Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. Although the AICN Legends column is still in its infancy, something kind of extraordinary has already happened: someone contacted me with an interview specifically because this column now exists. And this person has access to many, many subjects that would 100 percent qualify for what I have in mind for this career-focused feature. In a perfect world, each subject would have at least 30 minutes to give me and wouldn't be sitting down to talk about any specific new project. Rather, they would sit down to talk about the films that made them as legendary as they are in our eyes (or at least my eyes). These folks don't have to be elderly (although I'm guessing many of them will be); they just have to have made enough of a name for themselves for me to consider them worthy. My column, my rules.
That said, I don't think any of you will dispute the "legend" status of Tony Curtis, who has made somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 movies in his 84 years of life, plus countless appearances in TV movies and series (anyone remember Stony Curtis from "The Flintstones"?). Probably the oldest film I remember really spotting Curtis in was director Anthony Mann's brutal Western WINCHESTER '73, opposite Jimmy Stewart. The '50s and early '60s were very good for Curtis, with choice appearance and lead roles in such works as HOUDINI, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, THE VIKINGS, THE DEFIANT ONES, OPERATION PETTICOAT, THE RAT RACE, THE GREAT IMPOSTER, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, and the riotous THE GREAT RACE. Perhaps the performances Curtis are best known for include 1959's SOME LIKE IT HOT, with Jack Lemmon and Curtis' longtime lady friend Marilyn Monroe; SPARTACUS, a seemingly minor part that got far more interesting when the reissue of the film saw a restored, barely veiled homoerotic sequence between Curtis's slave boy Antoninus and Lawrence Olivier as his master, Marcus Licinius Crassus; and my personal favorite Curtis performance in 1968's THE BOSTON STRANGLER. And we should not forget the 1978 masterpiece THE MANITOU. If you've seen it, you know its greatness; if not, find it and watch it. I'll say no more.
Despite being wheelchair bound, the Tony Curtis of today has more energy than most men half his age, and he was an absolute joy to speak with. When he feels it necessary, he leans in and locks eyes with you. He even at one point reached over and grabbed my shoulder to emphasize a point. The only downside to this interview, in fact, was that it only lasted about 15 minutes, and no one with his salt could do a proper interview with Tony Curtis in that amount of time. Still, I gave it my best shot, and I feel like he was really enjoying the topics I was bringing up. And the good news for this column is that the person who contacted me about doing this interview did so specifically for AICN Legends, with the promise of many more to come in the new year. I've heard a partial list of some of the folks coming to town, and 2010 cannot get here fast enough.
Anyway, here is the maestro Tony Curtis, who was wearing the coolest white cowboy hat during our talk. Maybe in Austin, I'll try to find one just like it. Enjoy…
Capone: Hello, it’s a real pleasure to meet you.
Tony Curtis: Thank you!
Capone: First of all, are you excited about being here this weekend and showing SOME LIKE IT HOT?
TC: Oh yeah, I am. I like Chicago a lot. I started in my acting career working here in town at the Yiddish theater.
Capone: Really?
TC: Someone had seen me in a play in the Catskills and thought it would be great. I said, “I don’t speak the language.” The he says, “We'll write it in English. And let’s change your name.” I said, “My name was Bernard Schwartz. Why would you want to change it?” He goes “Then the neighborhood would think I hired some Italian kid from the neighborhood and changed his name to Bernard Schwartz." I said, “So what would you want to call me?” “Bernard White,” because Schwartz is the opposite of white. I say, “Okay.” So I ended up being Bernard White in Chicago, and I did a season here in the winter.
Capone: Chicago in winter, you can't beat it. In terms of your film roles, do you have one in particular that is maybe not so much your favorite, but one that is closest to your heart, either because it was a significant part for you or one you are especially proud of?
TC: MISTER CORY [1957, dir: Blake Edwards], which was the story of a kid who was living at home in Chicago, and then his family member had a stroke and died and he decided to go out on the road and become what he wanted to be. He could shoot pool, so that started him off with making a little money shooting pool, then the next thing you know he did a lot things for the supposed mob in those days, and then from there he ended up being in charge of one and making enough money to open one and then open his own casino.
Capone: So why is that your favorite?
TC: Because of the way he fought his way through all of it from the beginning. He didn’t allow anything to step in his way. He was completely beyond compare. There was no way to stop him. You know, even when what he had to do was bad, he didn’t give a shit, because it was important to just get it done.
Capone: That reminds me of the quote I read that Frank Sinatra had said you where his favorite actor for reasons that were very similar to that, "because you fucking earned it," I believe were his words.
TC: That's what he said, exactly. With Frank it was neat, because I could feel it in Frank, but you see he had a great gift of a voice and he had that from 14 or 15 or some silly age. I was lucky because I was the handsomest kid in the neighborhood, so that helped me, so that was my voice, and with Frank, his look didn’t manifest itself until later. Do you see how it all is the same? Some things like looks come a little bit later. When it came along for me, I just moved along quickly, and that’s when Frank found me, and we all came from the east. He was a great friend to me.
