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Tony Curtis dead at age 85
Spider7115
Member Posts: 29,704 ✭✭✭
Tony Curtis, a classically handsome movie star who earned an Oscar nomination as an escaped convict in Stanley Kramer's 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones," but whose public preferred him in comic roles in films like "Some Like It Hot" (1959) and "The Great Race" (1965), died Wednesday of a cardiac arrest in his Las Vegas area home. He was 85.
His death was confirmed by the Clark County coroner, The Associated Press reported.
As a performer, Mr. 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, Mr. 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," 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).
His death was confirmed by the Clark County coroner, The Associated Press reported.
As a performer, Mr. 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, Mr. 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," 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).
Comments
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I bet I saw that more than any movie (along with "The 300 Spartans") in the 1960's back when the only way to see something was to actually go to a theater.
Thank the Lord for today's DVDs, LCD TVs and surround sound!!!
Wulfmann
"Fools learn from their own mistakes. I learn from the mistakes of others"
Otto von Bismarck
Trinity +++
He used to tell a great story about him and Walter Mathau in their early days. Mathau and he were getting very few parts and struggling. It was a rainy day & Curtis was in the back of a cab, spied Mathau trudging along the sidewalk head down in the rain - unhappy, hang dog look on his face. As they drove by Curtis had the cabbie honk the horn, he leaned out the window and jubilantly hollared at Mathau "I just (bleeped) Yvonne DeCarlo!!!" and sailed by happy as hell while Mathau continued his sloshing walk.
Always thought that was a funny as hell visual.
BEST DRAMA ... BOSTON STRANGLER.
HE CERTAINLY WILL BE MISSED AND MAY HE REST IN PEACE....
The Great Race was an all time comedy top ten IMO but while Curtis had the lead as the good guy with Natalie Wood it was Jack Lemmon as the evil professor Fink who made the movie (Also playing the look alike gay prince) with Peter Falk as Fink's assistant.
I bet I saw that more than any movie (along with "The 300 Spartans") in the 1960's back when the only way to see something was to actually go to a theater.
Thank the Lord for today's DVDs, LCD TVs and surround sound!!!
Wulfmann
Just for clarification Lemmon played Professor Fate, not Fink. Probably a typo. Anyway one of my all time favorite picturres was The Vkings, 1958, with Kirk Douglas Tony Curtis, Ernest borgnine and Janet Leigh. R.I.P. Mr. Curtis.
"You can't lynch me...I'm a white man"!
The utter disbelief he showed at the idea of being hanged by a white mob, much less along with a black man, was a brilliant piece of acting and something I have always remembered.
The first I remember watching was when he played Houdini...
The under the ice scene when he lost track of the exit hole really got me....
RIP Tony.
6 wifes and an admitted drunk and cocaine addict in his later years....you go Tony and rest in peace
Many of these actors have their "little flaws."
They are "artist types" who tend to be wild in their private lives and not play by the rules.
You get a guy who never snorted coke, never got drunk, and never cheated on his wife, he is a life-long clerk for the IRS. You never saw him in a movie, and if he had been in a movie you wouldn't have wanted to see him.
Paul Gaugain deserted his wife and family of 6 kids and ran off to Tahiti, where he was banging 14 year old girls. He made a painting of his 14 year old girlfriend and today it is worth millions.
His buddy van Gogh was an unemployed manic-depressive who spent years in an insane asylum and who shot himself in the stomach at age 35. He died 3 days later. He lived a pauper and had never sold a painting for more than $100.
Today van Gogh is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time, I saw one his paintings go for 5 million bucks.