I really did fall in love with her.

To make the situation even more ticklish, Christine was only seventeen years old. That gave me pause, but there was a freshness about her, an exuberant joy in living that made me go all funny inside. To me, she represented all those girls I would have liked to have dated when I was a poor kid living in New York. I had never gone out with a girl like that, and now I was playing love scenes opposite one

If Janet and I had been getting along, I might not have been so emotionally vulnerable, but that was not the case. Needless to say, the fact that my marriage was not in good shape meant that Janet and I rarely had sex, which didn’t help either. Christine made life fun again, and I wanted to be with her in the worst way. My dream came true when Christine and I launched into a torrid affair for the first three weeks of shooting. Then her mother arrived on the set, at which point she and I agreed to bury our feelings and stop seeing each other.

That wasn’t the only off-screen drama that was taking place during production. Yul Brynner disliked me because he’d wanted top billing, but United Artists had given it to me. Brynner was very pretentious and overbearing, not unlike the characters he played in his film roles. It got back to me that Yul was telling people I wasn’t a good enough actor to play the part of his son. Yul’s wife also made clear her distaste for me.

On location she would bring a big pitcher of orange juice to the cameraman and the boom operator, and she was very obvious about not offering me any. I just shook my head

Yul smoked all day long, and he had a lackey whose job was to light his cigarettes. When Yul was talking, he’d pull out his long cigarette holder, insert a cigarette, and then nod, which was the signal for his man to walk over and light him up. It was just another way for Yul to publicly demonstrate his power.

He used this ritual to assert himself when he talked with the director, J. Lee Thompson. He’d say, “I don’t think the scene will work this way, Lee. Why don’t you have the horses come in from the other side instead?” Then he’d pull out a cigarette and wait for it to be lit.

After a while, I couldn’t take Yul’s behavior anymore, so I went out, bought an eyedropper, filled it with water, and brought it to the set. I stood behind Yul and waited for his servant to walk over to light his cigarette. After the cigarette was lit and Yul took a puff or two, he’d set it down in an ashtray. I’d tiptoe over, squeeze a couple of drops of water onto the end of the cigarette, and put it out.

When Yul went to take another puff, the cigarette would be dead. After three days of this, Yul was about ready to kill his servant. I didn’t want to be responsible for Yul firing the guy, so I finally let Yul in on what I was doing. I have to give him credit: he laughed

Another actor who didn’t like me was a bit player named Mickey Finn, a guy who weighed in at an impressive two hundred and eighty pounds. One day Mickey was sitting on his horse teaching a couple of other actors how to fence, and he said, “It’s like throwing confetti.” When I heard that load of horseshit, I realized Mickey had no idea what he was talking about, and I just had to correct him.

“You can’t do it that way,” I said. “You have to get close.” I got on my horse, rode up right alongside a mounted soldier, and struck him twice with my sword before he finally parried. I said, “That’s what you’ve got to do.” When one of the riders followed my example, I said, “You’ve got it.” Mickey became furious that I was showing him up, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it because my suggestion worked. I’d had a lot of experience fencing in movies.

One night at a cocktail party Mickey decided to vent his frustration by picking a fight with me. He came at me like a gorilla. I just stood there, thinking, If you want to kill me, give it your best shot, Mickey, but if you so much as touch me, you’re out of a job. I was the star of the picture, which meant I could have easily seen to it that Mickey was fired.

I prepared to defend myself using some self-defense moves that my stuntman friends had taught me. Perry Lopez, who was playing my brother in the film, alertly jumped in between Mickey and me, preventing what could have been a very ugly scene.

I may have been fooling Christine’s mother, but Janet could tell something was up. She came by the UA lot one day when we were shooting and said something odd to me: “I want to see this Christine girl.”

“What are you asking me for?” I said. “Go on the set and see her."

“Will you introduce us?” she asked.

“If I’m around, I’ll introduce you, sure,” I said. Janet was letting me know she suspected something was going on, but she didn’t come right out and accuse me. I couldn’t bear living with Janet anymore, so I often stayed overnight with Nicky Blair, a friend of mine who owned a restaurant in LA, or with Hugh Hefner. Whenever I needed to get away, Hef would let me stay in one of his rooms.

One night Janet and I were at home, having one of our terrible fights. Janet was drinking scotch and crying while she was trying to fix her makeup in front of a little mirror.

There was a bottle of pills on her dressing table next to the mirror, and while I was standing there she opened the bottle, shook a handful of red pills into her palm, and threw them down her throat. In a panic, I slapped her hard on the back, causing her to cough up most of the pills

That was the last straw. Soon after, I told Janet I was moving out. At first she took it calmly. “So move out if you want to,” she said.

I packed a few clothes, and after I walked out the front door to my car, carrying a small valise, Janet came and stood in the doorway, holding Kelly by the hand and Jamie in her arms. She didn’t say much, but she was crying, and when I saw the two girls, my heart was torn apart

I should have found a better way to end things with Janet, but I had run out of energy. So instead, I just left. I found a hotel close by, and I stayed there while I finished the movie. Janet and I had parted, and not on good terms. Sad to say, Kelly and Jamie have always held it against me.

It’s understandable. Janet had full custody of the girls, which was typical in those days, and I’m sure she filled their heads with all sorts of negative stories about me.

Meanwhile, the movie magazines were buzzing with rumors about Christine and me. One day I got a message on the set saying that Hedda Hopper was calling. I got on the phone, and Hedda said to me, “Listen, Tony, God help you if you lie to me, but are you going with a teenager?” I said, “No, Hedda, that’s not true at all.”

All that did was postpone the inevitable. The story of Tony Curtis leaving his wife and two kids for the teenage daughter of a German air force officer made every newspaper in America. The media frenzy made Janet even more bitter, if that was possible. She was being humiliated in public, and she never forgave me for it. I managed to get visitation rights to see our daughters, but Janet often found ways to keep me from seeing them.

Janet filed for divorce while I was away in Europe. I was making significantly more money than she was, so I gave her the house in Palm Springs and our house in LA. Things were bad enough between us; I didn’t want any more trouble over money. Also, I had two little girls to support, and I wanted to be sure they didn’t want for anything

Janet remarried with remarkable speed, and in my ongoing desire to not make things worse between us, I agreed during the divorce settlement to pay one-third of all Janet’s expenses, which included whatever her new husband, Bob Brandt, spent. So here I was, paying a third of the cost of Bob’s toothpaste, Bob’s shaving cream, and Bob’s neckties. Could Janet have been seeing Bob behind my back? I never asked, and I didn’t want to know, especially if it was true. It was hard enough seeing her new husband move into the house I had bought with my hard-earned money, to live with my daughters, even though Bob was a nice guy

Almost overnight, I went from being the happiest man in Hollywood to being miserable. I was in love with Christine, but now I felt my other problems were overshadowing the joy in our relationship. I had enjoyed being one of the most popular actors in town, but now I was roundly despised for having dumped Janet, who was very well liked. It was a terrible time for me.

Anyone who tells you there’s no such thing as bad publicity has never lived life in the public eye when things take a turn for the worse. I suffered a lot as I kept asking myself, How did I get in a mess like this?

After the divorce, strict limits were placed on the amount of time that I was allowed to spend with Kelly and Jamie. If I wanted to take them to the beach, I had to ask permission. Sometimes I’d go over to the house and bring them little presents, but Janet or Bob or someone else would always be in the room, keeping one eye on the clock, and asking me to leave the moment the legally prescribed time had elapsed.

The girls have blamed me for not spending as much time with them as they would have liked, but after a while the battle to see them just became too difficult...

Getting my share of that picture would have changed everything for me, because now I was completely broke. I was paying for Janet and the kids, in addition to supporting my mother, father, and brother, not to mention my aunt and uncle back in Hungary. Then I got a flicker of hope: I was offered five hundred thousand dollars to make a film called Lady L for MGM, but the project fell through. And boy, did I need that money. I had painted myself into a corner, and I needed to find a way out

On February 8, 1963, Christine and I were married in Las Vegas. Kirk Douglas was my best man. Kirk had made Town Without Pity with Christine, and he understood why I was so nuts about her. I was touched by how considerate and supportive Kirk was. Kirk’s extraordinary wife, Anne, was maid of honor. Anne loved the fact that I was marrying a European girl because Anne herself had been a reporter for a French magazine, which was how she met Kirk.

I was thirty-seven when we married, and Christine, at eighteen, was too old for me. She was such a special person. No other woman in my life—certainly none of those Hollywood girls, including Janet—had ever been so sweet and generous with me. I was madly in love with Christine. It was a wonderful, almost magical, experience.

Christine’s mother was adamantly opposed to the wedding. She didn’t like the idea of her daughter going with a Jew. She told me Christine was going to be a great star, that one day she would light up the sky in Germany, and I should stay away from her. But one day Christine’s mother came to me and said she needed money; if I gave her ten thousand dollars, she told me, she would end her opposition to the marriage. I gave her the money and I said, “Stay out of my way.” She did.

I was nervous about meeting Christine’s father, because he’d been a German air force pilot during World War II, but he was nicer to me than her French mother was.

My wedding attracted a lot of press, and none of it was good. Most stories took the angle that Tony Curtis was abandoning his family to marry a teenager. It hurt, but there was nothing we could do about it. If a magazine wanted to interview you for a story and you turned them down, they were even nastier than they would be otherwise, so I just met with reporters and did the best I could.

The studio decided that the best way to make the furor over our marriage go away was to put Christine and me in a movie together, so we signed on to act in a film called Wild and Wonderful...Once I married Christine, my life settled down. I had to start over financially, but I was making good money, and for the first time in a long while, I was happy

To be Continued...

Thanx OP

Great reading even if it's oh sooooo slanted.

For those of you too young to remember, Tony Curtis was always as asshole. Love how the hard drinking, pill popping, womanizer goes after Janet for her drinking. Compare Janet's personal life to Curtis's after divorcing him. Hers = stable, his = chaotic.

I always thought Tony was a homo himself?

So it was Janet Leigh's and Bob Fosse's fault he was cheating on his wife.

Got it.

Not even close, R27.

What an ass. If everyone hates you, it must be you. I know Janet had some problems but she stayed married to Bob to the end of her life. Bob was more of a father to Jamie and Kelly than he ever was. But that is everyone else's fault.

It sounds a lot like Eddie Fisher's autobiography. Eddie too failed to be accountable for anything that went wrong in his marriage to Debbie Reynolds. I'm sure Janet and Debbie aren't blame-free, but dude! Man up, own up or shut up 🤐!

[quote] Marlene Dietrich was a huge star, and I loved the way she talked and sang, but she was too old for me

He's disgusted at being propositioned by Marlene Dietrich because of her age (23 years older) but has no problem marrying first a 18 year old girl who was 20 years his junior, and then a woman 46 years younger than he was

typical man

Jamie Lee knew how clueless he was. That's why they had such a rocky relationship!

I read Tony Curtis' memoir, American Prince. According to the rumor mill and those in the know he had quite a few same-sex experiences and told of some of them with great gusto to his 'in crowd'. But his book has been 'sanitized' and nary a whisper is told about them. Same old Hollywood bullshit - the image and then the reality.

....

R34 Singer Rick Springfield. In his autobiography he told about being at a West Hollywood party. He was introduced to the current 'It Boy', a beautiful young man that quite a few male singers and male celebrities had been intimate with. Springfield stated that he gave it some thought about actually having sex with the young pass-around-guy but then decided against it. At least he was honest enough to tell about the situation in his book. But whether or not he actually passed up the 'It Boy' is open to speculation.

[quote]I always thought Tony was a homo himself?

Oh, God - here we go. Who else have you always thought was gay?

Only the good looking ones, R37.

I fucked Tony Curtis in the ass!

I met him once. Was surprised how short he was. I'm only 5'8" & towered over him.

He was always somewhat outspoken. I think he embellished his stories as the years went by but there is a funny one that took place back around 1970; he & ROGER MOORE were starring in a television series called THE PERSUADERS. As I recall they played two rogues who were constantly solving crimes while romancing beautiful girls. JOAN COLLINS was a guest one week and was apparently quite the diva, being a major pain to cast & crew. MOORE took it in stride but CURTIS had enough and in front of everyone said, "JOAN, you're being a major cunt !!" She was so shocked that she refused to work for the remainder of the day, almost walked off the series.

[quote]the image and then the reality

Hollywood is loaded with actors who fall under that category.

[quote]he & ROGER MOORE were starring in a television series called THE PERSUADERS.

Yes, YUUUUUGE hit in England. Made him a star again to a younger generation who didn't know him at all.

The only good thing about it was the John Barry theme.

