Tony Curtis started life in the back room of a Bronx tailor shop, so poor that the city once put him and his brother in an orphanage. He ended it as one of the most famous faces in Hollywood, a star whose grin carried a hundred films.
Between those two points he played almost everything: a scheming press agent, a convict chained to Sidney Poitier, a jazz musician in drag, a slave in Spartacus, and a real-life serial killer. He married six times, fathered six children, and painted his way through a second career in his later years.
Curtis died at 85, in 2010, after a career that spanned six decades. This is his story, from Bernard Schwartz of the Bronx to Tony Curtis of Hollywood.
Quick Facts
| Fact | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Bernard Schwartz |
| Born | June 3, 1925 |
| Died | September 29, 2010, aged 85 |
| Birthplace | New York City, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Spouse | Janet Leigh, Christine Kaufmann, Leslie Allen, Andrea Savio, Lisa Deutsch, Jill Vandenberg |
| Children | 6, including Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis |
| Net Worth | Estimated at $60 million at death by Celebrity Net Worth |
What Was Tony Curtis’s Childhood Like in New York?
Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, at the Fifth Avenue Hospital in East Harlem, Manhattan. He was the first of three boys born to Helen and Emanuel Schwartz, Hungarian Jewish immigrants. His father was a tailor, and the family lived in the back of the shop.
It was a hard upbringing. He spoke only Hungarian until the age of six, which delayed his schooling. His mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and his youngest brother Robert was institutionalised with the same illness. When Curtis was eight, he and his 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.
Curtis ran with a neighbourhood gang, and at eleven a friendly neighbour sent him to a Boy Scout camp, saving him, he felt, from a life of delinquency. He attended Seward Park High School but barely learned to read or write there, and he did not graduate until after he returned from the Navy. His first small acting part came at sixteen, in a school stage play.
How Did the Navy Change Tony Curtis’s Life?
Inspired by Cary Grant’s role in Destination Tokyo and Tyrone Power’s in Crash Dive, Curtis enlisted in the United States Navy and joined the Pacific submarine force. He served aboard the submarine tender USS Proteus as a signalman third class until the end of the Second World War.
On September 2, 1945, Curtis witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from his ship’s signal bridge, about a mile away. It was one of the great moments of the century, and he watched it from a warship deck.
After his discharge he attended City College of New York on the G.I. Bill, then studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in Greenwich Village under the influential German stage director Erwin Piscator. His contemporaries included Elaine Stritch, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Beatrice Arthur and Rod Steiger. While still at college he was discovered by the talent agent Joyce Selznick, the niece of producer David O. Selznick.
How Did Bernard Schwartz Become Tony Curtis?
In 1948, Curtis arrived in Hollywood at the age of 23. In his autobiography he described how, by chance, he met Jack Warner on the plane to California. He signed with Universal Pictures, which changed his name from Bernard Schwartz to Anthony Curtis. The first name came from the novel Anthony Adverse and “Curtis” from Kurtz, a surname in his mother’s family. Anthony was soon shortened to Tony.
At Universal he met a group of unknown young actors also under contract, including Rock Hudson, James Best, Julie Adams and Piper Laurie. Hudson and Curtis both became the studio’s signature 1950s leading men, though they got there by very different routes. Curtis later said he had been a million-to-one shot, the least likely to succeed.
Universal taught him fencing and riding, but Curtis admitted he was initially interested only in girls and money. His uncredited screen debut came in the crime drama Criss Cross in 1949, playing a rumba dancer opposite Yvonne de Carlo. The male star of that film was Burt Lancaster, who would make a number of films with Curtis. In City Across the River, also in 1949, he was credited as Anthony Curtis, and by Kansas Raiders in 1951 he was billed as Tony Curtis.
How Did Tony Curtis Become a Star?
The fan letters did it. Curtis was receiving so much mail that Universal gave him the starring role in The Prince Who Was a Thief in 1951, a swashbuckler set in the Middle East with Piper Laurie. It was a hit at the box office, and Curtis was established.
He followed it with a string of pictures that showed off his looks and energy: the boxing film Flesh and Fury in 1952, Son of Ali Baba in 1952, and Houdini in 1953, in which he played the title role opposite his then-wife Janet Leigh. The mid-1950s brought more of the same, from the musical So This Is Paris to the swashbuckler The Black Shield of Falworth. The films were moderately successful, and his popularity kept growing.
The step up came when he was cast alongside Burt Lancaster and Gina Lollobrigida in Trapeze in 1956. It was one of the biggest hits of the year. In early 1955 he and Leigh had formed their own production company, Curtleigh Productions, and Curtis was no longer just a studio contract player. He was a businessman too.
How Did Sweet Smell of Success Change Tony Curtis’s Career?
