Tony Curtis - Hardcover

Tony Curtis; Barry Paris

3.79

117 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434161845 ISBN 13: 9780434161843

Publisher: William Heinemann Ltd, 1994

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Tony Curtis is famous for his roles in films such as "Sweet Smell of Success", "Some Like It Hot" and "The Boston Strangler". He is also renown for saying that kissing Marilyn Monroe was "like kissing Hitler". In this autobiography, the reader can follow his fortunes from life in a New York street gang in the 1930s to the bath scene with Olivier in "Spartacus", from marriage to Janet Leigh, to his descent into alcohol and cocaine addiction in the 1970s. It contains many previously unpublished film stills, production shots and personal snaps.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Lippy memoir of actor/painter/novelist Bernard Schwartz, a hard-luck kid from gang-ridden New York who went to Hollywood in his early 20s and became known as Tony Curtis; told with Paris (Louise Brooks, 1989) inserting interviews with Curtis's friends, co-workers, and family members into the otherwise all-Curtis text. As ever, Curtis thinks well of himself, having checked both a skid in his career and addictions to cocaine and alcohol requiring two trips to the Betty Ford Clinic. Curtis's first trip to BFC didn't take, but family intervention in his yearlong slip planted him right back in the clinic for a second drying out and ego- retooling. Even so, the newer, brighter Curtis cuffs his former directors--Howard Koch, Blake Edwards, Norman Jewison, and Robert Mulligan--for not ``making any effort or gesture toward me. It may sound like sour grapes, but I don't care what it sound like. That's my feeling.'' Meanwhile, he praises Arnold Schwarzenegger for hiring him for the Terminator's directing debut in 1992's lame TV comedy Christmas in Connecticut. Despite what many will think lapses, Curtis's buoyant self-love (Elvis allegedly copied his hair style), active sex life (modestly veiled), and rise from dashing hunk (The Black Shield of Falworth) to determined, ever-committed actor (The Boston Strangler) make for an attractive, highly readable life, filled with gods as friends (Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra) and goddesses as fellow workers (Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Gina Lollobrigida) and wives (Janet Leigh, Christine Kaufmann). Aside from the addiction passages, the highlight here is the filming of Some Like It Hot, the cornerstone of Curtis's huge growth as a talent. Sometimes mean-spirited but...nobody's perfect. Could do very well. (Thirty-five b&w photos--not seen) -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Here's a surprise: a show-biz autobiography that's engagingly written, insightful--and it's by Tony Curtis, no less. Those who remember Curtis mostly for the terrible movies he made in the late 1970s and early 1980s (when he needed the money for drugs) will be surprised (there's that word again) at how many genuinely good movies Curtis made--Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like It Hot, The Defiant Ones, and Spartacus, to name a few. And some readers may also be surprised to learn that Curtis is now a well-known artist. But what will take readers aback most is Curtis' sheer honesty about himself. One gets the distinct feeling that no matter what Curtis did--or to what excesses he did it--he's not here to say he's sorry. If any aspect of his character comes through most clearly, in fact, it's his continuing ability to marvel at himself--his looks, his talent, even his grace and charm. And this self-love affair didn't start when Curtis became an actor, but when he was a street kid growing up in New York. Although this trait could easily become obnoxious, with Curtis, it's somehow endearing, perhaps because it's such a refreshing change from the false humility that most egocentric actors adopt when they turn autobiographer. Curtis' cowriter, Barry Paris, keeps his participation to interjections about Curtis' films and brief interviews with people like the actor's first wife, Janet Leigh, and old friend Walter Matthau. Letting Curtis speak for himself turns out to be a smart move--one final surprise. Ilene Cooper

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