His book sucked. Most was just a run down of his IMBD with I made "Not with My Wife, You Don't!" with Virna Lisi, she wouldn't fuck me...then I did "The Great Race"...I fucked Natalie Wood in her dressing room during a break from the ice berg scene. I think he mentioned his kids twice.

He was a stunningly beautiful man when he was young, but he only ever gave one great performance ("Sweet Smell if Success"), and was embarrassing in most of his movies with his Bronx accent ("I yam Antoninus, a sinGer of sonGs.") And he was a complete asshole. His memoir shows he had a complete double standard when it came to Janet Leigh: he could cheat and drink as much as he wanted, but she could not.

Curtis had such a predictably bizarre relation to his bisexuality. He openly disparaged "Brokeback Mountain" when it came out (and refused t see it), even though just a few years earlier he had admitted to the gay British magazine Attitude he had slept with men when he came to Hollywood in the late 40s.

R44 Most if not all men has double standard when it comes to women even in Hollywood. Honestly, Tony Curtis was not the only man like that.

R45 It's called Gay for pay Or gay to advance his career in the early days.

He was 5'9"

He actually grew up in Manhattan - when working class people still lived on the Upper East Side....(way over east).

Janet Leigh. One of the biggest forgotten. Nobody remembers her anymore yet she had a hell of a run.

R46 I agree, Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen come to mind , and many others were like that as well . they would cheat and sleep around with many women as they like but when they knew about their women/wives' infidelities , they went NUTS.

That's because women are straight bottoms.

[quote] Most if not all men has double standard when it comes to women even in Hollywood. Honestly, Tony Curtis was not the only man like that.

Doesn't excuse for a moment his acting like that, or especially his writing a memoir like that when he was older and should have known better.

I think I read this book. Is this the one where he talks about his coke use in the early 80's? The story where he leaves the drug dealers apartment and a bunch of doors on that floor start opening up with women trying suck off tony for some of the blow is hilarious. Of course tony admits to a few blowjobs.

The Great Race....Natalie Wood played the leading lady in the movie. She really didn’t want to do it, but Natalie owed Warner Bros. a picture, and when her agent couldn’t get her out of it, she really had no choice.... I was surprised when her agent came to me and asked if I would give Natalie a percentage of what I was getting. “I don’t know why I would do that,” I replied. He said, “Because Natalie’s in the movie.”

I declined, thinking perhaps he could have come up with a more persuasive rationale. Truth is, I had never heard of asking an actor to give part of his or her salary to another actor. Natalie was a friend and an asset to the movie, but if she was having trouble getting properly paid for her work, that certainly had nothing to do with my financial picture.

Once we started filming The Great Race, something happened between Natalie and me that often happened with my female costars. Natalie warmed up toward me, and we began to feel a strong attraction for each other. In one scene she was lying on my lap on a couch, and at the end of the scene, Blake yelled, “Cut!” Then Natalie sat up, moved up close to me, and affectionately toyed with a lock of my hair, so I kissed her on the lips. With that, she put her hand behind my head and pulled me down close to her. We just nuzzled each other for a few moments, indifferent to the people around us..

My trailer was right next to Natalie’s. It was going to be a long break, so there was no point staying in costume. I changed and went over to visit Natalie. I didn’t know why. I didn’t have an invitation. It just felt right.

I knocked on the door. Her hairdresser came to the door and said over her shoulder, “It’s Tony.” I heard Natalie mumble something, and the woman said to me, “Come on in.” I stepped through the trailer door, and the hairdresser said, “I’ll see you later,” and Natalie said, “Great.” The woman left.

After I sat down on the couch, Natalie walked across to the trailer door and locked it. She came back to where I was sitting, sat down next to me, and kissed me deeply. It was a kiss that spoke of longing, a kiss that perfectly expressed the feeling that had been exquisitely building between us for weeks as we worked together.

We both came up for air, and then she leaned forward and kissed me again. That was when I realized that she was naked under her robe. I tore off my jacket and shirt. I don’t remember how I got my pants off, but I must have, because the next thing I knew we were making crazy love on the sofa of that trailer.

We didn’t say anything, before, during, or after. Nor did we need to. It was perfect just the way it was. No explanations, We still took every opportunity to talk and spend time together between shots, and it was always sweet and gentle, but what was between us remained unspoken

Once we were done shooting the picture, I went back to my life, and Natalie went back to hers, and we both knew that was best for both of us

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.

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...

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

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

Around this time I began to wonder how well I really knew my wife Christine. She had been very young when she married me, and it didn’t take her long to start feeling out of place among my circle of friends, who were all twenty years older than she was. She became restless and wanted to go out with her younger friends.

Sometimes that worked out fine. After I came home from making The Chastity Belt in Italy, for instance, we went out to the clubs in LA, where at one point we met the Rolling Stones.....On other nights, when I wanted to stay home, Christine would go out anyway.

This is how she met Dean Martin’s son Rick. It wasn’t long before everyone in town knew they were seeing each other—everyone except me.

When I found out, I confronted Christine, and we had an ugly scene. I had to really work hard to control myself, because while we were shouting at each other I felt the most horrible, violent impulses. Every married man fears that his wife will cuckold him.

Even when I had nothing to worry about, the thought of my wife fucking another guy could make me really upset. So when I found out that it was actually happening, I almost went crazy. And it certainly didn’t help when I realized that everyone else already knew about it. What a nightmare!

After this particularly ugly argument, Christine decided she was going to fly back to Germany. She took our daughter Alexandra and flew the first leg of her trip, the flight to New York, but when she got there, she had second thoughts and came back home. I took her back, but I wasn’t very happy, and I was exasperated at having to pay for the canceled airfare to Germany...

We shot some scenes of The Boston Strangler in LA, and during that time Christine and I were having terrible fights. Some nights I stayed on location because I couldn’t bear to go home and face her. Apparently there were some nights when Christine didn’t feel like staying home alone, so the following day I would hear that she’d been seen out somewhere with Rick.

Once after I finished shooting, I went to a club where I was told Christine hung out, and there she was with two or three of her friends. She was surprised when I walked in, but she didn’t act like it was a big deal. Rick wasn’t there, but something about the scene made me fear I’d do something I’d regret, so I just left without a word. I still had a picture to finish.

I suppose my problems with Christine helped me in one sense, because I was able to take my rage and express it through the character of Albert DeSalvo. I felt Christine had violated my trust, which made me want to explode. Sure, I hadn’t always been faithful to her, but I’d always been discreet. And I’d always figured that after I’d had a little fun I’d go home to the woman I loved most of all.

In any event, while my rage may have helped my portrayal of Albert DeSalvo, it didn’t make me much fun to work with. There were times when, after we finished shooting, someone would come up to me and say, “How’s Christine?” I’d growl, “I don’t fucking want to talk about it.” The question was probably asked innocently, but I was incapable of hearing it that way.

I was so distraught that I started seeing my psychiatrist again. He was really good with me. One day he said, “Tell me about the parts of your life that you think are similar to Albert DeSalvo’s.”

I said, “I don’t feel comfortable at home anymore, and every now and then I want to go out in my car and just drive around. When I do that, I’m not looking for women; I’m not looking for anything. I just need to be alone, which is a first for me. I’ve never wanted to be alone. I may have felt like a loner, but I always needed company.”

He stayed with it. “Let’s go deeper than that. What is it about being alone that is so terrifying to you?” I’d tell him it took me back to my early childhood, and away we’d go.

For a couple weeks after I finished filming The Boston Strangler, I tried to carry on as though nothing was wrong. By this time Christine and I had had two daughters, Alexandra and Allegra, whom I loved deeply. There were also times when Kelly and Jamie Lee, my daughters from my marriage to Janet, would come over and play, and that calmed me.

But I was unable to control a deep sense that I had lost everything that mattered to me, that I had started two families but I was going to be left with nothing and no one. I knew my life would no longer be the same. I felt devastated.

Eventually Christine moved out of our big mansion, leaving me to suffer alone in that empty palace. Without my knowing it, Christine went to Juarez, Mexico, and got a divorce, which was foolish of her, at least financially.

Had she sought a divorce in the United States she might have been eligible for half of my assets plus child support, but she didn’t pursue it. I’m not sure why she made this decision, although perhaps her very public infidelity may have had something to do with her reluctance to fight for her share of my net worth. I just don’t know.

To this day Christine claims that she still loves me. I don’t believe her. I’d like to, but I don’t.

While I was filming The Boston Strangler, I met the woman who would become my third wife. Her name was Leslie “Penny” Allen, and she was a friend of my friend Bob Friedman, a stockbroker in New York City...

Bob knew how despondent I was after the breakup of my marriage to Christine, and he said to me, “Don’t worry about a thing, Tony. I’ll fix you up.” That was how I met Penny Allen, who was twenty-three and working for the Ford Modeling Agency. I was absolutely bowled over by her beauty.

I told her I was filming in Boston and asked her if she’d like to visit me there. Penny’s mother lived in Boston, so she agreed to come and see me there, which would also give her a chance to visit her mother. Almost immediately, Penny and I became lovers.

I was a real mess because of my breakup with Christine, but I kept that hidden from Penny. A big part of me felt beat-up and numb, but another part of me was yearning to find a new relationship, any new relationship, and that was the part that won out. I focused all my charms on Penny and won her over. I felt she was special—so beautiful and so young—that I didn’t want her ever to leave my side. Like Janet and Christine, Penny was the shiksa goddess of my dreams. Heaven knows, when I was a kid I couldn’t have imagined even talking to a girl who looked like Penny Allen.

After I was done filming in Boston, Penny flew out to California to be with me. I was still living in the Keck estate... I started taking Penny on a grand tour of the house, and while we were walking together, I asked her to marry me.After a whirlwind romance, Penny and I were wed on April 20, 1968

After our marriage, I flew off to Rome to film Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies, a new take on The Great Race. Two great English comedians, Terry-Thomas and Dudley Moore, were in it. I was the star, and my love interest was Susan Hampshire, who was married to a French film producer. The thing I liked best about Susan was that she kept falling in love with everybody around her, even me.

We became lovers, but just while we were working on the movie. I couldn’t help myself—marriage or no marriage. It didn’t mean anything, but for some reason I needed to do it. I guess at this point I wasn’t sure of anything or anybody—least of all myself

The last movie I made for a while was for Columbia Pictures, and it was called You Can’t Win ’Em All. I went to Turkey to shoot it, and when I got there I discovered that the director, Peter Collinson, was a rabid anti-Semite. A friend of mine who happened to be Jewish came to see me on the set, and Collinson asked, “How come you Jews always stick together?” I told him to go fuck himself. Needless to say, this was not the best way to start off a working relationship. To make matters worse, the picture was terrible.

Turkey was an interesting country. A local Columbia Pictures employee recommended that I go to a Turkish bath in Istanbul, but when I went into the place and got undressed, I discovered a lot of guys standing around with erections. As calmly as I could, I delicately turned around, put my trousers back on, and got the hell out of there

I was also directed to a massage parlor with rooms decorated in the Turkish style. The masseuses wore flouncy Turkish harem clothes with bloomers. One of the women must have seen my films, because she took me under her wing. She picked out a group of gorgeous girls for me to spend time with, and I found myself involved in some very exotic sexual play.

After this very pleasant break I went back to work. We were shooting a street scene, and I noticed that one of the bystanders watching us was a girl from the massage parlor. During a break in shooting, I went over and talked to her, and she invited me to go out with her. I thought I was going to a party, but instead I wound up at her parents’ home. She came from a well-to-do family. She introduced me to her folks, and we had a lovely time; I never once let on where we had met.

I didn’t work in a single movie between 1971 and 1974. My star had fallen so far that I couldn’t even get work on an American TV show. I did get a role on an English TV show called The Persuaders, with English star Roger Moore. Roger had played Simon Templar on the TV show The Saint for six seasons, and later he would star in a string of James Bond movies. The Persuaders was about two millionaire playboys who roamed Europe fighting bad guys. It was similar to James Bond, but perhaps a little more realistic.

Before I flew to London to start shooting The Persuaders, I carelessly threw a little marijuana in one of my bags. By this time pot had become very hip in Hollywood, and everyone and his brother was smoking it. Marijuana was cheap, and it wasn’t addictive. The worst feature of smoking pot was that you tended to eat a lot of munchies. That, and the possibility that it might accidentally find its way into your luggage.

To make matters worse, for some reason I must have thought I might need protection across the pond, so I packed a .38 pistol in another bag

When I got to England, customs inspectors went through my suitcases, and they found the marijuana and the gun. They confiscated them and allowed me to go on to my hotel, but a few hours later I received a summons to come to court the next morning at ten.

When I arrived the next day, the British police kept me in a jail cell until my case was called. Everyone treated me very nicely, but I was beginning to get worried. When it was time for my case, the police officers led me up a spiral staircase, and at the top I found myself in the middle of a courtroom.

