Tony Curtis looking forward -- with a nod to the past
Nearly 50 years after its initial release, "Some Like It Hot" is still hot. And that's a good thing for actor Tony Curtis.
The only surviving lead in the racy 1959 screwball comedy says he got a cut of the gross, thanks to a deal brokered by Lew Wasserman, the late legendary super-agent.
"When things were going really good, he got me percentages of a dozen movies or so," the 82-year-old Curtis said in a recent telephone interview from Las Vegas, where he lives and paints pictures. "I've got those percentages now; monies come in all the time."
"Some Like It Hot," which Curtis said has grossed $80 million, also enjoys the status of an enduring classic and arguably is his best-remembered film in a 60-year career. In 2000, the Billy Wilder-directed comedy earned the No. 1 spot in the American Film Institute's top 100 U.S. film comedies of all time.
It tells the breakneck, Prohibition-era story of two jazz musicians (the cool Curtis and the spastic Jack Lemmon) who dress up as women band members to evade Chicago gangster George Raft. Thrown into the mix is voluptuous singer Marilyn Monroe, whom Curtis romances while pulling a second disguise as a bespectacled millionaire. Complications and double-entendres ensue at the seaside resort where everything converges.
Curtis dated Monroe in the late-1940s, a few years before either of them hit it big in pictures.
"We were lovers, and that's a wonderful thing for me to be able to remember her as," Curtis said in his familiar Bronx accent, which is a little huskier these days.
His memories of working with Monroe a decade later are not as positive. Monroe, who would die in 1962 of a drug overdose, reportedly was unstable during the "Some Like It Hot" shoot, though her bubbly performance enjoys a good reputation.
"She was having a lot of trouble personally," Curtis said. "Her problem was facing life and looking at it. I don't think Marilyn was very smart, but she was yearning to be smart."
He said sharing the screen with Monroe presented another challenge: how not to get upstaged. It was the same, Curtis said, with Lemmon, the esteemed comic actor who passed away in 2001.
"I would listen to him and see the way he played it, and I knew I had to come up with a little more," he said. "To work with the best brings out the best in you. 'Some Like It Hot' was a perfect example of it."
Curtis said he had idolized Raft, the smooth tough guy who knew real-life underworld figures. He said one of the advantages of becoming successful in Hollywood was the ability to seek out his movie heroes at parties.
"He was impeccable in (his) clothes," Curtis said of Raft. "And his attitude was wonderful. He was so pleased he was George Raft. He couldn't understand how that happened to him."
Curtis, whose career burned brightest in the late-1950s and early-1960s, was a contemporary of virile stars Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. He expresses disappointment that he himself was only nominated once for an Academy Award, for 1958's "The Defiant Ones," even though he made such well-received pictures as "Sweet Smell of Success" (1957) and the 1960 epic "Spartacus."
"You couldn't have any more recognition than I've had, and I've loved it for that," he said. "But to have somebody in your family still treat you like a kid out of the gutter, it's been difficult for me just talking about it."
Curtis is slated to appear Sept. 21, 22 and 23 at a Chicago-area revival of "Some Like It Hot." He said he appreciates his success and enjoys interacting with fans but insists he is not on a nostalgia trip.
"I don't relate to anything in the past - it doesn't exist anymore," he said.
"It's like I'm standing on the bow of a ship, like the Queen Mary," Curtis added. "If you're high enough, you don't see where it's cutting in the water. All you see is you're moving forward. It's an incredible experience, and I've always thought of it that way, that for a few minutes in front of you, your life disappears."
Mike Ramsey can be reached at (312) 857-2323 or ghns-ramsey@sbcglobal.net.
IF YOU GO
Film actor Tony Curtis is scheduled to appear Sept. 21, 22 and 23, 2007, at the restaurant and theater Hollywood Blvd., 1001 W. 75th St., Woodridge, Ill., for a revival of his 1959 movie "Some Like It Hot." Curtis is expected to participate in question-and-answer sessions and sign autographs.
For more information, go to www.atriptothemovies.com <http://www.atriptothemovies.com/> .
CURTIS QUIPS
On making 140 films and being married four times: "That really would kill an ordinary man."
His most disappointing movie - a schlocky 1978 horror film, 'The Manitou': "I wanted the special effects to be a little cleaner. …I made a number of them - stiffos. I made them at Universal. I knew what they were. I did the best I could in them."
The type of material his forthcoming autobiography will contain: "Who I went to bed with, who I didn't go to bed with. I never touched or got involved with any guys. All that good stuff."
On the gratitude he has for his career: "All I ever wanted to be in was the movies. I didn't give a (expletive) about anything else -- just put me in the movies. When I got in it, I was so astounded that I made it."