American Prince (12 page)

I had a few lines, none of which was particularly memorable, but it was a nice part for a novice. And since we were filming some of the scenes from
City Across the River
in Manhattan, I was able to fly to New York with the rest of the cast. We shot in a downtown tenement area near the Bowery, and I
loved
being in front of the camera in public. I got a kick out of how people in real life responded to me working as an actor. There was a rope separating us from the spectators, and there were all these girls on the other side of that rope batting their eyelashes and jumping with joy whenever I looked in their direction. Steve McNally was pretty well known, but I signed more autographs than anyone else in the cast.

I stayed at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel with the rest of the actors, although every once in a while I would go home and spend an evening with my parents. I did it out of a sense of obligation rather than any real desire to be under their roof. I didn’t want to go back home anymore; I was making my own life now. My parents came to watch me work a few times, and my mother liked to come down with one of her sisters. My mother just loved being around show business.

While we were there shooting
City Across the River,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were working at the Loews Theater in Manhattan. Jerry invited me up to their dressing room, where he was clowning around as usual. Their fans were lined up around the block before their performance, so Jerry and Dean opened up the second-floor dressing room window and yelled down to the throng below. Jerry grabbed me and made me stick my head out, so I waved, and the girls squealed. I always enjoyed the fame that came with acting. As a kid I’d dreamed of getting this kind of response, if only I got my chance. And here I was, living it.

After we finished filming one afternoon, the studio limo took some of the actors back to the Sherry-Netherland Hotel. After they got out, I asked the driver if he would take over me to the President Theater at the New School. It was during school hours on a weekday, so I knew the students at the Dramatic Workshop would be there.

As we drove up, there was Walter Matthau, standing on the sidewalk. On a crazy impulse I said to the driver, “See that guy over there? Pull right up next to him, and then stop.”

Walter was standing there, immersed in a newspaper that might have been
The Racing Form.
He loved betting on the ponies. It was kind of a gloomy day, and although Walter was only about twenty-nine years old, he looked fifty-nine—he always looked older than he was. We pulled up, and Walter peered at the big car, trying to look through the dark glass to see who was inside.

I rolled the window down. Before he could say anything, I said, “I fucked Yvonne De Carlo.”

I rolled up the window and ordered the driver to speed off.

For me, that moment captured all the giddy craziness of Hollywood in those days, and how hungry one young person could be to make his mark.

Getting Shot by Audie Murphy

U
niversal had a
dozen or so young actors and actresses in its stable all starting out at about the same time I was. We all had our various strengths and weaknesses, but I had a weapon in my arsenal that no one else had: my hair. This was a time in America when men had crew cuts. That was the all-American way. In high schools and colleges, the Big Men On Campus all had short hair. Everyone who came back from the war had short hair, and so did politicians, businessmen, you name it. But I thought I looked better with a lot of hair, so I grew it long and twirled it on my forehead so it would look curlier, and on the nape of my neck I combed it into a DA (duck’s ass). I had styled my hair to please myself, but soon after I danced the rumba with Yvonne De Carlo in
Criss Cross,
I discovered that my hair had made me a hero with practically every white teen ager in America.

From 1949 to 1951, I became famous for my hair. I was mentioned in Ed Sullivan’s column, which appeared all over the country, as “the kid with the haircut.” Before I knew it, I was being featured in movie magazines. A newspaper cartoon from back then shows a guy in a factory operating a big machine; the guy has long hair combed back, and the caption says, “Those of you who have Tony Curtis haircuts, stay away from the machinery. Danger.” I loved it. You can’t imagine the publicity my hair generated. The studio didn’t have enough money to pay for that kind of publicity. My hair took on a life of its own. In fact, for a while my haircut was more famous than I was. I felt like introducing myself to people as “the guy with Tony Curtis’s hair.”

It wasn’t long before young guys all across the country started growing their hair long like mine. Elvis Presley was fourteen when
Criss Cross
came out, and it’s not unlikely that he copied my look, as did countless other kids his age. That hair of mine was important, in its own way. What it did was reach out to kids and say,
We can be our own people. We don’t have to wait until we’re adults before we can have our own identities.
The youth of America responded. And as the fan letters kept rolling in, Universal decided to give me bigger and bigger parts.