Capone: In looking over some of the roles you took, you took a lot of chances in some pretty risky film, even SOME LIKE IT HOT. To have two men dressed like that for the whole movie was unheard of at the time. Or the racial message of something like THE DEFIANT ONES.
TC: Right. Or another movie called THE OUTSIDER. I played Ira Hayes, the Indian boy that raised the flag at Iwo Jima. There were always little odd pieces.
Capone: I think actually my personal favorite of just straight acting work of yours is THE BOSTON STRANGLER. I think that was risky at the time.
TC: You're absolutely right, that was a very risky part for me to play.
Capone: Such a very dark film.
TC: Very dark, but I was happy I was in it, because what I was able to bring to it was, like when the curtain opened where darkness had closed, you saw within the man his madness. When Henry Fonda was playing whoever it was, and he asked me at one point “What were you doing when you saw them?” And they cut to me and my hands working in that funny little house, and then they cut back, and there was that funny little thing I was holding. I love that. Imagine if you could switch into your madnesses.
Capone: I’d rather not!
TC: Yeah, tapping into the darkness on all of us. There isn't any one of us who couldn’t tap something, and it’s as quick as changing the channel. It’s quick. I always liken it to that. Wherever you are at, whatever you are doing, hit that button, and all of a sudden there you are in a period of time. You can almost smell it. You can see it. You can hear it. That’s what keeps us from going insane. If we couldn’t do that, we’d be wiped out.
Capone: You were one of those few actors of that time that really went out of your way to not do the same thing twice. A lot of actors that you admired had very well known personas, and they just did that for most of their years on film.
TC: Even as recent as Sylvester Stallone. It’s just a repetition of the same movie. A lot of actors back then did that, and they did that deliberately. That was what brought them their fame, and they weren’t going to do anything to lose it. They liked that agilation.
Capone: And some of my favorite people did that, going back to Spencer Tracy or Jimmy Stewart or Bogart
TC: They went back to movies and performances that they thought were significant.
Capone: Why was it important for you to switch it up?
TC: I wouldn’t do it and I still won't do it. I will not play a part that I have played before; even if he’s grown up, I won’t do it. As I talk with you know, I remember when I was just 22, 23, or 24, and these parts would come up, if it once made me feel reminiscent, then I would do it. That’s how I worked it. If it was reminiscent in any way of some of those earlier movies I made, I wouldn’t even bother with it and that way I stayed out of my own way. I loved it for that.
Capone: Obviously when they reissued SPARTACUS a few years ago, and they had put back in that scene with you and Olivier, it really opened people’s eyes to what that relationship was really about. It’s still almost hard for me to watch that movie and believe that Stanley Kubrick is the guy that directed that. What do you remember about the enigmatic Mr. Kubrick?
TC: Stanley was, with me and with Larry, he didn’t have to talk much, because the three of us understood each other carefully, and we understood when I walked up in that first seen with Larry Olivier, there I was in front of him and Stanley was the one to bring up that next scene, the scene later on in the film, which explained why he wanted me to be his slave boy. Up until that point, people didn’t understand that and really didn’t care about it, you know? They just didn’t. It wasn’t until we did this scene when they showed us that bathtub in the middle of this very ancient Roman style, and there I was ready to massage him, and when he walked out of the bath, he put his arms up and he was completely warmed up.
Capone: Are you glad they put the scene back in?
TC: Oh my God. I did it for only that. When I first read the script, that was the first part I read, and that was right down my alley. I thought, “What a wonderful part that is to be caught by a guy, enslaved by him, and no one knows about what it is until way, way at the end.” It was really nice. It fulfilled my part as Antoninus. Until that, there was no way you'd remember me, and once that scene went in, you saw how you don’t have to manipulate, but you have to hear all of those sounds and every gesture and word tells you the real story.
Capone: I heard you talking about THE GREAT RACE when I came in, featuring maybe the greatest pie fight ever committed to film…
TC: Only because I didn’t get hit!
Capone: You didn’t get hit once, so how did you manage?
TC: We shot the tag of that scene in France way before anything. Blake [Edwards] says “We have got this building and we will have a pie fight. All of you are in the pie fight, come on out.” So five or six of us, we get down there and everybody was getting the pies they had to get hit with, so this guy came up to me with the pies, and I went up to him and said “I’m not taking any.” He said, “Okay,” and I went up to another guy “No no no.” I got to all of those secondaries, so I missed the pies, and it was so exciting hitting these people with pies and the assistant director, what a neat guy, I said “I’m not going to get hit by any of those pies.” He says, “Okay,” and he called in the pie throwers: “He don’t get hit.” “Okay.” Everybody was aiming to not hit me, and that was the whole purpose of it, and I walked through the whole fight never getting hit by any pies at all, so what we did one day would match what we were going to do two weeks from now. So when I walked out, I didn't have a drop of pie on me, maybe a little bit on my face, but that's another story.
[Everyone Laughs]
Capone: Well thank you so much. It was really wonderful to meet you.
TC: Thank you too. It was a pleasure.
Capone: Have a good weekend here.
TC: Thanks a lot!
-- Capone
therealcapone@aintitcoolmail.com
Follow Me On Twitter
