Tony Curtis (1925 - 2010)

He was born in 1925 when the masses were still swooning for silent icons like Rudolph Valentino. By the late 1950s he was a household name heartthrob himself if not a silent one. Still, that oft imitated Bronx accent "yonda lies the castle of my fadduh" couldn't derail his movie ascendance.

History continually teaches movie stars -- though scant few of them seem to really listen -- that what's important is not the paycheck or even necessarily a great role but working on enough top notch material with top directors to wind up in a few classics. It's one of the only ways to ensure that you are remembered, if screen immortality is indeed your goal.

Curtis, like any star, had his share of duds but history has and will continue to remember him because he appeared in a good share of classics, most notably that one-two-three-four punch of Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958), Some Like it Hot (1959) and Spartacus (1960). That's a four year run of winners that would make any career a major one.

That kind of ascendance is nearly impossible to undo. Sure, huge stars usually fade and become "celebrities" rather than vital working actors... but you can't take the classics away from people.

And aside from often solid work in a wide variety of genres from those classics to thrillers (The Boston Strangler) to romantic comedies (Sex & The Single Girl with my girl Natalie Wood) we must thank Curtis for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis into the world (she's the infant in mama Janet Leigh' arms in the photograph below). That definitely made the world a better place.

The Curtis Family (left to right): Kelly, Tony, Janet Leigh and Jamie Lee

How heady must Curtis & Janet Leigh's "golden couple" years have been? Consider that during one calendar year they delivered unto the world three classics: Jamie Lee Curtis,  Touch of Evil and  The Defiant Ones. Then, they chased that triple with Some Like It Hot, Psycho, Spartacus and The Manchurian Candidate in the last four years of their marriage. It boggles the mind it does.

A few admittedly more timely farewells

• Boy Culture remembers a Shelley Winters anecdote
• Coffee Coffee and More Coffee shares a personal memory and marvels at Curtis ability to slide so easily back and forth between comedies and drama.
• New York Times on his good looks and storied "vigorous heterosexuality" despite the sexually ambiguous roles.
• Vanity Fair his idea of perfect happiness was "top billing"

Related amusements

• Kissing Marilyn Monroe
• Jamie Lee Curtis is Perfect
• Tony & Janet... not the snappiest of dressers

MM@M: "9 out of 10 Hollywood stars depend on LUX"

Mad Men at the Movies. In this series we've been covering movie references made on the 1960s show. Even if you don't watch, you're here because you love talking 'bout the movies. Previously we covered a telling Gidget reference, a throwaway Wizard of Oz bit and the scandal of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Episode 4 mentions an ad campaign that featured Hollywood's A-List actresses.

1.4 "New Amsterdam"
Young account executive Pete Campbell is at dinner with the rich in-laws. The father in-law has some unsolicited advice.

Tom: You've got to get that LUX soap campaign over to Sterling Cooper. Janet Leigh, Natalie Wood -- now, there's a day at the office. I'm telling you, you boys have got it made: Martini lunches, gorgeous women parading through. In my next life I'm coming back as an ad man.

Pete Campbell: Well, there's slightly more to it than that.
Tom: Yeah? Well, I'd keep that to yourself.

When Tom says "Natalie Wood" he gestures briefly toward his wife rather than the son-in-law he's speaking to. Is the Mrs. a fan? It wouldn't be surprising.

Natalie Wood for LUX soap --->

Wood's fame was not yet at its peak in 1960 (West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass and Gypsy coming right up) but she'd been quite famous since the mid 40s. She belonged to that rare breed of actor, the child star who becomes an even bigger teen idol and then a full on A List movie queen. As the book Pictures at a Revolution reminds us, Natalie held an odd cultural position in the 60s. Though Natalie was younger then many of the members of what came to be known as 'New Hollywood'

"she was Old Hollywood to the core... even if the term New Hollywood had been in use, Wood certainly would have considered herself no part of it.

It figures that she held great cross generational appeal.

But back to LUX soap for a minute. Their ad campaign was an enduring familiar one. It had featured legendary Hollywood beauties for decades with slogans like "To him, you're just as lovely as a movie star" and "9 out of 10 Hollywood stars depend on LUX"

Here's a few actressy LUX ads for fun.


An Olivia deHavilland ad from 1941, a German version starring Marlene Dietrich and Claudette Colbert's from 1935.


Rita Hayworth's from 1957. These ads were generally doubling as sneaky movie advertisements... this one for Pal Joey) and Debbie Reynolds' from 1956.

Other references in this episode
Television: a black and white western series... but which one? | Celebrities: Bob Newhart and Lenny Bruce | Books: Psalms and Nursery Rhymes From France | Theater: Bye Bye Birdie
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Worst Workout Clothes - EVER!

Well this month here on Film Experience will focus on the Olympiad so I guess we better get in shape. Tony and Janet will start us off with a few curls. The two seem to have fun staying in shape but Tony's line of designer workout clothes never quite caught on. Too bad. Imagine how much more fun it would be going to the gym if everyone wore short dress pants, tube sock style argyles and dress shoes. I'd go just to snap pictures.