In 1957, Burt Lancaster asked for Curtis to play Sidney Falco, the scheming, fawning press agent in Sweet Smell of Success. The film was a box office disappointment, but Curtis, for the first time in his career, received sensational reviews. Critics who had dismissed him as a pretty face suddenly saw an actor.
He consolidated the new reputation immediately. He starred alongside Kirk Douglas and Janet Leigh in The Vikings in 1958, produced by Douglas’s company, which was a major box office hit. He co-starred with Frank Sinatra and Natalie Wood in the war film Kings Go Forth the same year.
Then came the performance that defined his dramatic reputation. In The Defiant Ones in 1958, he played a bigoted white escaped convict chained to a black man, played by Sidney Poitier. At the 31st Academy Awards, Curtis was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. He lost to David Niven in Separate Tables, but the nomination put him in the front rank of serious actors.
Why Is Some Like It Hot Tony Curtis’s Most Famous Film?
In 1959 Curtis co-starred with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, playing Joe, one of two jazz musicians who disguise themselves as women to escape the mob. The film is now considered one of the greatest comedies ever made, and Curtis’s performance, including his dead-on Cary Grant impersonation as the fake millionaire Junior, is a large part of why.
The same year he starred with Cary Grant himself in Operation Petticoat, another huge comedy hit. Curtis ended the 1950s as one of the biggest stars in the world, with dramatic credibility, comedy genius and box-office power all at once.
In 1960 he took a supporting role in the epic Spartacus, again for Kirk Douglas’s Bryna Productions, playing Antoninus, the young slave who befriends Spartacus. It was a generous piece of ensemble acting in a film dominated by its star and producer.
What Happened to Tony Curtis in the 1960s?
The 1960s were a mixed decade for Curtis. He made the biopics The Great Impostor in 1961, playing the con man Ferdinand Waldo Demara, and The Outsider in 1961, playing the war hero Ira Hayes.
He formed new production companies and made 40 Pounds of Trouble, the first motion picture ever filmed at Disneyland. His focus stayed on comedies: The Great Race in 1965 with Natalie Wood and Jack Lemmon for Blake Edwards, which was the most expensive comedy film made up to that time, and Boeing Boeing in 1965 with Jerry Lewis. In the early 1960s he even guest-starred as a voice on The Flintstones, as “Stoney Curtis.”
But his stardom and film career declined considerably after 1960, as new kinds of leading men took over Hollywood. The pretty-boy roles dried up, and Curtis had to find a new way to matter.
How Did The Boston Strangler Revive Tony Curtis?
After a run of poor-performing comedies, Curtis fired his agent and took a pay cut to $100,000 to play the title role in The Boston Strangler in 1968, his first dramatic film in several years. He played Albert DeSalvo, the real-life serial killer, and the response from critics and the public was excellent.
It remains his most significant dramatic performance after the 1950s, and many consider it his finest acting. He gained weight for the role and rebuilt his appearance for it, throwing off the polished image that had defined him.
Television gave him his next long-running success. The British producer Lew Grade signed him for The Persuaders! in 1971, in which he co-starred with Roger Moore as Danny Wilde, an American millionaire playboy. From 1978 to 1981 he co-starred as the Las Vegas casino owner Philip “Slick” Roth in the Aaron Spelling series Vega$. He kept making guest appearances on television into the mid-2000s.
What Was Tony Curtis’s Net Worth at Death?
Celebrity Net Worth estimates that Tony Curtis had a net worth of $60 million at the time of his death in 2010. That is the figure most commonly quoted for him, and like all such totals for stars of his era, it should be understood as an attributed estimate rather than an official valuation.
The fortune was the product of an unusually long and varied earning life. It stretched from his Universal contract years and the peak stardom of the late 1950s, through percentage participations, royalties, his memoirs, and a serious second career as a painter that began in the early 1980s and continued until his death. His paintings sold through galleries and to private collectors.
There is some dispute around the final figure. Social Life Magazine reported a probate estate of around $40 million, while other outlets repeated the $60 million estimate. What is not disputed is that Curtis died a wealthy man, after arriving in Hollywood with nothing. For the fullest public record of his life and career, his biography on Wikipedia is a reliable place to keep reading.
Who Were Tony Curtis’s Six Wives?
Curtis married six times. His first wife was the actress Janet Leigh, whom he married in 1951. They were one of Hollywood’s golden couples of the 1950s and made several films together, including Houdini and The Vikings. The marriage ended in divorce in 1962, after Curtis’s affair with the teenage German actress Christine Kaufmann.
He married Kaufmann in 1963, and they had two daughters before divorcing in 1968. Later that year he married Leslie Allen, and they had two sons before divorcing in 1982. One of those sons, Nicholas, died of a heroin overdose at the age of 23.
His fourth marriage, to Andrea Savio, lasted from 1984 to 1992, and his fifth, to Lisa Deutsch, from 1993 to 1994. In 1998 he married Jill Vandenberg, a horse trainer 45 years his junior, and they remained together until his death.
