Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was born on June 3, 1925 in the Bronx, New York, a son of Emanuel Schwartz and his wife Helen Klein. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Mátészalka, Hungary. His father was a tailor and the family lived in the back of the shop, the 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, 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 discharge, Curtis studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator, 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 Universa Pictures and changed his name to Tony Curtis, taking his first name from the novel Anthony Adverse and his last name from “Kurtz”, a surname from his mother’s family. Although the studio taught him fencing and riding, Curtis admits he was at first only interested in girls and money.
Curtis has been married six times. His first (and most famous) wife was the actress Janet Leig (1927–2004), to whom he was married for 11 years (June 4, 1951 – 1962), and with whom he fathered actresses Jamie Lee and Kelly Curtis. “For a while, we were Hollywood’s golden couple,” he says. “I was very dedicated and devoted to Janet and on top of my trade, but in her eyes that goldenness started to wear off. I realized that whatever I was, I wasn’t enough for Janet. That hurt me a lot and broke my heart.” It was Leigh’s third marriage. Curtis, who admits to cheating on her throughout their marriage, left Leigh in 1962 for Christine Kaufmann, the 17-year-old German co-star of his latest film, Taras Bulba.
Curtis’ handprints at the Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park
His son, Nicholas (with Leslie Allen), died of a heroin overdose on April 2, 1994, at the age of 23. Of this, Curtis has said, “As a father you don’t recover from that. There isn’t a moment at night that I don’t remember him.”
