May 18, 2005. Copyright 2005, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Tony Curtis: Still liking it hot
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, May 18, Graphic News:  Tony Curtis, soon to celebrate his 80th birthday, is the ultimate Hollywood survivor: multiple marriages, drug problems and personal tragedy have failed to blight the spirit of the Bronx boy who remained true to the studio system yet somehow stayed ahead.

In the years leading up to his ninth decade, Curtis has shown few signs of either slowing down or toning down the New York attitude and accent that helped to make his name. Indeed, the actor, whose fifth wife is 45 years his junior, is still feisty, flamboyant and even fired up -- an accomplished painter, he now travels the world to exhibit his art.

Born Bernard Schwarz in New York on June 3, 1925, Curtis was the son of a poor Hungarian tailor and his wife. As a youth, he ran with local gangs for a while before choosing drama as the outlet for his abundant energy and dark, matinee idol looks.

A one-way ticket to California led to a contract with Universal Studios, and after years of television parts and minor roles, Curtis burst onto the big screen in his first leading role in The Prince who Was a Thief (1951). Two years later he played magician Harry Houdini in the biopic, Houdini, and he won an Oscar nomination for his part in The Defiant Ones (1958) -- in which he appeared as an escaped convict handcuffed to Sidney Poitier.

Throughout the 1960s Curtis concentrated on light comedies, such as The Great Race and Arriverderci, Baby. But his best known role was as a cross-dressing musician in Some Like It Hot, with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. The film, regularly voted one of the best comedies of all time, was also famous for cast problems, and Monroe was so unpopular on set that Curtis once claimed that kissing her was Òlike kissing Hitler.Ó

Nevertheless, Curtis, a self-confessed womaniser, did fall for leading ladies, including Janet Leigh -- his wife from 1951 to 1962, by whom he had two daughters -- and second wife Christine Kauffman, mother of another two daughters. Two further marriages, the first producing two sons, followed before Curtis wed Jill Vandenberg in 1998. One daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, has shared her fatherÕs success in movies but his elder son, Nicholas, died in 1994 as the result of a heroin overdose.

Despite once being dismissed as a good-looking lightweight, Curtis has proved his worth in dramatic roles in The Boston Strangler (1968) and The Last Tycoon (1976), among others. A role opposite Roger Moore in the cult television series, The Persuaders (1971), added some male fans to the legions of women loyal to the coiffured New Yorker.
/ENDS