The judge, a woman, asked me to explain myself.

I said, “Well, ma’am, I don’t drink alcohol, because of what it does to me. But marijuana seems to calm me down. And I honestly don’t know why I brought the pistol. I just threw it in my bag without thinking. I had no intention of using it.”

She let me off easy, with a fifty-pound fine, but the incident made all the papers in England and America. One headline read, TONY CURTIS BROKE AND BUSTED. I felt humiliated, but there was nothing I could do about it except give myself a pep talk. I said to myself, Go ahead, world, do your worst. I’ve had it up, and I’ve had it down. Whatever happens, it won’t be as bad as my childhood

Penny and I decided to buy a house in London on Chester Square while I was making The Persuaders. Lew Grade, who was financing the show, intervened with the bank to make it possible for us to buy the house. I later found out that Penny had tried to make a secret deal with Lew and the bank so that if she and I ever got divorced, she would get the house. I was furious, and my sense of trust was badly shaken.

Meanwhile, Penny was also making friends in London. One night she took me to a party at the home of a famous British musician—I can’t remember his name—and she chased after this guy the whole time we were there. That really ate me up. My idyllic third marriage was starting to spring some leaks.

When we traveled for location shoots, Penny usually stayed behind in London. Despite my own dalliances, I was devoted to her, and I thought it would be easier for her to stay home because my shooting schedule was always so hectic—two nights in one place, one night in another, three nights in another. Also, it made more sense for Penny to stay home now that she and I were spending a lot more time with my daughters from my marriage with Christine, Alexandra and Allegra

I had unexpectedly won a reversal of the custody decision from my divorce with Christine, because I’d discovered that the kids really needed their father in their lives. In 1971 the girls had come to France and I had had a chance to see them for the first time since the divorce. I wanted them to eat healthier foods. They had been eating so much candy that it was a wonder they weren’t toothless!

I went to attorney Marvin Mitchelson, a good friend of mine, and sought his help in gaining custody of the kids. And that is exactly what happened: I was awarded custody. Penny and the girls got along well, which made me feel great.

While we were working on The Persuaders, Roger Moore and I became the best of friends. We had a wonderful time together,.....

One of those was Joan Collins, a British actress best known for later playing Alexis Carrington on the American TV soap opera Dynasty.

Joan’s bizarre behavior made her rather difficult to work with. In one scene, we were supposed to drive a little truck a couple of hundred yards to where the camera had been set up; then I’d stop the truck and we’d both get out. When the time came to do the shot, the assistant director waved a flag, which was my signal to start driving, but Joan said, “Don’t go yet. Please. I’m not ready. Let me get into the mood.”

I leaned out and shouted, “She’s not ready.” Joan started fixing her makeup in the side-view mirror. I waited and waited. Every now and then I’d look over at her. She kept fiddling with her face. Finally I lost my temper. I said, “Joan, will you stop acting like a cunt? Let’s go get this shot, and then we can break for lunch.”

She said, “What did you say? You called me a cunt.”

I said, “I’m sorry, Joan, but can we please go?”

The assistant director waved the flag, and I drove to my mark. When I stopped, Joan leaned out the window of the truck and screamed, “He called me a cunt!”

She leaped out of the truck and said, “I’m going home!” Going home? I thought. You’re lucky to be working. She stalked off to her trailer.

The producer, Bob Baker, said to me, “Tony, you’ve got to do something about Joan.” “What do you want me to do?” I said. “I apologized in the truck.”

Bob sent a runner to go buy some flowers, then he brought them to me and said, “Take these to her.”

I went to Joan’s trailer and knocked, and she opened the door. I said, “Here, Joan, these are for you. I’m really sorry I said what I did. I got nervous when we were doing the shot. Please for give me.”

“Well, that’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.”

She closed the door, and I whispered under my breath, “You cunt.”

While we were working on The Persuaders, Roger Moore and I became the best of friends. We had a wonderful time together,.....

One of those was Joan Collins, a British actress best known for later playing Alexis Carrington on the American TV soap opera Dynasty.

Joan’s bizarre behavior made her rather difficult to work with. In one scene, we were supposed to drive a little truck a couple of hundred yards to where the camera had been set up; then I’d stop the truck and we’d both get out. When the time came to do the shot, the assistant director waved a flag, which was my signal to start driving, but Joan said, “Don’t go yet. Please. I’m not ready. Let me get into the mood.”

I leaned out and shouted, “She’s not ready.” Joan started fixing her makeup in the side-view mirror. I waited and waited. Every now and then I’d look over at her. She kept fiddling with her face. Finally I lost my temper. I said, “Joan, will you stop acting like a cunt? Let’s go get this shot, and then we can break for lunch.”

She said, “What did you say? You called me a cunt.”

I said, “I’m sorry, Joan, but can we please go?”

The assistant director waved the flag, and I drove to my mark. When I stopped, Joan leaned out the window of the truck and screamed, “He called me a cunt!”

She leaped out of the truck and said, “I’m going home!” Going home? I thought. You’re lucky to be working. She stalked off to her trailer.

The producer, Bob Baker, said to me, “Tony, you’ve got to do something about Joan.” “What do you want me to do?” I said. “I apologized in the truck.”

Bob sent a runner to go buy some flowers, then he brought them to me and said, “Take these to her.”

I went to Joan’s trailer and knocked, and she opened the door. I said, “Here, Joan, these are for you. I’m really sorry I said what I did. I got nervous when we were doing the shot. Please for give me.”

“Well, that’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.”

She closed the door, and I whispered under my breath, “You cunt.”

After the episode wrapped, I called Lew Grade and said, “Any more episodes with Joan Collins, and you’d better get somebody else to do them, because I won’t work with her again.”....

After we finished shooting the first season of The Persuaders, it was summertime, so Penny and I decided to take a family vacation on the island of Sardinia, in the middle of the Mediterranean. By this time she had given birth to Nicholas, so we invited Alexandra, Allegra, Kelly, and Jamie to join us. It was a rare opportunity for me to have all my children together in one place.

I loved Sardinia; the water was gorgeous. The only off note was Penny’s mood; she seemed distant and unhappy. By the end of the summer, I felt we might all do better going back to the States.

The Persuaders was a huge hit, a very successful TV show in England, France, and Germany. On the nights The Persuaders aired in England, the streets literally emptied because everyone wanted to be home or in a local pub so they could watch the latest episode. It was the biggest television show in England.

The show’s success couldn’t alleviate the stress I felt. I now had five kids—with one more on the way! Penny and I were soon to be blessed with the arrival of a second son, Benjamin. But how was I going to support my growing family when I couldn’t get a movie role? Looking back, I see that I was always so busy concentrating on my work that I never took the time required to be a good family man.

I guess I wasn’t wired to be a good father. Whenever I fell deeply in love with a girl, I knew that the only way to keep her loving me was to marry her; but once she gave in and married me, children became involved, and somehow I was never prepared for that. I guess I had a hard time sharing the affections of the woman I loved

My mother died about a week later. I didn’t know how to feel about that. All my life I had resented the way she had treated me, but now that she was dead, I wondered if maybe I had been too hard on her.

My guilt lasted until I opened her safe-deposit box and read her will. She had ten thousand dollars in cash, and her will stipulated that the entire sum go to my brother Robert, in the mental hospital. I had told her earlier that if she left anything to him, the state would just take it, but she left him that money anyway. She did it deliberately. She knew how to stick it to me, even in death

After my mother died, I hoped that her death might finally free me of the bitterness I felt toward her. Our relationship had been so ugly for so long. I had felt no warmth or kindness from her since I was a very small child, when she used to sing to me in Hungarian. I remember her beautiful voice and how it made me feel when she sang to me.

But those memories would give way to my recollection of years and years of terrible loneliness as I came to understand that I was never going to find in this woman the love that I needed so badly. The beauty of those early moments faded quickly, but the anger and bitterness lingered for a lifetime

I enjoyed making Lepke, and the movie did well, but I could see that my career was in serious trouble. For one thing, I wasn’t properly connected to the film industry anymore.

Nobody wanted to take a chance on me, whereas in my salad days if you put me in a movie, it was money in the bank. I really didn’t know whom to talk to about this. Lew Wasserman was no longer by my side, and Irving Lazar was no help. I could have talked to someone at William Morris about it, but I wasn’t sure William Morris would have done better for me anyway.

My stomach was in knots all the time. There I was, growing into middle age, and nobody cared. I would read in Variety about upcoming pictures that seemed like they might have parts for me, and a couple of times I even swallowed my pride and called producers to ask them, “You got a role for me?” But that never works. Being your own agent is like being your own lawyer: you have a fool for a client After

After Lepke in 1974, I didn’t make another movie for almost two years. Then Elia Kazan asked me to play Rodriguez in the movie The Last Tycoon. Robert De Niro played studio boss Monroe Stahr in a cast filled with wonderful actors. When Elia called me, it brought tears to my eyes, because at that point I really thought my career was over. The character I played was a guy who couldn’t have sex with his wife anymore. He had been a great actor, and all the fans loved him and wanted to see him, but when he got home with his wife, he just couldn’t get it up.

Did he and Burt have a thing for each other.

[quote] 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,

What does that mean? He had sex with Zsa Zsa or not?

Rose, it means she made him her special moo goo gai pan.

Whatever became of the kids, 2 more daughters and a son, he had after Janet with his other 2 wives?

Considering his looks and the mothers' looks, they must have been gorgeous. Odd that none of them seemed to find their way into show biz.

Tony Curtis & Son Nick who died from Heroin overdose in 1994

ony Curtis with his son Benjemin Curtis and daughter Kelly and grandchildren

Tony Curtis with Daughters Kelly , Allegra and Son Nicholas 1991

Allegra is really stunning. Is she just tan or is she really that much darker? Is tony really the dad?

Tony Curtis with his sons Benjamin and Nicholas, daughters Kelly, Allegra Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis

Wow.

Thanks! Ask and ye shall be rewarded.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Tony with his sons Benjamin and Nicholas

Really they look nothing alike. Christine had to be fooling around, Allegra is clearly not his kid and only a half sibling to Alexandria.

Tony Curtis disinherited all of his Children and left all his estate to his last wife Jill

.......

Tony Curtis's Daughter Allegra Speaks Out About Disinheritance

OMG what did she do to her face! r83

He still screams GAY GAY GAY to me. And I'm a lesbian.

I mean, bisexual. Actually bisexual. The man loved sex, anything.

R84 Allegra Curtis

.........

Time is such a cruel bitch. The extra weight doesn't help either.

I then had a very strange experience starring in a movie called Sextette, based on a play written by eighty-five-year-old Mae West. I agreed to do it because they paid me a hundred and fifty grand for six weeks’ work. It was the last movie Mae ever made.

In Sextette I played Mae’s forty-year-old Russian lover. This is the film where she utters her famous line to George Hamilton: “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” But she had another line I liked even better. When my character sees her in her bedroom, I say to her, “Remember the songs I used to sing to you in my native tongue on the Volga, many years ago?She looks at me and says, “I don’t remember the songs you used to sing to me, but I remember your native tongue.”

Mae was tough to work with because she could be completely oblivious to a line or a cue, and she wasn’t too good with names either. One day she and George Hamilton were working with the director to block a scene, and the director said to her, “You’re going to come out first and go to the window, Mae, and then George is going to come in center stage.

Mae looked at the director and said, “Who’s George?” She didn’t have Alzheimer’s or dementia; she was just so narcissistic that she had forgotten his name. The only person in the movie who mattered to her was Mae West

Mae was pretty bad about taking direction, too. The propman would lie on the floor, out of sight of the camera, grab her ankles and turn them so she would know which way to turn, left or right. As I said, Mae didn’t know her lines, so the director sat in a closed booth just outside the scene and read her lines into a microphone that transmitted his voice over a shortwave radio signal. Mae had an earpiece that would broadcast the director’s voice into her ear, and she simply repeated the lines as she heard them When he coughed, so did she. I would stand there, watching this, thinking, This is crazy

One time I was doing a scene with Mae, and we had the setup with the booth and the microphone going. The director said, “Action,” and I gave my line, and Mae replied, “Altercation on Melrose and Sunset. Approach with caution.”

The director yelled, “Cut!” Everyone looked at each other; those words weren’t in the script. The director asked her what she was talking about, and she said something like, “Units are en route.” Then we realized that Mae’s earpiece had been intercepting signals from a police shortwave radio. I couldn’t help myself. I averted my face and walked off stage, hoping no one could see that I was laughing hysterically

My biggest problem with Mae was that she was as bad as Marilyn in terms of showing up on time. I’d arrive at eight in the morning in order to be ready at nine. Mae, who had the same start time I did, wouldn’t come onto the set until eleven or eleven thirty.

