Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis (born June 3, 1925, Bronx, New York, U.S.—died September 29, 2010, Henderson, Nevada) was an American actor whose handsome looks first propelled him to fame in the 1950s. He won critical plaudits as well as broad popularity in both dramatic roles and comic performances.
Schwartz grew up in the Bronx, where he experienced a troubled home life and became a member of a notorious street gang. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he studied drama and did some stage work before going in 1949 to Hollywood, where he adopted the name Tony Curtis. His first starring role was in the swashbuckler The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951). Many of his early movies were panned, but he earned acclaim for his performances in George Marshall’s Houdini (1953), as Harry Houdini; Carol Reed’s Trapeze (1956), as an Italian aerialist; and Sweet Smell of Success (1957), as an unprincipled press agent. In The Defiant Ones (1958), set in the racially segregated South, his portrayal of an escaped white prisoner chained to an African American convict (played by Sidney Poitier) earned Curtis his only Academy Award nomination.
Curtis became better known for his role in Billy Wilder’s screwball comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), in which he and Jack Lemmon are musicians trying to escape the mob. They disguise themselves as women in a band whose lead singer, played by Marilyn Monroe, fails to notice their subterfuge. Curtis’s comedic work was interspersed with more serious roles, such as that of a former slave in Spartacus (1960). His roles were primarily comedic in such films as Blake Edwards’s Operation Petticoat (1959), Robert Mulligan’s The Great Imposter (1961), and Richard Quine’s Sex and the Single Girl (1964).
Curtis made a string of films with his first wife, Janet Leigh, including Houdini, The Perfect Furlough (1958), and Who Was That Lady? (1960), before the couple divorced in 1962 after an 11-year marriage. (One of their two daughters, Jamie Lee Curtis, became a successful actress.) Tony Curtis had recurring roles in the British television series The Persuaders! (1971–72) and in the American TV series Vega$ (1978–81). He continued to perform onstage and in films into the 21st century.