Tony Curtis, legendary film star, signing copies of American Prince

November 6 HUNTINGTON, NEW YORK On Nov. 6th, Tony will be signing his new book at the Long Island Cinema Arts Centre prior to two movie screenings (more to come).

November 7 NEW YORK CITY Tony will attend the commissioning of the USS New York. As a Navy Veteran, Tony is being hosted by Stories of Service, an organization which encourages young people to serve their country.

November 8 STAMFORD, CT Tony will signing copies of his new book prior to movie screenings of two of his films at the Avon Theater. More info to come!

November 10 RIDGEWOOD, NJ Tony will be signing copies of his new book, The Making of Some Like it Hot at Bookends.

November 11 NEW YORK CITY Tony will be a Grand Marshall of the 90th anniversary Veteran’s Day Parade. As a Navy Veteran,Tony supports the Stories of Service Organization that encourages young people to serve their country as he did.

November 12 NEW YORK CITY Tony will signing his new book at the 92nd Street Y.

December 4-6 NAPERVILLE, IL Tony will be hosting movie screenings and signing his book at the the newly opened Hollywood Palms Cinema. More info to come!

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925) is an American film actor. He is best known for light comic roles, especially his musician on the run from gangsters in Some Like It Hot (1959) with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. He has also played serious dramatic roles, such as the escaped convict in The Defiant Ones (1958), which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Since 1949, he has appeared in more than 100 films and has made frequent television appearances.

Early life

Curtis was born as Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, New York, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen (née Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz.  His father was a tailor. The family lived in the back of the tailor shop, his parents in one corner and Curtis and his brothers Julius and Robert in another. Curtis has said, “When I was a child Mom beat me up and was very aggressive and antagonistic.” His mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental illness which also affected his brother Robert and led to his institutionalization. When Curtis was eight, he and his younger brother Julius were placed in an orphanage for a month because their parents could not afford to feed them. Four years later, his brother Julius was struck and killed by a truck.

During World War II Curtis served in the United States Navy aboard USS Proteus (AS-19), a submarine tender. On September 2, 1945, he witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from about a mile away.

Following his military service, Curtis studied acting in New York along with Elaine Stritch, Walter Matthau, and Rod Steiger. He was discovered by a talent agent and casting director Joyce Selznick. Curtis claims it was because he “was the handsomest of the boys.” Arriving in Hollywood in 1948 at age 23, he was placed under contract at Universal Pictures and changed his name to Tony Curtis. Although the studio taught him fencing and riding, Curtis admits he was at first only interested in girls and money.

Career

Curtis’s screen debut came uncredited in the Criss Cross playing a rumba dancer. Later, he cemented his reputation with breakout performances such as in the role of the scheming press agent Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster (who also starred in Criss Cross) and an Oscar-nominated performance as a bigoted escaped convict chained to Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones.

He was so popular during the 1950s as a screen hunk that Elvis Presley copied his on-screen ducktail hairstyle.

Curtis also appeared frequently on television; he co-starred with Roger Moore in the TV series The Persuaders!. Later, he co-starred in McCoy and Vega$. In the early 1960s, he was immortalized as “Stony Curtis,” a voice-over guest star on The Flintstones.

Throughout his life, Curtis has enjoyed painting, and since the early 1980s, has painted as a second career. His work commands more than $25,000 a canvas now and he now focuses on painting rather than movies. “I still make movies but I’m not that interested in them any more. But I paint all the time.” In 2007, his painting The Red Table was on display in the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.

Curtis has spoken in the past of his disappointment at never being awarded an Oscar. “My profession has never recognized me sufficiently for my work.”[cite this quote] But in March 2006, Curtis did receive the Sony Ericsson Empire Lifetime Achievement Award. He also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) from France in 1995.

Filmography

* Criss Cross (1949)
* City Across the River (1949)
* The Lady Gambles (1949)
* Take One False Step (1949) (scenes deleted)
* Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949)
* How to Smuggle a Hernia Across the Border (1949) (short subject)
* Woman in Hiding (1950)
* Francis (1950)
* I Was a Shoplifter (1950)
* Sierra (1950)
* Winchester ’73 (1950)
* Kansas Raiders (1950)
* The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951)
* Meet Danny Wilson (1952) (cameo)
* Flesh and Fury (1952)
* No Room for the Groom (1952)
* Son of Ali Baba (1952)
* Houdini (1953)
* The All-American (1953)
* Forbidden (1953)
* Beachhead (1954)
* Johnny Dark (1954)
* The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)
* Six Bridges to Cross (1955)
* So This Is Paris (1955)
* The Purple Mask (1955)
* The Rawhide Years (1955)
* The Square Jungle (1955)
* Trapeze (1956)
* Mister Cory (1957)
* Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
* The Midnight Story (1957)
* The Vikings (1958)
* Kings Go Forth (1958)
* The Defiant Ones (1958)
* The Perfect Furlough (1958)
* Some Like It Hot (1959)
* Operation Petticoat (1959)
* Who Was That Lady? (1960)
* The Rat Race (1960)
* Spartacus (1960)
* Pepe (1960) (cameo)
* The Great Impostor (1961)
* The Outsider (1961)
* Taras Bulba (1962)
* 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962)
* The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) (cameo)
* Captain Newman, M.D. (1963)
* Paris, When It Sizzles (1964) (cameo)
* Wild and Wonderful (1964)
* Goodbye Charlie (1964)
* Sex and the Single Girl (1964)
* The Great Race (1965)
* Boeing Boeing (1965)
* Chamber of Horrors (1966) (cameo)

* Not with My Wife, You Don’t! (1966)
* Arrivederci, Baby! (1966)
* Don’t Make Waves (1967)
* On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who… (1968)
* Rosemary’s Baby (1968) (voice)
* The Boston Strangler (1968)
* Monte Carlo or Bust (1969)
* You Can’t Win ‘Em All (1970)
* Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? (1970)
* The Persuaders! (1971-1972)
* Mission: Monte Carlo (1974)
* Lepke (1975)
* London Conspiracy (1976)
* The Last Tycoon (1976)
* Casanova & Co. (1977)
* Sextette (1978)
* The Manitou (1978)
* The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)
* Double Take (1979)
* Title Shot (1979)
* Little Miss Marker (1980)
* It Rained All Night the Day I Left (1980)
* The Mirror Crack’d (1980)
* The Scarlett O’Hara War (1980)
* Othello, the Black Commando (1982)
* Where Is Parsifal? (1983)
* BrainWaves (1983)
* The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal (1985) (documentary)
* Club Life (1985)
* Insignificance (1985)
* The Last of Philip Banter (1986)
* Balboa (1986)
* The Passenger – Welcome to Germany (1988)
* Lobster Man From Mars (1989)
* Midnight (1989)
* Walter & Carlo In America (1989)
* Prime Target (1991)
* Center of the Web (1992)
* Hugh Hefner: Once Upon a Time (1992) (documentary)
* Naked in New York (1993)
* The Mummy Lives (1993)
* A Century of Cinema (1994) (documentary)
* The Immortals (1995)
* The Celluloid Closet (1995) (documentary)
* Hardball (1997)
* Brittle Glory (1997)
* Alien X Factor (1997)
* Stargames (1998)
* Louis & Frank (1998)
* Play It to the Bone (1999) (cameo)
* Reflections of Evil (2002) (narrator)
* Where’s Marty? (2006)
* Funny Money (2007)
* The Blacksmith and the Carpenter (2007) (voice)
* David & Fatima (2008)
* The Jill & Tony Curtis Story (2008) (documentary feature)

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.