After a week or two of this, I went to the assistant director and said, “Why are you calling me two hours before Mae shows up? “Because I never know when she’s going to get here,” he said.

I said, “How far away does she live?”

“About forty-five minutes.”

“What does she do when she gets here?”

He said, “She comes in and takes some time to put on her makeup. That’s a forty-five-minute ordeal. Then they fit her with hair. That’s thirty minutes. Then wardrobe: forty minutes. The last thing is her enema, and then she’s ready for work.”

I said, “What time is the enema?” “The enema comes after everything else is done. She doesn’t wear panties, and after she has her enema, she’s ready for work.”

“How long does the enema take?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

I said, “Call me fifteen minutes before she takes her enema.”

The next day I waited most of the morning at home, until the assistant director called.

“Enema time,” he said

I saw him in person once in Vegas, in the early 90s probably. He was with a tall blonde woman in the casino at Caesars. He was wearing all white from his hat down to his shoes. He just kind of strutted around the pit being seen. I don't remember him stopping at any of the tables and actually playing.

I leaped into my Rolls-Royce convertible, tore down the streets of Hollywood to Goldwyn Studios, parked my car, rushed in, had my makeup put on, and hit the stage ready to work just as Mae emerged from the bathroom, her enema finished. Once I’d mastered the intricacies of this schedule, I had no complaints.

When I signed on to this film, I had certainly heard about Mae’s legendary sexual appetites. I didn’t want her even looking at me, but she had brought her bodybuilder boyfriend with her, so I relaxed. As I got to know her I realized she was actually a sweet, caring, very nice person—a little self-absorbed perhaps, but that hardly made her stand out in Hollywood.

Another reason I had agreed to be in Sextette was that Cary Grant had made movies with Mae West, and if she was good enough for Cary, she was good enough for me. But the truth is that I was feeling sorry for myself. Marlon Brando was still getting good parts, so why was Hollywood pissing on me? But I took comfort in being a consummate professional: even in these B movies, I gave each scene all I had. Never once did I go into a movie thinking, This thing is going to be shit, so I’m not going to prepare for it. I couldn’t do that. I even busted my tail for The Manitou

When I came home, my children Nicholas and Benjamin were waiting for me with their mother......the boys were thrilled to see me. But something told me that my marriage to Penny was over. I could tell just by her attitude. She was young and beautiful, so she inevitably attracted a lot of attention from hip, young men in Hollywood. I wasn’t around too often, and the combination was poison to our marriage.

As I had seen earlier, Penny had a tendency to go with the best thing that came along, and at some point she decided that I was no longer the best thing. I told myself that had I been making better movies, I might have had a chance, but that was just another way to put the focus back on my work.

Once Penny began making the nightclub scene, our relationship went downhill fast. She began seeing other guys, and marriage number three bit the dust. In retrospect, she was too young, and I was too messed up, and we both would have been better off if we hadn’t gotten married. But that’s hindsight talking.

My life had become exhausting and empty. I was well into my fifties, the 1980s were just around the corner, and I had no idea what to do with myself

My next movie, The Mirror Crack’d, was based on an Agatha Chris tie novel about a group of actors who come to an English home to make a film. While they’re there, somebody gets murdered. The cast included Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak.

I loved doing the movie with Elizabeth. She and I had a wonderful connection, which involved lots of good times but never crossed the line from friendship to romance. Kim Novak was sweet and very perceptive. She lived in northern California, outside San Francisco. Rumor had it that she was a lesbian, but we never talked about it, and I found her professional and easy to work with.

One afternoon I checked my mail and found a letter to Penny from City National Bank. Curious, I opened the envelope. Inside was a check for one hundred thousand dollars, made out to her, taken out of my account. Our divorce negotiations were still under way at that point, but we certainly hadn’t agreed to anything like this. She was being under handed, pure and simple, and I had caught her.

I called my lawyer and asked him to call the bank and stop the check. We stopped the divorce negotiations, and instead I simply dictated terms that Penny was obliged to accept. She wound up getting a lot less out of me than she otherwise might have. After the divorce was final, Penny moved to Cape Cod. The settlement gave her all the furniture in our home, so she opened an antique shop and put all our furniture in the shop as merchandise.

To get away from my mess with Penny, I spent three full months in 1980 with Hugh Hefner at his mansion. Hef was a steadying influence for me, the kind of guy I could tell anything to and he would understand. I was so vulnerable in those days that I fell for every girl I met at the mansion. There was hardly anyone around to take them out, and Hef didn’t want them floating around the city unescorted, so I always had a girl on my arm

But there were boundaries, even at the Playboy Mansion. Romances were to be conducted on the grounds, not taken to a hotel room or to someone’s home. The idea was to have a place where you could have some wholesome fun, a place that wasn’t sleazy. Life at the mansion felt like being on a luxurious college campus. Guests enjoyed private talks in the garden or watched movies in Hef’s screening room. The girls were happy to spend time with me, and I behaved properly. I enjoyed their friendship, and where appropriate, I enjoyed romancing them. The pleasure of spending time with these beautiful girls and having them find me attractive calmed me and made me feel good. That was far more important to me than the sex

When I wasn’t falling in love with one of the girls at the Playboy Mansion, I lived pretty much like a hermit. I spent most of my time in my room at the mansion, and occasionally I’d go down to a party or watch a movie. As the evening went on, if I didn’t feel like socializing anymore, I’d go back up to my room.

After Penny moved out and took our sons, Benjamin and Nicholas, with her, I left the mansion and went back to live alone in our condo. There I was, living in luxury, miserable, waiting for jobs that weren’t coming in. Many of my contemporaries had already prepared themselves for the day when they would no longer be called on to act. They had begun writing, directing, or producing

It was during this time—the early 1980s—that I began dabbling with what had become a very fashionable drug in Hollywood and other major cities around the country: cocaine. When the cocaine craze hit, no one knew how addictive it could be. Everyone knew about the dangers of heroin, but people thought coke was something you could try when you felt like it and stop using whenever you wanted to. I’m sure that dealers encouraged that misconception

I was introduced to cocaine during the making of Lepke. We were working long, grueling hours, and I was getting tired. Then one day a woman in wardrobe said to me, “Here, try some of this.” She took a small paper packet out of her pocket, opened it up, and shook some white powder out of it onto a mirror. She handed me a little straw and told me to sniff some powder up each nostril.

Almost immediately, I felt comforted by a new sense of confidence, and I noticed that even though it was well past midnight, I was full of energy. I took another hit, kept the paper packet, and worked until four in the morning. The next day I paid the woman for more. It was the start of my descent into hell

While filming The Great Race, Natalie Wood have a total nervous breakdown. They had to shut down filming while she recovered. I wonder if his buddy Kirk showed up?

What an asshole this guy is.

Before long, the cocaine epidemic wrecked Hollywood. Actors became so addicted that they demanded coke in their contracts.

Around this time I moved out of the modern condominium I’d shared with Penny and the boys, and into a small apartment. And I started doing cocaine on a regular basis. Once I began using heavily, I found myself involved with unsavory people I didn’t even know. When you’re hooked on drugs, you have no close friends, just druggie friends. That makes you feel totally alone, which makes you want to take drugs even more. It’s a vicious cycle.

My head wasn’t on straight, and although I knew it, I didn’t know what to do about it. The cocaine gave me a brief feeling of euphoria, which was the best feeling I could manage in those days. I told myself that if I controlled my use, and chose my friends more carefully, I’d be able to stop whenever I wanted to. As it turned out, it wasn’t so easy.

One of the big reasons I started using cocaine was that I was told it was great for sex. Specifically, I heard that it made men less sensitive, allowing them to prolong the time before orgasm. This sounded good to me, so I bought some coke and started seeing lots of women, testing out what I’d heard. It didn’t make me superhuman in the longevity department, but it certainly did make my sexual experiences more intense.

After a while, the girls I hung out with were all using. It was a perfect environment for disaster. There were times when I’d be at some girl’s apartment and all I wanted to do was go back home, but I was too fucked up to move.

One time I went to an apartment on Fountain Avenue to buy cocaine. During the transaction, the gentleman I was buying it from reached under his desk and pulled out a .45-caliber handgun. He cocked it and laid it down on the desk. That was all he did. Maybe he was just trying to make sure I didn’t try anything funny. I kept my cool, made my purchase, and got the hell out of that apartment.

After he shut the door behind me, a door down the hall opened, and a girl poked her head out and said, “Hey, come here.” I walked down to her and said, “Yes?” “How much did you buy?” she said. She obviously knew what the score was, so I didn’t play stupid. “Five grams,” I said. She said, “I’ll give you a blow job for half a gram.” That happened to me more than once. Sometimes I’d go along, and sometimes not.

I remember another coke dealer who went by the street name of Madison. If a girl was around, sometimes Madison would pull out a pipe, take a hit, suck in a deep breath, and motion for the girl to come closer. He’d then blow the smoke into her mouth and give her a kiss. What a despicable thing I was involved in

In my new environment, with my new friends, everywhere I went somebody had a gram or more. They’d put it in your hand, and each nostril would get a shot. It would give you a rush, and then twenty minutes later—if it took that long—you were craving more. Cocaine, it turned out, was not addictive: it was very addictive.

If you wanted sex during the 1980s in Hollywood, you needed only one of two things: cocaine or money. If a girl was addicted she was probably going to need a couple of hundred bucks to pay the rent because her rent money had already gone up in smoke. All you had to do if you wanted to have sex with her was give her money or coke. If you went to a party and flashed a gram bottle, you knew you were flaunting a commodity that every girl at that party wanted. Guys I knew really well—actors, producers, writers—were all using cocaine as a way to compete for girls.

After I began freebasing, my life got even stranger. I’d wake up in a room I didn’t recognize, in a house I couldn’t remember going to. I probably remembered the girl, but she was already gone; maybe she had left me a note, or maybe not. If I was making a movie, I’d get myself together and go to the studio. How I made those pictures, I’ll never know, but I’m proud that I was able to manage it. When it came time to work, somehow I was able to dispel all my distractions and all my weaknesses.

To escape from myself on the weekends, I went to the only drug-free safe haven I knew: Hefner’s. At Hef’s I’d watch a movie, eat some dinner, and flirt with a beautiful woman.

Some friends and I even created our own little place where we could take drugs anytime we wanted to. A hairdresser to the stars owned a little place in LA called The Candy Store. It had a doorman, and to get in you had to say the password, which changed every couple of days. In front the place sold candy—Tootsie Rolls, lemon drops, stuff like that—and in back was a disco with a small dance floor. I was the president of the club, and I had the best time. And the worst.

Being an addict gives you a peculiar mixture of thoughts and feelings. On the one hand, your body is crying for relief. On the other, when you’re freebasing cocaine, you feel extraordinarily good. Your life becomes much more intense. The candle burns very brightly. Yet you can see the damaging effects the addiction is having on you. You know that what you’re doing isn’t good for you—you know that it’s killing you, really—but you don’t stop

My career didn’t fall on hard times because of cocaine. Everyone was on coke. Maybe it was because, at the age of sixty, I was no longer a young man. That was when I began to see the sad truth about having devoted my life to my profession. I had given the movies everything I had ever since I was a kid, saving nickels and dimes from shining shoes so I could go see Tyrone Power at the Loews theater in the Bronx.

Once I got to Hollywood, I gave it my all. I learned my lines; I did my own stunts; I tried to save the studio money. I could make movies quickly and easily. I could even make the actors around me better. But when an actor reaches a certain age, that’s it. The movie business is not a profession for old people, not if you’re in front of the camera.

By this time I began to see the value of having a backup plan for my acting career. I just wanted to hang around a set and be part of it. If I had planned ahead better, maybe I could have kept working as a makeup man or a screenwriter or a producer. But now it was too late for me to do anything about that. I was out in the cold, utterly miserable, and feeling hopeless. If my life didn’t turn around soon, I wasn’t going to have much left to turn around.

My attorney, Eli Blumenfeld, was the one who arranged for me to check into the Betty Ford clinic.

I didn’t say much for the first couple of meetings; I just sat back and watched. In our group, some guys were dressed like they were going to a country club, but there were also guys who were store clerks and stevedores. I couldn’t understand how those guys could afford it. Betty Ford was expensive, so much so that there were times when I was more concerned with the cost than I was with my recovery.

When I was asked to speak, I told everyone about my childhood and what drugs I was doing, but I didn’t say too much more than that. I wasn’t very open at first because I didn’t want to come off worse than the guy sitting next to me. Everybody was like that; we started off by being cautious, but as time went on, we all got down to the real story. Fuck it. I was a prick. I was mean and ornery while I was using. Don’t come to me if you have a problem. I was in the depths of Dostoevsky, and in a perverse way, I enjoyed it.

