A pretty Bronx boy who won over Hollywood

Tony Curtis had an uneven career, but with one cross-dressing masterclass he passed permanently into movie Valhalla, writes DONALD CLARKE

EVEN IN an industry founded on unlikely transformations, the story of Bernie Schwartz seems pretty remarkable. The son of an impoverished Hungarian who never properly spoke English, Bernie somehow managed to blossom into a kiss-curl matinee idol named Tony Curtis. Before he was 30, Curtis, raised in a tough part of the Bronx, had married Janet Leigh, then a rising star, and appeared in such variable (though popular) movies as Son of Ali Baba, Francis the Talking Muleand Houdini.

Yet Tony Curtis, who has died at the age of 85, went on to pull off a still more remarkable metamorphosis. At this stage of his career, Curtis looked to be a middle-ranking tight-wearer – good for medieval epics and second-string westerns – in the style of lightweights such as Rory Calhoun or Tab Hunter. In the years that followed, however, he delivered a handful of key performances that firmly established his reputation as a giant of the industry.

In Alexander Mackendrick's imperishable Sweet Smell of Success(1957), Curtis was incandescent as a press agent with the morals of a rattlesnake. In Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones(1958) he made sense of a potentially gimmicky set up: his racist convict is chained to fellow escapee Sidney Poitier. Then, with Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot(1959), Tony passed permanently into movie Valhalla. His turn as the musician who, while fleeing hoodlums, is forced to become a woman named Daphne (or Geraldine), has become one of the beacons by which film enthusiasts light their way through history.

A few decent roles followed, but Curtis's performances in Sweet Smell of Successand Some Like it Hotremain the twin pinnacles of his career. Forty years before Burt Reynolds subverted his own suavity in Boogie Nightsor Tom Cruise satirised his alleged messianic leanings in Magnolia, Tony had realised that movie performances can – without getting too clever-clever – make gentle comments on the actor beneath the costume. "I call him the boy with the ice-cream face," the tough, corrupt cop says of Curtis's Sydney Falco. Sure enough, Curtis already had a reputation for being a bit too pretty for his own good. He went further in Some Like it Hot when, despite playing alongside Marilyn Monroe, he still managed to be the prettiest girl in the movie. Many appreciated the irony when, decades later, Curtis refused to watch Brokeback Mountain because "Howard Hughes and John Wayne wouldn't like it".

By then, one of many old-school stars who didn’t quite get on with the 1960s, Curtis had become settled into his role as a painter, elder statesman and walking anecdote machine. There are worse things.

Tony Curtis had, it seems, a pretty tough upbringing. His mother was a borderline schizophrenic. His younger brother died in a car accident at the age of nine. Money was always in short supply. “We lived in tenements, father was a tailor, mother was a housekeeper,” he said recently. “My father barely made enough to maintain us, so we lived very frugally. He never made a lot of money because he didn’t speak the language, and by the time he’d learned enough, we were in the middle of the Depression.”

Like so many of his generation, he found his life changed beyond measure by the second World War. Just 19 when he joined the Navy, Curtis returned to New York and, full of mysterious confidence, signed up for acting classes. Those soft, fluttery looks did the trick and, by 1948, he already had an agent and a nascent Hollywood career. His strong Bronx accent was evened out and he was taught how to wield a sabre and fling a spear. The notion that he can somewhere be heard bellowing “Yonduh loiz da kingdom of my faddah!” does seem to be a myth, but traces of the Bronx were still apparent in his knights, pirates and Vikings.

The marriage to Janet Leigh lasted 11 years and, in 1958, gave the world Jamie Leigh Curtis, subsequently a legend in her own right, but Tony later admitted that he rushed into the union. “I shouldn’t have gotten married. But there was a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, but I wanted to become a part of something,” he said.

“Janet had entrée to everybody in the movies, so to me it was very valuable, but I had a good life with her, and two kids.”

Mind you, the failure of that marriage didn’t put him off the institution. Tony got hitched on four further occasions, most recently in 1998.

The success of Some Like it Hotshould have led to a plethora of magnificent opportunities. After all, Paul Newman was born in the same year as Curtis and managed to remain a box-office draw throughout the 1960s and 1970s. But, whereas Newman had emerged from the method, with all its faux informality, Curtis, like Rock Hudson, remained very much a product of the slick 1950s charm school. His only route was to dive deeper and deeper into pastiche.

In the swinging decade, some heavily toothed, implausibly gleaming thing called "Tony Curtis" was unavoidable in such lightweight entertainments as Monte Carlo or Bustand The Great Race. It was brave of him to play the title role in The Boston Strangler, but the film wasn't quite good enough to reboot his career.

Still, a whole new generation discovered him playing Danny Wilde, troubleshooting millionaire, opposite Roger Moore, as the hilariously named Lord Brett Sinclair, in the popular 1970s TV show The Persuaders. Val Guest, veteran British director, remembered the shoot with some queasiness. “Tony was on pot at the time, and I used to have to say ‘Oh, go and have a smoke’, because he always had some gripe of some kind.” he said.

In later years, ever self-aware, Curtis made an art of his own eccentricity and irascibility. The odd, white-haired, somewhat camp gentleman who appeared on the Dame Edna Everage Show was, surely, as much an invention as Daphne or Sydney Falco.

Curtis: the key roles

Sweet Smell of Success(1957): Incandescent as a press agent with the morals of a rattlesnake.

Some Like it Hot(1959): Starred as a musician who, while fleeing hoodlums, is forced to become a woman named Daphne (or Geraldine). Monte Carlo or Bust(1969): In the swinging decade, some heavily toothed, implausibly gleaming thing called "Tony Curtis" was unavoidable.

The Persuaders(1970s) A new generation discovered him playing Danny Wilde, trouble-shooting millionaire, opposite Roger Moore in the popular 1970s TV show.