Who is Killing Marion Cotillard?

Vanity Fair's Hitchock photoshoot got a lot of buzz. Particularly this Psycho piece starring Marion Cotillard as Marion Crane... about to meet her end in the shower.
But who is playing "mother" for the Vanity Fair camera?

8th Close-Up of Carrie's Hands

Approximately every 8 days in 2008 we celebrate the 8th Something of Something -- whoa, specific

The rest of the internet is going on and on about Marion Cotillard's Psycho Janet Leigh murder recreation in Vanity Fair , so I thought I'd hit the showers, too. I love Carrie. It's easily my favorite Brian DePalma picture. All of its excesses thrill me from the soft core of the title sequence to everything about Piper Laurie's Jesus freak mama-from-hell to the Psycho like sound cues when Carrie uses her powers.

The first scene is a volleyball game which Carrie loses with her clumsiness ("You eat shit") Right away we know this abuse is common for Carrie from her classmates [Aside: Karen Allen plays the queen bee heather (Chris) and Amy Irving is her veronica (Sue) in this early collection of mean girls] As the opening credits roll, the girls hit the locker room and DePalma and his cinematographer and composer lull you into soft-core land with slow motion nude girls and Carrie's sad theme playing.


The volleyball game, the actual opening scene, is all long and medium shots. So the first true close up of this classic anti-heroine is actually of her hand reaching for the soap, so I thought I'd count that out (pictured above). On the 7th shot, Carrie drops the soap. Something's wrong. uh oh... Which brings us to the 8th closeup of her hands and the reveal which sets this whole bloody (sorry) story in motion


Carrie has become a woman. She thinks she's dying. Her classmates attack mercilessly again ("plug it up! plug it up!"). Her psychic rage is triggered for the first but relatively harmless time. The gym teacher sends her home ... and boy is Carrie in for it when her mama realizes she's received "the curse"

24 Hour Psycho

A new exhibit called Douglas Gordon: Timeline just opened on the 6th floor of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). If you're in New York City between now and early September when the exhibit closes, you must see it.

I know very little about Douglas Gordon as an artist but it's obvious (and not just from the title of the retrospective) that he is very concerned with the elapsing of time. It's most obvious in the first piece which is 24 Hour Psycho, a piece from 1993. In the center of a dark room Psycho is projected (you can look at it from either side) at two frames per second. At that speed it lasts all day.

I have seen Psycho several times and I thought I'd instantaneously know where I was narratively but, as it turns out, film projected at 2 frames per second is quite a different experience. I was lost. I don't know how long it took me to realize that I had just missed the shower scene but I had. The shower sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece is one of the greatest narrative tricks ever played on a moviegoing audience. Murdering your protagonist in the film's first half is simply NOT done. I wasn't alive in 1960 but I've often felt that this film must have been more shocking to audiences then than anything we've ever seen in multiplexes in the following forty some years. You're suddenly rudderless --there is no audience surrogate. When I realized I'd missed the scene I felt a wave of disappointment. But what happened next was surprising to me.

Before I knew it I was in the headspace of Norman Bates himself, feeling my own wave of nausea and guilt (just as Norman does staring at what "Mother" has done), realizing that I had walked into this exhibit and even vaguely planned the time of my arrival to see the murder. Sick!

This exhibit unexpectedly gave me a different Psycho experience than I've ever had before. I felt more inside the film than ever. But I also felt removed enough (without the sound and music) to notice things I've never noticed and to appreciate with renewed clarity what a genius Alfred Hitchcock was. During the clean up sequence that camera barely moves. I'm just staring at that damn showerhead with Norman Bates coming in and out of frame. 99% of directors, particularly modern ones, would've had the camera moving all around Bates and the body. Hitchcock just frames that bright shower with a dark doorway. So it's not just in the murder sequence where he's tricking you into filling all the gorey details in for yourself.

Time is a funny thing. At two frames per second I was mesmerized staring at Norman Bates who was a) moving very very slowly b) feeling guilty very very slowly c) turning off the motel lights very very slowly and d) cleaning up the bathroom very very slowly while Janet Leigh's arm hung limply and tellingly in frame. While all of this was happening very very slowly it turns out the time was flying by. Before I knew it 45 minutes had passed and I had to hurry through the rest of the MoMA exhibit.

Alfred Hitchcock is a famously fetishistic director and Psycho lends itself very well to external fetishizing too. Douglas Gordon isn't the first to scrutinize this work of art and Gus Van Sant (who made the misunderstood recreation) won't be the last. I highly recommend this exhibit. I'll be back to spend more time with the rest of it, and I'll try not to let Norman's psychosis suck me back in for another hour so that I can give the other Gordon pieces their due.

crossposted in an abridged version @ Modern Fabulousity