We spent the first five days discovering what was really bothering us. We did this by talking it over as a group. You can sit around and think about your problems all you want, but somehow you don’t really face them until you tell someone else about them.

One time I told the group, “My mother used to beat the shit out of me, and I hated it. I would hide under the bed so she wouldn’t find me.” These were the facts that I was hiding from, the experiences that made me feel small and helpless no matter how much I accomplished in life. Once I understood that certain events in my past were the source of the anger and self-loathing that had led to my addiction, then I could begin to work on the addiction itself.

After a couple of weeks I started to come to grips with how I really felt about everything that had happened to me. Dealing with all of that old pain was really difficult, but I felt the bitterness slowly start to recede. At the end of the twenty-eight days, I felt my fears slowly dissipating. The clinic counselors helped replace those fears with new thoughts and ideas about how to live life and be happy without having to rely on drugs to do it.

As part of the clinic’s twelve-step recovery program, I wrote a letter to my boys, Nicholas and Benjamin. They were in their teens. I said, “I know I haven’t been a good father to you, but I promise to do better from now on. I’m not going to give up. You two guys are so important to me that I will do whatever it takes.”

I also wrote a letter to Penny. I told her that I knew about her infidelities, and that I was angry at her for keeping the boys from me. I told her I felt she was stealing them from me, and I didn’t like it. The letter didn’t change anything between us, but at least it gave me a chance to express myself in an honest way, which was something I hadn’t made a habit of doing before.

I wasn’t sure if the program at Betty Ford was going to work, but it did. When I checked out of the clinic, my cocaine use came to an end. I had a new life in front of me, one without cocaine, and hopefully with more of my children in it. There wasn’t too much I could do about my career, which was still in the toilet, so to help with my transition from movie star to private citizen, I devoted more and more time to painting.............

On the last day of February 1993, I married for the fourth time. I wasn’t expecting it, and I wasn’t looking for it, but even though I was in my late sixties I still was capable of falling head over heels for a stunningly beautiful woman. I was attending a dinner at the Friar’s Club when I looked over at the next table and saw a young woman whose plunging neckline revealed quite a bit of the most beautiful, inviting breasts I had ever seen—and that was saying a lot.

She was a tiny girl, not more than five foot two, but she was so sexy that I couldn’t help staring at her for the rest of the evening, imagining what it would be like to make love to her. I don’t know what it is about breasts that revs me up. Maybe I didn’t get enough breastfeeding when I was a baby. But whenever I feel an attraction like that, I put my charm into overdrive and see if I can make something good happen.

She turned out to be a Jewish attorney named Lisa Deutsch. I was sixty-seven, and she was thirty-three, but in my mind’s eye I was still a youngster. I’m fortunate enough to feel that way now, and as of this writing I’m eighty-three. When you get to a certain stage in life, women your own age seem ancient. Of course, they’re no more ancient than you are, but they don’t match up with the way you feel. I know it sounds crazy, but I refuse to give up that part of me that is still in tune with my youth—that part of me that still wants to steam up the windows in a car by making out. Why should I give that up if I don’t have to?

I was probably too quick to jump into this marriage, but I had always been impulsive when it came to affairs of the heart. Very quickly, though, I sensed the potential for trouble. Lisa’s father, who was a lawyer, wanted me to sign a prenuptial agreement in which I agreed to give Lisa half of everything I earned. That didn’t happen, but we got married anyway

One time early in our marriage, Lisa and I went to a party where Ronald and Nancy Reagan were in attendance. Lew Wasserman and his wife were there, as were a number of famous actors, some of whom I’d adored in the movies when I was a kid. I was very pleased to be at the same party with them, socializing with them; it meant a lot to me. But when I introduced Lisa to them, she wasn’t at all impressed.

At the time I didn’t understand why, but in retrospect I realized that she hadn’t grown up with their movies. She didn’t know anything about these actors, so being in their presence didn’t mean much to her. This was my first realization that the age difference was probably going to be a source of trouble.

You might think I would have learned that lesson by now, but there she was, with that great inviting smile and that fantastic body, and she was my wife! How could life be better than this?

Our marriage lasted less than two years. Lisa seemed haunted by something in her past. I don’t know what it was, and she never encouraged any conversation about it. Professionally, Lisa devoted herself to legal work on behalf of clients who couldn’t afford legal services. I could tell that she was under a lot of stress, but I chalked that up to the demands of her job. I knew there was nothing I could do about that, and Lisa wasn’t an easy person to talk to about feelings—not that I was any prize in that category, either.

Sadly, it wasn’t long before I could see she didn’t care about being with me, much less care about being married to me. I had done it again—given my heart to a woman on the basis of how she looked as opposed to who she was on the inside—and I braced myself for the inevitable: marriage number four was about to crash and burn.

Not long before we split up, I took Lisa to Paris as part of the publicity tour for my first book, Tony Curtis: The Autobiography, and we had some crazy fun on the roof of our hotel. It was a very romantic evening, but it turned out to be the last one we would ever enjoy.

After we returned to LA, Lisa came home late one night. She was drunk, so I said, “Get out of here until you sober up.” She went downstairs to her bedroom and fell asleep. As I watched her walk away, I knew the marriage was over. After that she spent every night out. Our life together had turned to ashes.

When the marriage ended, I was surprised by the way I felt. I had expected to fall into a depression, but instead I was overcome by a sense of relief. There were no recriminations. I had had a good time while it lasted, and that was the end of that. I wasn’t crushed the way I had been with Christine and Penny. I just moved on.

I came through my open-heart surgery just fine, but that hard ship was about to pale by comparison to a tragedy that is every parent’s worst nightmare. In July 1994, my son Nicholas, who had been living in a garage apartment at his mother’s house on Cape Cod, died of a drug overdose. He was twenty-three. I was so distraught I sank into a depression unlike anything I’d ever known. I just wanted to bring the final curtain down.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was somehow responsible for Nicholas’s death. Why did Nicholas get into drugs in the first place? Was he doing drugs because I’d done them? Was he doing drugs because he had a void where his father should have been? We got along well, so I didn’t think that was it. Did he inherit from me a tendency for substance abuse? I tormented myself with these thoughts, although I knew from my own experience that ultimately addiction is an individual madness. Nicholas was addicted, but his brother, Benjamin, wasn’t

At Nicholas’s funeral, a local minister got up and talked about Nicholas’s poor mother and the loss she suffered. He never mentioned my name or even indicated that Nicholas had a father, and by mentioning his mother in so many ways, the minister seemed to be implying that I had abandoned Nicholas. Not surprisingly, he was Penny’s minister.

After the service, I wrote him a letter asking, “Why didn’t you even mention my name?” He wrote back with some poppycock about religion. Fuck him. He couldn’t have been much of a minister or a father if he’d so completely lost sight of the Golden Rule.

Nicholas had been a child when Penny and I got divorced, so he had spent years flying back and forth across the country, going back and forth like a yo-yo between me and his mother. I think he might have been strongly affected by that. I say this because at the age of twenty-three he showed no signs of a direction to his life. He should have had a job or hobby to keep him occupied, a steady girlfriend, a good-looking car, but he had none of that. He was broke, living over his mother’s garage.

Nicholas is gone, and I miss him terribly, but his death has helped me to appreciate how lucky I am to still have five wonderful children.

The Mae West stories are hilarious. “Who’s George?” LOL!

Kelly, my firstborn, was always remarkably practical. One of my favorite memories of Kelly’s childhood took place when she was four years old. I had brought home a television, and she had never seen a television before. So she got up from the couch and walked behind the set. She was there for a long time, so I finally asked her what she was doing. She told me with great seriousness that she was looking to see where the pictures and sounds were coming from.

Jamie was more of a firecracker. I have always called her Jamie, not Jamie Lee, because to my mind you can spell it any way you want, it still comes out “Leigh.” Jamie always sought out the excitement and joy in life, and she’s intelligent, gifted, and ambitious. She’s been that way all her life.

As a kid, Jamie didn’t smile too much. She was serious, and it was hard to get her to drop that seriousness. Kelly would be playing around and laughing while Jamie sat quietly, keeping her thoughts to herself. As she got older, I realized that her attitude toward life was very different from mine, and from Kelly’s. Jamie was practical, thick-skinned, and aloof—at least that’s the way she was around me.

But you have to remember I wasn’t around much. I was always in an airplane or on a set, and my hectic schedule often had me working pictures back to back. Sometimes I’d go six months at a time without seeing Kelly and Jamie, so when I finally did see them, they were often angry with me for being away from them for so long. Jamie was usually more upset than her sister.

One time in my apartment, when Kelly and Jamie were still kids, Kelly read me the riot act for not being around when she needed me. Jamie said nothing, but I knew that her feelings toward me were at least as strong as her sister’s. I felt terrible that night, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And the truth is, I don’t know what to do about it now. After Janet and I divorced, Janet filled their heads with all sorts of negativity about me. I was the villain.

To prove it, Janet had only to point to the articles about their monstrous dad in the movie magazines. There was nothing I could do about that. But it doesn’t stop me from taking pleasure today in the people that Kelly and Jamie have become.

Jamie is married to the talented actor and director Christopher Guest. He seems to share Jamie’s belief that she deserved more from a father than I gave her, and I don’t blame either one of them for that feeling. Jamie’s friends made me feel insecure too, and I didn’t enjoy being in their company. I wish I could rewrite the past, but I know that’s not possible. Frankly, I wish I could do a better job right now of enjoying my children and grandchildren, and I know I’ve fallen short on that score too. But I’m getting better.

In Jamie’s case, I still struggle to get past her coolness toward me. I know I can sound formidable, but inside I’m as fragile as ever. And sensitive as I am, I’m not at my best when I think someone doesn’t like me. I’m working on this, but progress is slow.

I have few regrets about my life, but chief among them is my failure as a father. I hope that in whatever time I have left I can do better in one role that never came naturally to me

[QUOTE]She was quite a bit older than I was, though, so I was lucky,

ZSA ZSA was all of 8 yrs older. CURTIS was 13 yrs older than NATALIE WOOD but that didn't seem to bother him.

His son Clariton is so hot.

"So I was lucky" meant he escaped Zsa Zsa's bed?

Those later pictures with the coiffed blue hair remind me of my neighbor Toba Rosenthal.

I never thought he was attractive. I would have never thought he was straight or even bi. He was more flaming than Tony Randall.

I first laid eyes on Jill VandenBerg in 1996, when I went to Nicky Blair’s restaurant alone one night for dinner. I was single and enjoying it. As I walked toward my table, I saw a couple at another table. The man looked like he might be Middle Eastern, and the young woman, a blond, had a beautiful face and a magnificent body. I hadn’t seen anyone that appealing since Marilyn. I tried not to be rude, but I literally couldn’t take my eyes off her.

At one point my chutzpah (my inner Schwartz) kicked in and propelled me over to their table. I had never seen the man before, but I pretended I knew him. “How have you been? We haven’t talked in ages. How’s your family?” He was dazzled by all the attention from a famous person. Where could he possibly have met me?

Then I paused and leaned over to the beautiful woman. “Hi, I’m Tony,” I said with a little smile on my face. “Hi, I’m Jill,” she replied, “and this is my friend Matt.” I felt a surge of joy from the knowledge that those two weren’t married. I said, “I’m so happy to meet you, Jill.” During the conversation that followed, I found out that she lived in San Diego and drove up to LA on weekends. So this guy might be her boyfriend, but they weren’t living together. I took heart from this news and ramped up the charm a notch. They say all’s fair in love and war, and when Schwartz is falling in love, you’d better look out.

I told Jill I was in San Diego a lot. Then I looked at her friend, and I said, “Matt, do you mind if I get a number where I can reach Jill when I’m in San Diego?” “No, not at all,” he said. I was so relieved I wanted to jump up and click my heels. I got Jill’s number, put it in my pocket, and walked away like a gunslinger who’d just outdrawn Jesse James.

Jill had told me she was returning home Sunday night. I calculated when she might leave LA, and how much time the drive home would take her. Once my estimated time had elapsed, I called her and said, “Hello. Remember me?”

During that phone conversation, she let on that she had been a big fan of Marilyn Monroe and that she had been upset with me for saying that kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to explain my way out of that one, but this time there was more on the line than ever before. No way was I going to let this amazing woman’s loyalty to Marilyn cause a problem for us! I took her through my explanation and apologized profusely, which satisfied her.

The next time Jill came to Los Angeles, she called me up, and we started going out. After a couple of weeks of dating, I invited her to spend the night at my apartment, and she did. It was a wonderful experience, which told me that what I felt for Jillie wasn’t just an infatuation. By this time, I finally knew the difference. What I felt for this woman was truly serious. To my everlasting wonderment, Jillie felt the same way.