How Many Children Did Tony Curtis Have?
Curtis fathered six children. With Janet Leigh he had Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis, both of whom became actresses. Jamie Lee Curtis became one of the most successful and beloved actresses of her generation, winning an Academy Award in 2023.
With Christine Kaufmann he had two daughters, Alexandra and Allegra, the latter also an actress. With Leslie Allen he had two sons, Nicholas and Benjamin. Nicholas predeceased him, dying in 1994.
The family story had a painful final chapter. In May 2010, months before he died, Curtis reportedly rewrote his will and trust, leaving his entire estate to his widow Jill and deliberately writing out his five surviving children. His daughter Allegra said the family had been blindsided and claimed their father had been influenced. The dispute turned a private inheritance fight into a public one.
How Did Tony Curtis Spend His Final Years?
Curtis never stopped working, but in his later years his second career as a painter became his great passion. Beginning in the early 1980s, he painted seriously, and his colourful, expressive work was shown in galleries. He concentrated on painting above all else in the last years of his life.
He spoke openly of his disappointment at never being awarded an Oscar. In March 2006 he received the Sony Ericsson Empire Lifetime Achievement Award. He had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, inducted in 1960, and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France in 1995.
In 2002 he appeared in the national tour of Some Like It Hot, the stage musical based on the film, playing the supporting role of Osgood Fielding. It was a lovely full-circle moment, the old star saluting the film that had made him immortal.
How Did Tony Curtis Die?
Tony Curtis died of cardiac arrest at his home in Henderson, Nevada, on September 29, 2010. He was 85 years old. He had been in declining health, and his death came just months after he had rewritten his will.
He was buried at Palm Memorial Park in Las Vegas. He had outlived almost all of his golden-age contemporaries, the last great grin of the 1950s studio system. His daughter Jamie Lee Curtis spoke warmly of him afterwards, and tributes poured in from across Hollywood for a man who had been famous for more than sixty years.
Lesser-Known Facts About Tony Curtis
- Curtis spoke only Hungarian until the age of six, which delayed his schooling.
- He met Jack Warner by chance on the plane to California, on his way to Hollywood in 1948.
- He witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, from the signal bridge of the USS Proteus.
- His film 40 Pounds of Trouble was the first motion picture ever filmed at Disneyland.
- He voiced a guest character called “Stoney Curtis” on The Flintstones in the early 1960s.
- He took the name Anthony Curtis partly from the novel Anthony Adverse and partly from Kurtz, a surname in his mother’s family.
- He was an accomplished painter from the early 1980s onward, with gallery representation for his work.
- He openly admitted his disappointment at never winning an Academy Award.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old was Tony Curtis when he died?
Tony Curtis died on September 29, 2010, at the age of 85. He had been born on June 3, 1925, in New York City, and he died of cardiac arrest at his home in Henderson, Nevada.
What was Tony Curtis’s real name?
His real name was Bernard Schwartz. Universal Pictures changed it to Anthony Curtis when he signed with the studio in 1948, and Anthony was soon shortened to Tony.
How many times was Tony Curtis married?
He married six times: to Janet Leigh from 1951 to 1962, to Christine Kaufmann from 1963 to 1968, to Leslie Allen from 1968 to 1982, to Andrea Savio from 1984 to 1992, to Lisa Deutsch from 1993 to 1994, and to Jill Vandenberg from 1998 until his death in 2010.
How many children did Tony Curtis have?
He had six children: Kelly and Jamie Lee Curtis with Janet Leigh, Alexandra and Allegra Curtis with Christine Kaufmann, and Nicholas and Benjamin Curtis with Leslie Allen. Nicholas died in 1994.
What was Tony Curtis’s net worth?
Celebrity Net Worth estimates his net worth at the time of his death in 2010 at $60 million. It is an attributed estimate, not an official valuation, and some reports put the probate estate lower.
Did Tony Curtis ever win an Oscar?
No. He was nominated once, for Best Actor for The Defiant Ones in 1958, but lost to David Niven. He spoke openly about his disappointment at never winning, and received a lifetime achievement award in 2006.
Final Thoughts
Tony Curtis was the great survivor of the studio system. He arrived with nothing, a Bronx kid who could barely read, and he talked his way into a career that lasted sixty years and more than a hundred films.
What made him last was not just the looks, though the looks opened every door. It was the work ethic and the willingness to risk embarrassment: playing a press agent worm in Sweet Smell of Success, going in drag in Some Like It Hot, turning himself into a serial killer for The Boston Strangler. He was never afraid to be unlikable on screen.
Burt Lancaster gave him his first big chance in Trapeze and then his first great role in Sweet Smell of Success, and Curtis never forgot it.
Pingback: Sidney Poitier: Age, Wife, Children, Net Worth & Movies - DailyBlogFeed