Tony Curtis, one of the brightest and most popular Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s, and certanly one of the most handsome, recently died at the age 0f 85. Tony has a star on the fabled Hollywood Walk of Fame, but more importantly, he has his own room at Chelsea Pines.
Back when the Hollywood studio system was just barely still flourishing (just before the advent of television changed the way we got our entertainment forever), Anthony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz to a poor Jewish family in the Bronx in 1925, had hustled his way into a seven-year contract as one of the decorative pretty boys at Universal (where Rock Hudson, Jeff Chandler and George Nader were similarly employed) in a series of B-movies where his looks meant more than his talent. Slowly his roles began to improve in size and quality, helped by his storybook marriage to Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame (the first of six wives) to the point where he won the role of a bigoted Southern escaped convict, shackled to Sidney Poitier, in Stanley Kramer's "The Defiant Ones," which earned him his first and only Oscar nomination.
Many starring roles followed, but two stood out then, and still do today. The better known role was as Joe, the saxophone-playing musician, fleeing across country with Jack Lemmon, both dressed in crazy-funny drag and drooling over Marilyn Monroe, as part of an all-girl band in Billy Wilder's classic comedy, "Some Like It Hot." Demurely pursing his lips and looking almost too pretty in drag as Josephine, Curtis held his own against Monroe, at her charmingly sexy best, and Lemmon, whose comic talents were at full tilt, particularly in his seduction scenes with Monroe, where he very effectively did a dead-on Cary Grant impersonation.
Even better, and two years earlier, Curtis had portrayed a dead-eyed, soulless press agent, sucking up to the vicious newspaper columnist Burt Lancaster, in the unforgettable "Sweet Smell of Success". His Sidney Falco, all sniveling, hustling deadbeat, proved once and for all that Curtis was no longer a male ingenue; this guy was an actor, and attention must be paid.
After too many years of too many sex comedies, in the late 60s Curtis won the title part in "The Boston Strangler," and made a dramatic effort to change his image once again. While his performance was well-received, tastes had changed. While Curtis continued to work sporadically for many years to come, both in film and TV, his best opportunities were over. He found new respect in his second career as a painter, and his artwork has become very collectible.
I had the opportunity to see Curtis in his final public appearance, at a showing of "Success" at the first TCM Film Festival in Hollywood this past April. He was frail and wheelchair-bound, but the spirit was indomitable, and before long there was Sidney Falco up on screen, as grasping and sleazy as ever. That's the Tony Curtis I'll remember.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Steve Sondheim, happy birthday to you!
To paraphrase Steve, which I do an awful lot of, what more can I say? Well, probably a great deal more, so I will. There cannot be enough words to thank this man today, on his 80th birthday (wow!)
My connection to Steve began as a teenager (don't get the wrong idea). Yes, I knew all the words to WEST SIDE and GYPSY and even FORUM (I was a very precocious kid, and a determined show album princess-in-training). But I don't think I really understood what Steve Sondheim's work was all about. That didn't happen until ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. No, I didn't see it; as Angela Lansbury, who starred in the original 9-performance run said in a recent interview, if everyone who says they saw it actually had seen it, it would have run for years. But I did have a ticket for it, to a Saturday matinee in May, and as I did in those days, I bought all seven daily newspapers (yes, there were seven) to read the opening night reviews. They ranged from angry to dismissive to ecstatic, and I was really eager to see it (a show about nonconformity, kind of a musical version of A THOUSAND CLOWNS, I thought). Amazingly, the damn show closed; even with stars like Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury and Harry Guardino, the reviews killed it (thanks again, NY Times) and it disappeared. Filled with early 60s teenage rage and youthful disappointment, I returned my ticket to the Majestic Theatre and got a refund of my $2.50 (yes, that's what shows cost for the last row or two in the balcony in 1964!)
Several weeks later, on my way to see SHE LOVES ME (a miraculous show worth its own blog), I stopped by Sam Goody's record store, as I did every Saturday before my weekly theatre matinee, to see what new original cast recordings had been released. Imagine my surprise when I found a double-fold album of WHISTLE, complete with photos of the production, as though the show was a big hit and would run for years. See, all shows got recorded on the first Sunday after they opened, and even though WHISTLE was already gone, Goddard Lieberson, then-head of Columbia Records, thought so much of the score, he went ahead and recorded it anyway as a labor of love, and the score was dedicated by Steve to Lieberson as a thank you.
So I bought the album, somehow knowing, from all the reviews I had read, that this was no HELLO DOLLY or FUNNY GIRL, the two biggest hits of the season, but something quite different. Even then, when I got it home and started to play it, my precocity was not quite sufficient to fathom the blaring orchestral chords of the overture, the Kay Thompson-like pizzazz of "Me and My Town" or anything else on side one. Confused and ready to put it aside, I flipped the album over and set the needle down on side two, and on came the plaintive voice of Lee Remick singing the title tune. It was the first day of the rest of my life. I sat dumbfounded, listening to her sing this deceptively simple song about "what's hard is simple, what's natural comes hard"...and I began to weep. I played the song over and over that night, and for many nights throughout my life. Steve somehow understood what it was like to be different, to be unlike everyone else, and it spoke to me as nothing else in my first fifteen years of life ever had before. Steve touched my soul in ways I was too young to understand, but his work from that moment forward had a profound effect on the rest of my life.