I’m still crazy about her now. There’s something about Jill’s beauty that touches me very deeply. It glows through from the inside rather than being a more typical beauty. I don’t know how she avoided all the issues and hang-ups that beautiful girls so often fall victim to, but she did. She never wanted to be a model and never wanted to be an actress. She just wanted to live a happy life, and when we met, we both believed that our best chance at happiness was to spend our lives together. We’ve been married for ten years. I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but I finally got it right

.......

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[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

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What a great thread. I don't know why, but i kind of like him.

I wonder if the unscrubbed version of this autobiography is out there anywhere

Tony with his first wife Janet Leigh and daughter Jamie Lee

To be continued...more from his early life

Are you fucken kidding me R111?

Tony Curtis was an asshole. Maybe that's why Danny Kaye didn't like him. It's just like Curtis to think that Kaye had some "complicated sexual feeling" about him. He's flattering himself. the asshole. He was pretty easy to dislike.

Seeing Tony Curtis on talk shows it's obvious he was a dick. And disinheriting his children like that....that's pretty cold. I liked some of his performances but the man was a typical Hollywood creep.

Danny Kay had big dick face.

I find Tony Curtis to be honest which is refreshing....I think if most people say what they feel and think honestly , they will come out looking like assholes.

I've gotten hooked on these book excerpts about Steve McQueen and Tony Curtis (even though they were both hypocritical assholes). More stars, please!

I've scrolled through this thread. All excerpts and not one dealing with Marilyn Monroe and "Some Like It Hot?" Or did I miss it? At any rate, the stories about Monroe's awful behavior making that film are legendary. After the movie wrapped someone asked Curtis what was it like kissing Marilyn Monroe (there's a a scene in SLIH where she's on top of him, french kissing him). He said "it's like kissing Hitler." He got some backlash for that, so at first he denied saying it. Then he admitted he said it but claimed he said it sarcastically in response to to being asked such a silly question. But I think he meant it. He and practically everybody else grew to loathe Marilyn for being hours late and flubbing her lines over and over, even lines like "it's me, Sugar." She made the making of that movie hell for everybody.

Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were the "brangelina" of the 1950s

Tony and second wife Christine Kaufmann' wedding

Christine, Tony and daughters Alex and Allegra

He was really pitifully self centered. And those toupees-my goodness-world class tacky.

Janet Leigh was an interesting underrated actress. She was never a major star, never had top billing or carried a picture, but she had an earthy, effortless sexiness was genuinely sensuous. She actually played a wide range of roles in her career, from MGM starlet of light comedies and musicals to the very adult Psycho and The Manchurian Candidate.

[quote]Hef was a steadying influence for me ...

Good Lord.

Looks like EDIE ADAMS on the left & EDDIE FISHER on the right

Loving this thread... I just downloaded the book to read it in full. I also like him from these candid excerpts, despite so much selfish, crappy behavior (esp. with regards to his children and the will).

[quote]I've scrolled through this thread. All excerpts and not one dealing with Marilyn Monroe and "Some Like It Hot?" Or did I miss it?

Oh he fucked Marylin while she was just a contract girl at the studio way before "Some Like It Hot". If he had fucked Zsa Zsa , he would have said. He had no problem outing his quickie with Natalie Wood. Zsa Zsa was very "old school". She was born in 1917 and said many times, she wasn't a slut, she only slept with the men she married. BUT she married alot.

R121 = Danny Kaye

I have always loved Tony Curtis . I find him very forth right, honest and refreshingly humorous.

His supposed homophobia seemed to come and go.

Before dissing Brokeback Mountain he was one of the most refreshing and articulate talking heads on the brilliant documentary The Celluloid Closet. The dvd extras have a lot more of him expounding on being gay in Hollywood in the 1950s, yet he never comes out. Interesting that he was asked to participate in the doc and did so with great enthusiasm.

He was an attention whore, he would not turn down an interview

Didn't Janet throw shade at Our Judy?

I read that here on DL recently.

r136 I found him an obnoxious, attention seeking old Jew bag.

I have the "Some Like It Hot" DVD signed by him. Met him at CHILLER.

Debbie Reynolds wrote in her book that Bob Fosse was well hung. He liked to rehearse in just dance tights and a t-shirt, and he would come up behind an unsuspecting female and rub his package against her.

In this pic he reminds me of Donald Sutherland

R142 Where's Bob Fosse when you need him?!

Concerning his will he might have just been influenced by the wife as he was an elderly man and not in great health and she was quite a bit younger and was probably taking care of him. Older people are quite vulnerable to that. I also always found him likeable despite being a crappy father and serial cheater. He was a silly vapid man but probably charming. My father was a similar type of man very good looking and a terrible husband and father but he was loveable and I really miss him despite all his many faults. No one is perfect.

HOw largth wath Tonyth thcock?

I adore it when stupid people talk about themselves. No, really. Do go on.

Tony Curtis had his faults like anyone else but there was something genuine and spontaneous about him which is endearing, it's hard Not to like him. About the the will, i'm not sure but i think his wife Jill may have had an influence on him, he changed it just five months before his death when he was in a very bad health.

Don't know why but i feel sorry for the man.

The Beatles also had a double standard with women. Pattie Boyd was asked --- decades later -- if she expected George to cheat on her when she married him and she said yes. It was expected that all the beatles would cheat. I dont know about Paul and Linda, but Paul cheated relentlesly on Jane Asher.

Of course George cut Pattie loose when she finally gave in to Eric Clapton and Ringo dumped Maureen after George talked Maureen into sleeping with him. But Ringo remained pals with George. Typical. George's second wife also said she turned a blind eye to George's multiple sex partners and that she knew before she married him that he would cheat on her.

Pattie Boyd also broke off all contact with Maureen Starkey and claimed that Maureen was horrible, a snake for betraying her. Meanwhile, it was George who pursued Maureen, and Maureen said she finally slept with George to show Ringo what it felt like to be cheated on.

So Pattie Boyd stayed married to her cheating husband after he slept with Maureen and Pattie later cheated on her husband, too, but explained it all away and still hated Maureen for being a"betrayer. " Ringo shed Maureen, but stayed friends with George.

Zak Starkey held it against Ringo for years. I don't know if he still does, but he did not speak to Ringo for a long time. Zak gave bone marrow, platelets and white cells to Maureen when she had leukemia, but she came down with a postop infection and died. She married one of the founders of the Hard Rock Cafe, so she did all right after her divorce.

Why people always putting the blame on Tony Curtis only for his failed marriage to Janet Leigh?! Even Janet said in her autobiography the reason for their breakup was not because of a woman, but their various disagreements in life were building up for long a time.

Great to have you back Book Troll. I missed your work. Have been going through a tough time lately so your posts have been a welcome distraction.

I just can't believe that Bob Fosse is straight.

"I just can't believe that Bob Fosse is straight."

He was. He was quite a pussyhound, in fact. Not all male dancers are gay.

I can't believe Janet Leigh is wearing Ethel Mertz's hostess pants in R126.

I wondered what happened to those - that cheap-ass Lucy probably lifted them from the costume department and re-gifted them to Janet.

They would've looked better with a scrunchy belt and an off-the shoulder blouse though.

I like Stoney Curtis from Hollyrock

R134

Bullshit. ZSA ZSA also had along affair with (slept with) PORFORIO RUBIROSA. SINATRA was another lover.

Zsa Zsa also had affairs with Richard Burton and Sean Connery.

Janet Leigh was great in an early 'Columbo' episode where she played a has-been movie star. She was so thin! Everyone was so thin in those early 1970s episodes. I love watching them because Southern California looked so lovely, the traffic wasn't that bad, and they were filmed in beautiful large homes and estates where the furnishings were elegant.

Tony Curtis on Janet Leigh :

" I even married Janet Leigh for my career. I could see the two of us could get more attention together. We had the paparazzi wherever we went, we were on the cover of all the movie magazines. It wasn't enough for a man to be cute, he had to be connected to the right woman."

[on his troubled relationship with daughter Jamie Lee Curtis] I have a feeling she wanted to teach me a lesson for abandoning her mother and her. But I couldn't be with Janet Leigh anymore. She was disappearing into her own madnesses.

[on the long-running feud with daughter Jamie Lee Curtis] What am I going to do? God bless her, I wish her the best. If she can't forgive me, then get another father.

[on his love scene with Marilyn Monroe on the yacht in Some Like It Hot (1959)] It was like kissing Hitler. She'd gone funny, her mind was all over the place. It was awful. She nearly choked me to death by deliberately sticking her tongue down my throat into my windpipe.

She did get a new father. She was very close to her step father.

.......

Why Tony was so bitter toward Janet Leigh?! I remember watching him in an interview and he didn't even want to mention her name!

R165 I think the he blamed her for the breakup and it's subsequent bad publicity for him which was the catalyst for the downward trajectory his career took. The fact that he was limited as an actor seems to have escaped him. If all you've got is youth and beauty then middle age is a mindfuck.

He seems to blame her for his children not being close to him. He wasn't present in their lives so what did he expect?

Thank you, OP

Tony Curtis' hottest costar.

You want to read a tell book combined with a thoughtful biography by someone who knew everyone? Read Shelley Winters' book. It's everything a Hollywood tell all should be.

Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh - Home Movies

Tony Curtis Talks About Mae West' story

Tony may have impregnated Marilyn...

OP, Thanks, I've read all your excerpt threads and love them. Are you reading anything new and planning another?

I knew Tony for a while. I liked him for his charm and friendliness, but couldn't get over that he was really a douche in his private life.. He was at that time more on the humble side from the beat-down he got, and I think he knew he deserved it, ie the end of his career and the personal problems compounded by drug and alcohol abuse.

For the people thinking Curtis was gay, I can understand why they might have that impression. In his later years I saw him on some talk show. He wasn't as queeny as Richard Simmons but he definitely was leaning sharply in that direction. At the time I just figured he had reached the age he just didn't give a damn anymore.

Loved the Mae West story about the police call. I laughed out loud reading it but nonetheless have to be skeptical. If that happened how has that footage never been shown on some blooper show.

As to Tony "respecting" Virna Lisa for not being seduced by him, maybe she might have been more receptive if she wasn't afraid her husband might kill her, or him. She and Jack Lemmon did a movie called "How to Murder Your Wife" and Lemmon once told this incident from the filming:

[quote] Prior to starting the film, the husband of co-star Virna Lisi made her promise that she would not be talked into doing a nude scene in her first American film. She assured him that she would not, signed the contract and traveled to Hollywood. While filming the "revelation" scene, where Lemmon awakens to discover in horror that he had gotten married at the bachelor party, she had to disrobe and lay in the bed nude but discreetly covered with a sheet. However, it was this day that her husband, an architect, arrived unannounced at the set to surprise his wife. When he walked into the scene, he became very upset. He focused his anger toward Lemmon who, realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, exited the set at full speed with Virna's husband in tow. Running past several sound stages on the MGM lot, he quickly found a garbage dumpster, jumped in and closed the cover. He waited there until security officers found him.

damn, this whole thread is crying out for HRT

R148

This scene was cut from DON'T MAKE WAVES but in the original ending, the guys drop those gorgeous but silly women and go off with ROBERT WEBBER in Harry's trailer.

Read Piper Laurie's memoir "Learning to Live Out Loud". It's a good bathtub read and she's got some really good dish about what an insecure,narcissistic and manipulative little cunt Tony Curtis was to her.

And that's after they had been good friends!!

The actress Shelley Winters recalled that Tony Curtis arrived at her flat one afternoon at this time, and introduced himself as Bernie. "My mom knows your aunt back in the Bronx," he said, "and she said you should take care of me until I get settled." Shelley Winters found him an apartment to share (with Marlon Brando) and introduced him to her friends – including Marilyn Monroe, whom Curtis immediately asked out.

His son looks like Ryan Gosling at R72.

R178, Doesn't Piper claim in her book that Ronald Reagan date raped her?

R177, It was in that movie where Sharon Tate looked her best.

Tony's performance in "The Boston Strangler" was highly underrated. He starred in a fluffy comedy with Suzanne Pleshette in the early 1960's, "40 Pounds of Trouble", that I saw as a kid, but it seems to have vanished.

Just another interview or autobio pretending that the rich and famous are all straight and normal, ugh.

He was a deeply closeted homo misogynist. Janet Leigh was a class act. He denigrated every woman he was ever with. He was a slavish follower of the Eddie Fisher School Of Good Fatherhood. It was always somebody's else's fault. And he always wore more eye makeup than his leading ladies. Shouting out your car "I fucked Yvonne DeCarlo" should incite every DLer to outrage.