The next movie I appeared in, later that same year, was called
The Lady Gambles,
starring Barbara Stanwyck, a big-time movie star near the end of her career. Her best roles, like the one she played in
Double Indemnity,
were behind her now, although she was still a very talented actress. This movie was about a woman hooked on gambling who gets beaten up by thugs. I had a scene where I played a bellhop who delivers a telegram to her.

On the day my scene was being shot, I had unfortunately developed a stye in one eye. I went to the director, Michael Gordon, and told him, “My eye is a little swollen.”

He said, “Listen, kid, you’re better looking with one eye than anybody I’ve seen with two. So not to worry.” That reassured me, so I began to think I’d be okay. The direction was:
You’re off camera, facing the room. You look through the door and see Barbara and Steve McNally, and you come into the room. Then you say your line.
My line was “It looks like it’s followed you halfway across the country.”

As I stood outside that door in my bellhop uniform, I kept running that line over and over in my head, trying to say it with different words emphasized to see what sounded best: “It
looks
like it’s followed you halfway across the country. It looks like it’s
followed
you halfway across the country. It looks like it’s followed
you
halfway across the country.”

Michael Gordon was watching me. By the door was a red light. When the light went on, that was my cue to knock. I was standing there, getting ready for the shot, thrilled and a little nervous about my big moment. I heard, “Quiet,” while I was standing there muttering, “It looks like it’s followed you
halfway
across the country.” I kept looking at the light by the door. When that red light went on, that was my cue to knock and go on stage. I wanted to be sure I was ready when it turned red, so I wouldn’t waste any precious time while the camera was rolling.

I looked to my right, and I saw Michael walking toward me. I thought,
What’s he doing back here? Is he going to walk on with me?

He looked at me and said, “How are you feeling, kid?”

“Oh, great,” I said.

He looked at me searchingly and said, “All you want is a tip.” Then he turned around and walked away.

Now, Michael couldn’t have known I had delivered groceries and shined shoes as a boy. But when I worked those jobs, that was exactly how I felt: all I wanted was a tip. So I knew just what he meant. How he nailed me with that, I will never know, but it was perfect.

The red light went on, and I knocked on the door and entered, and when I entered the room I was smiling, looking friendly and helpful. How I said the line no longer mattered as much as turning on the charm while I was delivering that telegram. I was doing my best to get that tip. I said my line, and Barbara Stanwyck reached into her purse and gave me some money. The director yelled cut. My scene was over.

“Excellent,” Barbara said. That meant a lot to me, coming from her.

Michael Gordon had given me the best direction I’d ever gotten up to that point in my career, and believe it or not, I went on to apply it during every movie I made! I never forgot that I wanted my tip—the money they were paying me to make the movie. I wanted to behave professionally, and save the studio money. I wanted good reviews. And, just as important, I wanted everyone to like working with me. After the movie was in the can, I wanted everyone involved to say, “This guy is great. Let’s use him again.”

All you want is the tip.
Neat, huh?

M
y role in
The Lady Gambles
was tiny, but I felt good about it. I was learning, which was what really mattered to me. And appearing in a movie with Barbara Stanwyck was going to raise my profile further. I was also starting to get publicity about all the girls I was going out with. Hedda Hopper mentioned me in her column, and in New York, columnist Doro thy Kilgallen wrote, “A lot of people in Hollywood are turning their heads when they see Tony Curtis.” Mike Connelly, another gossip columnist, printed a phony story about me going out with Barbara Whiting, the younger sister of singer Margaret Whiting. I didn’t care that the story got the facts wrong, as long as it was a girl they were writing about. It meant I was get ting noticed.

In my next movie,
Take One False Step,
I played a race-car driver. For me the big thrill of that movie was getting to meet William Powell, whom I had seen in
The Thin Man
when I was a kid. 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!

Moviemaking at Universal gave me some insight into how quirky actors could be off-camera as well. Lou Costello, of Abbott and Costello fame, liked to take props from the sets and bring them home. If he saw something he liked—a bookcase, a vase, a writing desk—he would tell his stand-in to take it once the scene had finished shooting. The stand-in would put whatever it was under his arm or inside his sweater, carry it outside, and put it in the trunk of Lou’s car.

It didn’t take long for the propman to notice that things were missing, and if Lou was on the set, the propman knew who the culprit was. But it was a ticklish situation; no one wanted to blow the whistle on Lou because he was such a big star. Eventually the propman would go to the head of the department, and they’d confront Lou together.