I never again missed a Sondheim show, and one viewing was never enough. From the Yale swimming pool at the world premiere of THE FROGS to the legendary "puzzle album" tribute (where Steve, tears streaming down his face, ended the evening as the replacement for dear friend Lee Remick, with a simple, poignant performance of "Anyone Can Whistle") to a performance of FOLLIES in Ann Arbor where the four leads were played by the original four Broadway juveniles now playing their older selves 30 years later. Hundreds of performances over 40-odd years (50 really, if you count the original GYPSY with Merman, and why not?), thousands of hours of my life devoted to the man and his art. And that doesn't include playing Senex in FORUM for the Gay Men's Chorus or producing WHISTLE, YOU'RE GONNA LOVE TOMORROW and COMPANY off-Broadway with my spouse, Tom Klebba, under our production company, aptly named Opening Doors (and when I found it had already been used, I chose Something Familiar as an alternate name, of course).
And now we're about to get the Encores revival of WHISTLE with an amazing cast: Sutton Foster, Donna Murphy and Raul Esparza! That's another wow. And his birthday bash at Lincoln Center this past week was as exciting and heartfelt as any Sondheim evening I have spent.
So happy birthday, Steve, and thank you for enriching all our lives for so many years. And as a final quote from Steve from his legendary talk at the 92nd Street Y:
"I had a bow-off line, it's a quote from COMPANY. It's when April says, "I don't have anything more to say." I have a lot more to say, but I don't have anything more to say. Thank you."
No...thank you.
.
My connection to Steve began as a teenager (don't get the wrong idea). Yes, I knew all the words to WEST SIDE and GYPSY and even FORUM (I was a very precocious kid, and a determined show album princess-in-training). But I don't think I really understood what Steve Sondheim's work was all about. That didn't happen until ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. No, I didn't see it; as Angela Lansbury, who starred in the original 9-performance run said in a recent interview, if everyone who says they saw it actually had seen it, it would have run for years. But I did have a ticket for it, to a Saturday matinee in May, and as I did in those days, I bought all seven daily newspapers (yes, there were seven) to read the opening night reviews. They ranged from angry to dismissive to ecstatic, and I was really eager to see it (a show about nonconformity, kind of a musical version of A THOUSAND CLOWNS, I thought). Amazingly, the damn show closed; even with stars like Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury and Harry Guardino, the reviews killed it (thanks again, NY Times) and it disappeared. Filled with early 60s teenage rage and youthful disappointment, I returned my ticket to the Majestic Theatre and got a refund of my $2.50 (yes, that's what shows cost for the last row or two in the balcony in 1964!)
Several weeks later, on my way to see SHE LOVES ME (a miraculous show worth its own blog), I stopped by Sam Goody's record store, as I did every Saturday before my weekly theatre matinee, to see what new original cast recordings had been released. Imagine my surprise when I found a double-fold album of WHISTLE, complete with photos of the production, as though the show was a big hit and would run for years. See, all shows got recorded on the first Sunday after they opened, and even though WHISTLE was already gone, Goddard Lieberson, then-head of Columbia Records, thought so much of the score, he went ahead and recorded it anyway as a labor of love, and the score was dedicated by Steve to Lieberson as a thank you.
So I bought the album, somehow knowing, from all the reviews I had read, that this was no HELLO DOLLY or FUNNY GIRL, the two biggest hits of the season, but something quite different. Even then, when I got it home and started to play it, my precocity was not quite sufficient to fathom the blaring orchestral chords of the overture, the Kay Thompson-like pizzazz of "Me and My Town" or anything else on side one. Confused and ready to put it aside, I flipped the album over and set the needle down on side two, and on came the plaintive voice of Lee Remick singing the title tune. It was the first day of the rest of my life. I sat dumbfounded, listening to her sing this deceptively simple song about "what's hard is simple, what's natural comes hard"...and I began to weep. I played the song over and over that night, and for many nights throughout my life. Steve somehow understood what it was like to be different, to be unlike everyone else, and it spoke to me as nothing else in my first fifteen years of life ever had before. Steve touched my soul in ways I was too young to understand, but his work from that moment forward had a profound effect on the rest of my life.