"I wish he'd pursued that second career in makeup. We could have used him."

Oh, and just like Eddie Fisher he turns out not one but two autobiographies that "Tell All".

And denigrating a superstar like Marilyn doesn't make you a bigger star. Or more relevant.

American Prince

Who was that again?

Curtis was only relevant for 5 years or so, his best period being the second half of the fifties, so its an odd career. The two with Lancaster and the two with Douglas made him an A-lister for a while, plus the two by Blake Edwards (MISTER CORY an enjoyable drama about a kid on the make) and the nice comedy with Janet, THE PERFECT FURLOUGH in 1958), plus of course THE DEFIANT ONES, an oddity with Sinatra KINGS GO FORTH, and of course Wilder's imperishable SOME LIKE IT HOT. Everything he did before and after those are of no conesequence really, particuarly those silly 60s comedies he got bogged down it - THE GREAT RACE is practically unwatchable now, just silly slapstick.

[quote][R178], Doesn't Piper claim in her book that Ronald Reagan date raped her?

I remember reading that SOME 40s starlet made that claim but it wasn't Piper.

Piper DOES write that Reagan took her virginity when she was 17 and he was 40. Apparently, he was SHOCKED that he couldn't make her come and told her she needed to see a doctor about it.

Good lord how sad and embarrassing "my first fuck was Ronald Reagan" Shit I would rather admit to getting laid by Jimmy Stewart or Jack Benny

[quote]Good lord how sad and embarrassing "my first fuck was Ronald Reagan"

Yeah, reading the book it was obvious Piper has REALLY bad taste in men.

Yon-dah lies dah castle of my fad-dah.

Bernie Schwartz to Rosie Morgenstern

I read through the book posts above, although I can't say I was a big fan.

I still enjoy three of his movies: "Some Like It Hot", "The Great Race", and "Forty Pounds of Trouble".

There's no denying he was a very sexy man in the late 1950s/early 1960s.

I remember reading that one of the things Boy George (Culture Club) liked about Jon Moss (drummer for CC) was his "Tony Curtis" looks.

Elvis copied this exact look and haircut of Tony in R196 photo

R175 Matthew Broderick recounted a similar story about Marlon Brando, Marlon also used to wear ear piece to give him the script lines (because he didn't bother to learn his lines) and sometimes Brando would pick up the local police/radio station. Maththew talk about this in the below video starting from 3:04

R185 He was bi deary. A friend of mine saw him on vacation with a younger man in the Caribbean before he married his last wife. Bernie acted like an old queen in his later days. He liked pussy but he liked the occasional cock as well.

R192, Reagan was about to propose to Rhonda Fleming when Nancy told him she was pregnant with Patti.

young Tony Curtis with Shelley Winters

Marlon Brando :

In 1950, Universal wanted me to attend classes at the Actors Studio in LA. I went to one class and paid no attention. I was looking for girls.... The irony was that right after I took that class and ignored it completely, I became housemates with Marlon Brando,...He was a big Broadway star who was fast becoming a movie star, and I was still a player of bit parts, but Marlon enjoyed my company and treated me as an equal, which meant a lot to me.

Marlon was always the odd one. He’d come to a party late, or he would show up but insist on not coming inside, or he’d bring some weird girl with him as his date. He was always pushing the envelope

I loved living in that house with him, and I even enjoyed Marlon’s eccentricities. I knew he was really happy when he’d pull out a pan from the drawer and beat a rhythm on it. If we were the Odd Couple, I was Felix and Marlon was Oscar. He’d come in and throw his coat down, grab a beer from the fridge, and lie down on the couch.

He acted like he was the boss, but for some reason that never bothered me. If he didn’t clean up or take out the garbage, I’d do it. No big deal. Marlon didn’t like to drive, so he’d tell girls he didn’t know how, and every now and then one of them would come by to pick him up.

Marlon was into yoga long before it became popular. He spent time every day doing yoga exercises . But he was into alcohol, too; he would drink and that led to trouble. Marlon would start drinking, get distracted, forget about the time, and disappear for half a day—even if the studio had a meeting or photo shoot scheduled. They never could keep track of him. And if something didn’t go his way, Marlon would blow up like a Hawaiian volcano.

Marlon was being represented by Jay Kanter, an important agent at MCA, Lew Wasserman’s talent agency. One day Jay came by to take Marlon to the Racquet Club in Palm Springs, and Jay asked me to come along....when we walked into the bar at the Racquet Club, we both noticed this great-looking girl sitting on a barstool, nursing a drink. As we walked over, she looked from Marlon to me, and never looked back at Marlon. I didn’t think much of it, but it must have left an impression on Marlon.

Years later we were at a Hollywood party together, and when Marlon saw me, he raised his hand. The room fell silent. Marlon pointed to me and said, “There’s the only guy who ever took a girl away from me.”

Marlon was a monumental talent, a truly gifted actor. Much as I tried not to compare my career with his, it was difficult sometimes. In a weak moment I’d tell myself that if Universal had put me in classic movies instead of westerns or desert adventures, maybe I could have become a legendary actor too. But Marlon was unique. Instead of comparing myself with him, I was better off focusing on my own strengths—my exuberance for acting and my boyish charm—and overcoming my liabilities: I was insecure about my upbringing, my being Jewish, and my lack of education. I needed a big boost of confidence, and Marlon’s kindness to me helped with that.

Of all the actors Marlon could have chosen to pal around with, he chose me, even though he was well on his way to becoming a legend and I was just that crazy kid with a lot of hair trying to make it in the movies.

James Dean :

When I was starting out I also got to be friends with another struggling actor by the name of James Dean. Not many people know that James Dean’s first speaking role was in Sailor Beware, a Martin and Lewis movie. Jerry Lewis played a boxer, and James Dean was his corner man.

Soon after we became friends, Jimmy flew to New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.....we’d sit there drinking mai tais and discussing our careers. We never spoke too much about his childhood. He didn’t use his upbringing as a crutch or let it hold him back in any way, though; neither did Marlon. Unfortunately I did, and so did a lot of other actors. I wanted to be able to emulate Jimmy and Marlon in that way, but I didn’t know how.

Jimmy Dean had a kind of boyishness about him, as did I. The difference between us was that I never could get rid of my boyishness, but he could. He could become very tough and hard-bitten on screen. I liked that about him. I said to myself, If I could find a way of tuning in to Jimmy’s attitude, it would make acting a lot easier.

I was devastated when Jimmy died. I needed friends like Marlon and Jimmy, guys I admired who also liked me back. It was so rare for me to run into guys my age who didn’t treat me like shit. Everyone knew I enjoyed the ladies, and a lot of guys were jealous of me for my successes in that department, but not Marlon or Jimmy

Damn he was hot when he was young. He must have had guys after him non stop.

And what about him outing Kim Novak? Never heard that one before. I guess that explains her secretive life hidden away decades in n calif.

Shelley Winters :

In my next movie, Take One False Step, I played a race-car driver.... I spent two or three days on the picture, enough to see what a pain in the ass Shelley Winters could be. She was about five years older than I was, and she had been dating Burt Lancaster, along with a lot of other actors.

Shelley looked nice enough, but she was a real yenta, a big-mouthed busybody. Whatever she did, she made sure the press knew about it. She had never really made it to the top tier of stardom, which really pissed her off. As a result she could be very demanding—even dictatorial—on the set.

At one point during the shoot I was standing by a desk, waiting for my scene; I was sketching on a piece of paper, just killing time. Shelley grabbed the paper. “What are you doing?” she growled. “Why don’t you pay more attention to the scene?”

“Well, excuuuse me,” I said. I felt like I was back in school, being tongue-lashed by the teacher. What a bitch.....

Winchester ’73 was the first big-budget picture Universal put me in. The movie, starring Jimmy Stewart ,Shelley Winters was also in the movie. There had been no change in her manner since last we’d met, meaning that she was very unfriendly to everybody, including me. I observed how negatively people reacted to her, which was a very useful lesson for me.

When I was on the set, I was determined to enjoy every minute of what I was doing and to make it fun for everyone else too. I felt that my success depended on it. This was how I expressed my insecurity. But Shelley had a different take on it; she preferred to act high and mighty, always looking for an opportunity to push her career.

This was how she expressed her insecurity. Unfortunately, Shelley had no idea how she was shooting herself in the foot. But I never complained about her. And the studio rewarded my efforts with a raise to two hundred and twenty-five dollars a week, which made taking care of my parents a little less stressful for me.

[quote] I became housemates with Marlon Brando

"housemates" sounds less gay than "roommates"

[quote]And denigrating a superstar like Marilyn doesn't make you a bigger star. Or more relevant.

Good point, R188 because all of her other costars, directors, and others have written about what a brilliant, great talent as an actress she was, not to mention such a noble, enlightened human being.

"Tony may have impregnated Marilyn..."

ANYBODY may have impregnated Marilyn. She was not exactly discriminating.

Very funny interview of Tony Curtis

oh please, if HRT was on this thread he'd want us to guess what film he's currently watching that reminds him of that actor he once met that he won't name. If he reveals names, his life ain't worth a plug nickel....(snigger)

HRT = Harry R Truman?

IMO, CURTIS looked like REX REED'S better looking brother.

Love this photo of Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, Robert Wagner

I remember that movie, The Users, based on a novel about Hollywood. Jaclyn Smith played the lead. She comes to Hollywood and hooks up with Tony's character; his grown daughter, Michelle Phillips, I think, warns Jaclyn's character that her dad goes 'over the deep end' sometimes.

Jac's character finds out later that that meant he'll sleep with guys; and she walks in and finds him with a guy; Tony's character promises the guy that he'll make sure his script gets read.

In the end, Jaclyn's character ends up marrying John Forsythe.

It was so bizarre; thanks to People magazine and TV Guide we knew it was Kelly Garrett marrying Charlie.

"Good point, [R188] because all of her other costars, directors, and others have written about what a brilliant, great talent as an actress she was, not to mention such a noble, enlightened human being.'

I suppose you're being sarcastic. Marilyn Monroe a "noble, lightened human being?" She was pure hell to work with; hours late, flubbing even the simplest lines. And her talent was called into question a great deal, the general consensus being that she photographed very well and was very limited as an actress. She could play blonde sexpots to perfection, but that was pretty much it.

R214

I remember that. At the end, in the last moments, JACLYN is arriving at some Hollywood event and an interviewer asks her a question and JACLYN begins her reply with, " I'm not a professional ........ "

JACLYN was beautiful but as an actress she was serviceable, nothing more.

Eddie Fisher's autobiography was so much worse. But Jaime seemed to feel about Tony the same way Carrie Fisher felt about Eddie, so maybe in real life Curtis was just as bad. I can't help finding him really likeable on screen, though. And IMO he is the only actor who ever had real chemistry with Natalie Wood, even though the movies they were in together were terrible. He relaxed her and lightened her up, got her to have a little bit of timing. He was very talented.

I love how in his autobiography he compares his second wife, Jill, to Marilyn Monroe. Jill looked like drag queen, not to insult really good drag queens. She was an Amazon with a rough looking face. Every time Tony describes a wife in these excerpts, I go to google them, and they're not nearly as good looking as he describes them, particularly the lawyer. THOSE are the boobs, of all the Hwood boobs, that got him going?

I thought I read somewhere that in one interview Curtis acknowledged that he was bi.

R216, The actual line was, "Well, I'm not in the business . . ."

Tony with his 4th wife Lisa Deutsch, I agree with R217 about Tony wives' looks (Except Janet Leigh)

.......

with his 3rd wife

With his 2nd wife

With his last wife Jill

His second wife was gorgeous.

Yes, second wife teenaged Christine Kauffmann was indeed gorgeous, prettier even than Janet Leigh. She looked like a more exotic version of Audrey Hepburn.

I still enjoy three of his movies: "Some Like It Hot", "The Great Race", and "Forty Pounds of Trouble".

Me too.

The British chat show interview proves that he still had it.

From what i've read in his book, i think he fell really hard for Christine Kauffmann, she wrote a book years ago in Germany,She said that she lost her respect for him after he had a hair transplant operation and that she fell in love with a young man who was a very close friend of Tony when she was pregnant with her second child. and that she refused to sleep with Tony and each of them had a separate bedroom. she also recounted how irresponsible mother she was that she went out partying , sleeping around (Warren Beaty among them) and doing drugs leaving her kids in the care of a nanny and when Tony took the girls to live with him in 1971/72, she didn't fight back .

[quote] She said that she lost her respect for him after he had a hair transplant operation

What? Just for that?

R229 Yes, Christine seemed like a spoiled brat from what she said in her book, she said that Tony spoiled her very much that she didn't even know how to write a check by herself because he took care of everything. Also she made a point that she didn't know about his affairs with other women at the time and gave him a credit for being discreet about it while she flaunted her affairs infront of him.