“Lou, we need that table for tomorrow,” the head of the department would say.

“What table?”

“The one that’s in the trunk of your car.”

“Who put it in the trunk?”

“We don’t know, Lou, but we know it’s there.”

“How do you know that?”

“We just know.”

They’d march out to Lou’s car and open the trunk, and not only would the table be there, but also three or four other items that had disappeared during the week. Lou was contrite and tried to be funny about it, but no one laughed until after he left. Then everyone had a lot of fun at his expense.

I didn’t have a speaking part in my next movie, which was called
Johnny Stool Pigeon.
I played a deaf and dumb druggie who gets killed and whose body is shipped from Mexico to LA in a coffin along with a massive amount of cocaine. I have to say that even though I was dead, I looked sharp. I was wearing a beautiful pin-striped suit as I lay there in my coffin.

Shooting a film could get really tedious, so to relieve the boredom, the crew would play practical jokes on me, the new guy, the green kid who didn’t know the ropes. For instance, they sent me out to get left-handed cans of film. That one didn’t work, but another one did. We were getting ready to shoot the scene with me in the coffin, and I was sitting up in the felt-lined box when the assistant to the director, Marshall Green, shouted to me, “Are you ready?” I said I was. He said, “Okay,” and he called over the nurse who was always available if there was an injury on the set.

“What’s she doing here?” I asked.

“She’s going to be the one who gives you the shot,” he said.

“What shot?”

“Well, you have to be convincing in this scene, and that’s how we do it,” Marshall said. “But maybe we won’t need the nurse’s help this time. Tell you what. You lie back, close your eyes, and act like you’re dead. See if you can convince me.” I did as I was told. Marshall said, “See, you can’t do it.” I sat up, and the nurse came over with a very long hypodermic needle in her hand.

“This shot will relax you,” Marshall said. “You ready?”

“No, no, no,” I said, my heart racing. “You’re not giving me any shot. I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it.” I didn’t care what it meant for my career; I’d reached my limit. That needle was so enormous that my heart was racing just from looking at it. As I started to get out of the coffin, everybody on the set cracked up. That was when I knew it was a setup. They were trying to scare the shit out of me, and it worked. Beautifully. I laughed right along with them, knowing their teasing was a sign of affection.

I lay back in that box, and they shot the scene. Deaf, dumb, and dead: no needle, but I was convincing.

I
had been
in Hollywood barely a year when my parents and my younger brother Robert ambushed me by moving out to Hollywood. I was still living in a rooming house, and they arrived without even telling me they were coming, much the same way my grandmother and her children had left Hungary and showed up in New York to join my grandfather. There was no discussion; their arrival was a fait accompli. My mother had told me they were coming just for a visit, but they abandoned that pretext as soon as they arrived. My mother knew that if they came out, I’d have no choice but to take care of them.

Their arrival totally upset my equilibrium. I thought I had left my poverty-stricken Jewish background behind, along with my given name, Bernie Schwartz. I was Tony Curtis now. This was supposed to be
my
time. I was dedicated to succeeding in the movies, and that was hard work. I kept odd hours. And I had little room in my life for distractions. Now, all of a sudden, I had to find a place for my parents and brother to live. I had to pay their rent. I also had to help them find a special school for my brother, who was already acting far more strangely than my mother ever had. Robert would look up at the sky distractedly for long periods of time. Or he would blink obsessively and display all sorts of other odd tics and say nonsensical things. As he grew older, he acted out more and more, and we all worried that he might become a danger to himself or to others. He needed serious care, beyond what my parents and I could give him.

My parents sent Robert to special doctors who cost me three hundred dollars a visit. I couldn’t keep that up for long. Fortunately, a friend of mine suggested that I call the governor of California to see if he could help me get some state assistance for my brother. The governor connected me with the people at the state agency who handled this sort of thing. They arranged to have Bobby tested, which resulted in his diagnosis of schizophrenia. That diagnosis made Bobby eligible to become a ward of the state. It was hardly an ideal solution, but the truth was that we really had no choice. Given the possibilities, it was the best possible outcome, both for Bobby and for the family. Meanwhile, my mother, who was only too skilled at ignoring reality, kept pushing me to put Bobby in the movies.