I never again missed a Sondheim show, and one viewing was never enough. From the Yale swimming pool at the world premiere of THE FROGS to the legendary "puzzle album" tribute (where Steve, tears streaming down his face, ended the evening as the replacement for dear friend Lee Remick, with a simple, poignant performance of "Anyone Can Whistle") to a performance of FOLLIES in Ann Arbor where the four leads were played by the original four Broadway juveniles now playing their older selves 30 years later. Hundreds of performances over 40-odd years (50 really, if you count the original GYPSY with Merman, and why not?), thousands of hours of my life devoted to the man and his art. And that doesn't include playing Senex in FORUM for the Gay Men's Chorus or producing WHISTLE, YOU'RE GONNA LOVE TOMORROW and COMPANY off-Broadway with my spouse, Tom Klebba, under our production company, aptly named Opening Doors (and when I found it had already been used, I chose Something Familiar as an alternate name, of course).
And now we're about to get the Encores revival of WHISTLE with an amazing cast: Sutton Foster, Donna Murphy and Raul Esparza! That's another wow. And his birthday bash at Lincoln Center this past week was as exciting and heartfelt as any Sondheim evening I have spent.
So happy birthday, Steve, and thank you for enriching all our lives for so many years. And as a final quote from Steve from his legendary talk at the 92nd Street Y:
"I had a bow-off line, it's a quote from COMPANY. It's when April says, "I don't have anything more to say." I have a lot more to say, but I don't have anything more to say. Thank you."
No...thank you.
.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Remembering Jean Simmons
When most people hear the name Jean Simmons, they immediately think of the "Kiss" guy (his name is spelled GENE), but some of us think of a delicate, beautiful British-born actress, a two-time Oscar nominee and Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner, whose career spanned six decades and who left a body of work that should have guaranteed her lasting fame but is largely unknown today. At Chelsea Pines Inn, where "there are more stars than there are in heaven," Jean Simmons' star continues to shine as brilliantly as it did during the height of her fame in the 1950s and 60s.
While some of her films are considered classics, it is generally the performances of their male stars that are remembered: Burt Lancaster in ELMER GANTRY (he deservedly won the Oscar, while Ms. Simmons' equally unforgettable portrayal of Sister Sharon Falconer was not even nominated); Olivier's HAMLET (she was nominated at the age of 19 as Ophelia, but Olivier won two Oscars as star and producer); Sinatra and Brando in GUYS AND DOLLS (their egos and acting styles got all the press, but it was Jean who stole the picture and got a Golden Globe as well).
But watch the aching beauty of her performances in such dramas as ALL THE WAY HOME and HOME BEFORE DARK (both sadly unavailable on home video) or in the tv miniseries THE THORN BIRDS; she could command the screen with her stillness and her small gestures and quietly break your heart. And when given the chance, all too seldom, she could cut loose as a terrfic comedienne, as she does as the daffy best friend in the little-known Cary Grant gem, THE GRASS IS GREENER, or in the delighftul THE ACTRESS, where she portrays the young Ruth Gordon as a fledgeling actress. Even the disappointing THE HAPPY ENDING, where she is front and center as an alcoholic wife going through a divorce, seems a whole lot better than it is thanks to her portrayal. And some of us were lucky enough to see her shine on stage, in the national touring company and London edition of the brilliant Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical classic, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
In short, she could do it all, and perhaps because of that, she never quite got her due as one of the screen's great actresses. There are many great stars who were so good in so many different types of movies (Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Doris Day) that the Oscar eluded them throughout their working careers. Sadly, Jean Simmons now joins that illustrious group, but happily for all of us, a number of her great performances can be seen and enjoyed on home video, and Chelsea Pines will always proudly feature the Jean Simmons room.
While some of her films are considered classics, it is generally the performances of their male stars that are remembered: Burt Lancaster in ELMER GANTRY (he deservedly won the Oscar, while Ms. Simmons' equally unforgettable portrayal of Sister Sharon Falconer was not even nominated); Olivier's HAMLET (she was nominated at the age of 19 as Ophelia, but Olivier won two Oscars as star and producer); Sinatra and Brando in GUYS AND DOLLS (their egos and acting styles got all the press, but it was Jean who stole the picture and got a Golden Globe as well).
But watch the aching beauty of her performances in such dramas as ALL THE WAY HOME and HOME BEFORE DARK (both sadly unavailable on home video) or in the tv miniseries THE THORN BIRDS; she could command the screen with her stillness and her small gestures and quietly break your heart. And when given the chance, all too seldom, she could cut loose as a terrfic comedienne, as she does as the daffy best friend in the little-known Cary Grant gem, THE GRASS IS GREENER, or in the delighftul THE ACTRESS, where she portrays the young Ruth Gordon as a fledgeling actress. Even the disappointing THE HAPPY ENDING, where she is front and center as an alcoholic wife going through a divorce, seems a whole lot better than it is thanks to her portrayal. And some of us were lucky enough to see her shine on stage, in the national touring company and London edition of the brilliant Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler musical classic, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
In short, she could do it all, and perhaps because of that, she never quite got her due as one of the screen's great actresses. There are many great stars who were so good in so many different types of movies (Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Doris Day) that the Oscar eluded them throughout their working careers. Sadly, Jean Simmons now joins that illustrious group, but happily for all of us, a number of her great performances can be seen and enjoyed on home video, and Chelsea Pines will always proudly feature the Jean Simmons room.
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