Jesus, did Warren Beatty miss anyone?

[quote] But the truth is that I was feeling sorry for myself. Marlon Brando was still getting good parts, so why was Hollywood pissing on me?

Tony Curtis, you were no Marlon Brando.

Those hairpieces were AWFUL! Are there any pictures of him without the rugs?

I'm sure he was very jealous of Janet Leigh--she could act; he could not.

R216, you nailed it; serviceable at best; it's like she didn't know how to be better and if she ever tried, she was bad/worse.

But there was no one more beautiful.

that turn she gave in the opening credits from Charlie's Angels? go to :44/:45

Aaron Spelling was a genius.

R233

.......

Tony Curtis' vintage hair

Tony Curtis with Mia Farrow, Roman Polanski on the set of Rosemary Baby

With Marilyn

I think Jill was the top in that marriage.

with Christine Kaufman

Say what you want about Tony Curtis but i love his simplicity and honesty

I remember seeing him interviewed by Brian Linehan, decades ago "to me, Rex Reed is gahbage"

Did he ever even try to get a voice coach?

seriously? no HRT? really?

[quote] that turn she gave in the opening credits from Charlie's Angels? go to :44/:45

No "Oh, it's you!" facial expression? I am afraid I am not impressed.

[quote] Say what you want about Tony Curtis but i love his simplicity and honesty

Meh. Useless without self-knowledge, and he didn't have it.

R239, regarding ROSEMARY'S BABY:

In the book & movie Roman Castavet & his coven put a spell on actor Donald Baumgart which causes him to go blind so that Guy (Rosemary's husband) can get a career advancing role. TONY CURTIS provided the voice of Donald Baumgart in the scene where Rosemary calls him to see "if there's been any improvement" since he was struck blind.

CURTIS had made a film with POLANSKI'S wife the previous year so he was a friend of both ROMAN & SHARON and provided the voice partially as a favor.

Sharon Tate's voice-over was about as wooden as any speaking lines I ever heard the poor dear do on-camera. Nice butt-shot of Tony hanging on for dear life, and he was pretty funny inside the plane with the pages flying around. As mentioned upthread, Natalie DID seem like she was having fun in her scenes with Tony in THE GREAT RACE. It's my favorite movie of theirs because they are so great together in it.

Best job of acting Curtis did was in The Boston Strangler. Memorable.

What about that movie of SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL with Tony, Natalie and DL fave Lauren Bacall? Never seen it and never heard anything about it but it would seem to have all the right ingredients.

Natalie and Tony hit the peak of their film stardom in the mid-1960s just as Hollywood was rapidly changing to far more edgy and intelligent work. While they must have been at the top of box office popularity in 1964, by 1967, they were history.

Fun stories, OP, thank you for sharing! Is there anything in TC's book about his ill-fated stint in Neil Simon's play, "I Ought to Be in Pictures"? I seem to recall that there was an "I Quit"/"You're Fired" scenario in the press at the time, with bad blood on both sides after TC was replaced by Ron Liebman. There were even reports that TC walked out in the middle of performance.

Janet's side of the story.

I always loved Janet's old lady hairdo.

Janet seems so dear and lovely! Thanks for posting, r254.

R253

I hit another low point in my acting career in 1980, when Neil Simon and Herb Ross hired me to perform in a play called I Oughta Be in Pictures. I first met Ross at a restaurant. I was having dinner alone when he invited me over to his table and told me he was going to direct a play. Would I consider being in it? He was pleasant enough. I liked the title of the play, and when he told me what it was about—a down-on-his-luck guy who was a writer in the movies—I said I’d do it. I was already leaning in that direction because I had a good relationship with Neil Simon, who wrote the play.

I signed on for a good salary and a percentage, but when we started rehearsals, Ross turned out to be the most disagreeable man I had ever met. He was very dictatorial, with a mean streak that he loosed on everyone in the cast. I was a favorite lightning rod for Ross’s nastiness because he and I disagreed about how I should play my character. He’d tell me what he wanted, and I’d listen and nod, and then I’d turn around and play the part the way I thought it ought to be played. I knew what I was doing. I wanted the character to have the energy and drive that only comes from a New York background. I knew what this guy was like. He was like me: angry, aggressive, and fighting to get out of the mess he was in.

Meanwhile, Neil Simon was rewriting lines like crazy. If the problem with the play was the way I was portraying my character, then why was Neil spending so much time rewriting the script? The material obviously wasn’t working, and it wasn’t my fault. But try telling Ross that. He took being abusive to a new level. In rehearsal, he’d turn to me and say, “Don’t you know how to do this? After all those years in the movies, you’d think you’d know how to make an exit.”

At the end of rehearsal, I’d go out to the parking lot and get into my car, but I didn’t want to go home because things with Penny had hit rock bottom. I had no place else to go, so I drove to a downtown parking garage and slept in my Trans Am, which is no easy thing to do. Where were my friends? I didn’t know. At the time I was so depressed that it didn’t seem like I had any friends at all. I was living life in the lower depths. It was terrible. I told myself there was light at the end of the tunnel, but I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it.

We opened in Los Angeles, and despite constant rewrites that forced me to keep relearning my lines, I could tell from the audience’s reaction that I had done a terrific job. The next stop for the play after our run in LA was Broadway, and I was looking forward to that. Then one evening the propman, who was a friend, called me over. He said, “I overheard Herb Ross talking with Neil backstage, and Herb said, ‘We’ll get rid of him,’ and Neil said, ‘Who will we get?’ and Herb said, ‘Maybe Walter Matthau.’” Well, there was no one else in the play whom Walter could have replaced except me. “You know this for a fact?” I said. “That’s what I heard him say.”

At that very moment I was taking a break, halfway through the evening performance. I thought for a moment. I was being double-teamed. Neil wanted me out because I had negotiated a percentage, and Ross, the fucker, wanted me out because he had no control over me. I might have handled this news with more resilience if my marriage hadn’t been disintegrating and if I wasn’t sleeping fitfully in my car every night. But I just didn’t have much bounce at the time. Between the rewrites, the abuse, and the rejections, I had finally had had it.

When my cue came, I went out onto the stage and played a scene where my girlfriend and I are nasty to each other. My part ended with a tirade, which closed with the line “You’re a mean kid, and I don’t know why.” I ad-libbed an additional “Fuck you,” and then I walked off the stage before I was supposed to, and out of the play. I went up to my dressing room, picked up my little bag, and walked out to my car. I got in, fired it up, and drove off. Ding dong, the witch is dead. Boy, did I feel good. Fuck ’em.

Tony must have had plenty of dick in his time but apart from Danny Kaye does he out any important male actors of the period? no problem outing Debbie Reynolds and Kim Novak but what about the guys? For instance, nothing about RJ Wagner? Laurence Harvey? Dirk Bogarde?

Janet has a weird relationship with the camera. In stills I don't find her all that attractive. In TV or movies when she's moving I find her beautiful.

Outing male stars would have been too uncomfortable for Tony, considering his own orientation.

Who ultimately did replace Tony in the Simon play?

R260 Ron Leibman replaced Tony in the play

Matthau did the movie.

Tony Curtis says divorce from Leigh hurt career

"Curtis acknowledges his extramarital activities were well known and says roles became much harder to get when Hollywood's sympathy shifted to Leigh and their two children, Kelly and future actress Jamie Lee.

"They had movie magazines with headlines like, 'Tony is going with a teenager and his children are crying,'" Curtis told Reuters.

"If a marriage didn't work out, what are you sitting around for?" Curtis said. "But why was I being sacrificed like that? Didn't I have as much right as anyone else to search for my future and my companionship the way I wanted?"

Curtis said he had fallings out with friends like Robert Wagner over what they saw as his mistreatment of Leigh and he can only imagine how he changed in the eyes of producers.

Thanks, R253, I remember hearing something about that debacle at the time. Even though TC was a theatrical neophyte, it's still shockingly unprofessional to your colleagues and the audience to walk out mid-performance!

"Tony must have had plenty of dick in his time but apart from Danny Kaye does he out any important male actors of the period?"

He didn't "out" Danny Kaye. He wondered why Kaye didn't like him and surmised there might be "complicated sexual feelings" involved, but in all likelihood it probably just involved Kaye not liking him. Hmmm....Danny Kaye is supposed to be SO gay. And yet the only gay rumors about him are the ones that say he and Laurence Olivier were lovers. If Kaye was so into cock, why hasn't anyone come forward to talk about hot gay liaisons with the infamous Danny Kaye? WIth all the gay actors in Hollywood and the only one he supposedly had sex with was Olivier? If Kaye was so into cock, why haven't there been sensational articles about his gay affairs? That's certainly a puzzle.

R250 R252 NATALIE & TONY has also starred in KINGS GO FORTH back in '58. NATALIE actually did not enjoy doing THE GREAT RACE as she felt harassed.

r257

and again, wish HRT would chime in occasionally.

Who is "HRT"?

HRT = Herbert Ross Troll

oh God. The Danny Kaye is a manly man troll. I am wondering if it is Dumbvida because Kaye was Jewish and we all know how she really feels about gay people from when she first came to this site. It has to be a straight woman to have so much invested in some dead guy being straight when there have been rumors about him for decades. It sounds like what she used to say when defending Clooney from any talk he was gay or bi.

R266 Bernie pumped Natalie in her trailer. She must have loved that deary......

He is so full of himself. The director told him what he wanted, he didn't listen, the director gets pissed, but the director is the asshole.

I liked him in Houdini

Agree, R273, his best film.

Tony Curtis was sincerely genuine. Love him

They were such beautiful couple

BERLIN (AP) — Christine Kaufmann, an Austrian-born actor who became the country's first Golden Globe winner and was married to Tony Curtis in the 1960s, has died. She was 72. Kaufmann died in Munich after a battle with leukemia, her management company told the dpa news agency Tuesday. Born in 1945, Kaufmann made her acting debut in 1952 and won a Golden Globe for her 1961 Hollywood debut, "Town Without Pity," where she played alongside Kirk Douglas as a German girl raped by American soldiers. She met Curtis the year later while filming "Taras Bulba" and the two married in 1963. They had two daughters before divorcing in 1968. While continuing to act, Kaufmann later in life also wrote health and beauty books, and established her own line of cosmetics.

R277 What a coincidence, we were talking about her in this thread just last month!

I agree, R199. Tony Curtis was the same type of father as Eddie Fisher - an absent and uncaring one.

Reading about his butthurt feelings from his relationship with Janet Lee, 30 or 40 years after the fact - tells me a lot about Curtis. He never grew up.

Debbie Reynolds said in her second autobiography (the updated "Unsinkable" released in 2013) that she was close friends with Janet Lee. Debbie made "Goodbye Charile" with Curtis in 1964 at the height of Debbie's career. She said Curtis was professional and always prepared as an actor - she had no problems working with him.

But Debbie confronted him during the filming of that movie about Curtis saying that Debbie was a secret lesbian and that she was a lousy lover to Eddie Fisher - thus the divorce was her fault. Debbie asked him why he would say those things about her, especially so many years after her divorce from Fisher. Curtis told Debbie that those were the things that his friend Eddie Fisher had told him and he believed them. Debbie told Curtis to believe what he wanted but to stop repeating that. Curtis just mumbled to her and walked away.

R269 Did HRT retire from the DL?

I ended up watching Taras Bulba after reading this thread. Tony Curtis comes off flaming gay next to Yul Brenner, who was hot as fuck. Seriously bad casting to have him play Yul's son. Curtis looked like he was smelling cookies the whole time. Yul oozed masculinity and next to him Curtis would have done better playing his daughter. have always believed Curtis was bi, but now I wonder. That was a lot of gay on film.

All that time he spent at Hugh Hefner's, six kids with different women, banging (or at least trying to) every leading lady he ever worked with, and yet some DL queens will still insist he's purely gay.

I remember watching the movie Trapeze with Tony and Burt Lancaster and thinking that they might have had something going on between them. Unfortunately, Tony doesn't reveal any UST from Burt in his book. Same thing with him and Kirk Douglas in The Vikings.

Disappointed that the OP didn't put any comments about Spartacus and that bathing scene with Sir Laurence Olivier.

Curtis' autobiography is another one that demonstrates how "Hollywood" corrupts so many and strips them of the morals and ethics they may have had when they first went there. They're presented with every immoral and unethical opportunity imaginable and so many of them end up succumbing. They're like an animal that's made its first kill and has tasted blood, and then can't get enough of it. I guess with so many of them not being the most mature people in the first place, and having a strong exhibitionist streak as well, I can see why so many of them end up with such defective personal lives. And all the money and fame in the world can't make up for that.

He had minimal self awareness.