cover image Tony Curtis: The Autobiography

Tony Curtis: The Autobiography

Tony Curtis. William Morrow & Company, $23 (352pp) ISBN 978-0-688-09759-2

Self-serving and related in the argot of a former street kid, this story traces the metamorphosis of Bernie Schwartz, battler against anti-Semitic gangs, into Tony Curtis, screen personality. Leaving his Lower East Side Manhattan neighborhood in 1949 at the age of 23, he arrived in Hollywood with a contract that ultimately led to stardom. Writing with Paris ( Louise Brooks ), the actor dwells equally on his talents and supposedly irresistible appeal to women. To support the latter contention, Curtis lists his many lovers and four wives: first Janet Leigh, mother of two; the second and third wives, who bore two more offspring each; and his recent bride, a young law-school graduate. If Curtis's vanity didn't interfere, one could more readily sympathize with the man as a survivor of a mean childhood and the drug addiction from which he is recovering. Unfortunately, he blames most of his troubles on others, beginning with his parents. Such attacks and small thanks to benefactors ill become the hero of The Defiant Ones , Spartacus , Some Like it Hot and other films. Photos. (Nov.)