Actor Tony Curtis died of cardiac arrest on 29 September 2010. Born Bernard Schwartz on 3 June 1925 in the Bronx, New York, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1959 (for his role in The Defiant Ones), and for an Emmy in 1980 (for his role in The Scarlett O’Hara War).
According to his New York Times obituary, “as a performer, Curtis drew first and foremost on his startlingly good looks. With his dark, curly hair, worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley, and plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and wide, full lips, Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early 1950s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in Some Like It Hot (1959); a slave who attracts the interest of a Roman senator (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960); a man attracted to a mysterious blond (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s Goodbye Charlie (1964). But behind the pretty-boy looks could be found a dramatically potent combination of naked ambition and deep vulnerability.…”
After a difficult, poor childhood in New York City, he served in the US Navy during World War II, as a signalman aboard the submarine tender USS Proteus. After the war, he returned to New York, enrolled in acting classes, and began getting work in theater companies in the Catskills. New York casting agent Joyce Selznick signed him, and got him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1948. He worked steadily in a variety of genres from that point on. He made several attempts to establish himself firmly as a dramatic actor (which is how he won his only Oscar nomination), but fans seemed to demand he continue as a comic actor. He also made several unsuccessful forays into series television.
His genre films include: Reflections of Evil (2002), Stargames (1998), The Mummy Lives (1993), Lobster Man from Mars (1989), BrainWaves (1983), The Manitou (1978), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Chamber of Horrors (1966), Goodbye Charlie (1964), Son of Ali Baba (1952), and Francis (1950). He also appeared in an episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1996). And he is also rumored to have a role in the forthcoming Morella (2011).
Curtis also took up painting, and in 2005, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art acquired one of his canvasses for its permanent collection.
He published Tony Curtis: The Autobiography (written with Barry Paris) in 1994, and American Prince: A Memoir (written with Peter Golenbock) in 2008.
Divorced five times, he is survived by his sixth wife, Jill Vandenberg, whom he married in 1998. He is also survived by five of his six children (including actress Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of his first wife, actress Janet Leigh).