American Prince (16 page)

In the fall of 1952 I met the producer/director George Pal, who was Hungarian, like me; his real name was Julius György Märczincsák. George offered me the lead role in the movie
Houdini.
I absolutely loved the idea. A Hungarian Jew as an escape artist! What an incredible role. And George really wanted me. “Tony,” he said, “I’m not going to make the picture without you.” But we had a problem: this was a Paramount picture, and I was under contract to Universal. Actors sometimes got their studios to let them do “outside pictures,” as they were called, but to get the studio to do you this favor, you had to be able to pull some big strings, and I just didn’t have enough leverage to make that happen.

Then Lew Wasserman, the head of the MCA talent agency, interceded. I had met Lew through Jay Kanter, Marlon’s agent, who also worked at MCA. Jay and I were great friends, so when I told Jay my situation with George, he said, “Let me introduce you to Lew.” I had heard all about Lew; he was legendary, a man who could do more than just put picture deals together. When Jimmy Stewart signed to star in
Winchester ’73,
Lew had made a deal that gave Jimmy a chunk of the profits rather than a flat salary. It was a deal that would change the balance of power in Hollywood, making actors the most important players in the movie business instead of just paid employees.

Jay took me to Palm Springs to meet Lew. I didn’t have an agent at the time, so I asked him, “Will you handle me?” He said yes, so I signed an agency contract with MCA, and in that moment everything changed for me. With Lew Wasserman as my mentor, doors opened at the slightest touch. In those days, Lew was the most intelligent man in the movie industry; it wasn’t even close. Lew Wasserman was so good that MGM wanted him to sell his agency and take over the studio. They sent him a blank piece of paper and said, “This is your contract. You write in whatever numbers you want. Just run the studio.” But he turned the studio down. He said he couldn’t just walk out on all the actors who depended on him for a living. He was the most honorable guy I ever knew.

Lew and I became great friends. I spent a lot of time with him, and Janet and I were invited over for dinners at his home in Palm Springs.

One day Lew said to me, “I’ve got something for you, Tony, but you’ll have to pay for it.” I couldn’t imagine what it was, but he certainly had my full attention. Lew took me down to the basement of a private parking garage, and there was a gleaming, new, silver Rolls-Royce convertible with black upholstery. I had told Lew about my love of cars, especially how much I loved the Rolls-Royce, and Lew had gone out and bought the car for me. His partner owned a big car dealership in St. Louis, so Lew was able to get the car for a terrific price: seven thousand dollars. That was a lot of money in those days, but the list price was more than three times that much.

Janet was also one of Lew’s clients. Aware of how well my career was going, Lew decided to pair Janet up with me in the Houdini movie. If the studio wanted me (and Lew knew they did), they had to take Janet. For this deal, we were a matched pair. I was thrilled for Janet and happy to have her play my wife in the picture, but I wasn’t so sure this was the best thing for my own career. My concern was that I was running into a Douglas Fairbanks–Mary Pickford pairing all over again, only this time with Janet instead of Piper. I loved Janet, and I wanted the best for her, but I hoped that somewhere down the line I could make an important picture of my own.

Preparations for
Houdini
proceeded. When I told the people in the Paramount wardrobe department that my father was a tailor, they told me he could have a job there if he wanted it. My father had already gotten a job clipping articles for Warren Cowet, who was handling my press, but here was a chance for him to work as a tailor again. When Paramount gave me the good news, I immediately ran for the phone to tell my father. But as I was crossing the soundstage, I slipped on a cable and tore all the ligaments in my right knee. The pain was unbelievable, but I just had the knee taped, and we forged ahead. I didn’t even think about holding up production while I recovered. (By the way, if you watch
Houdini
closely, you can see me limping a bit.)

To prepare for the role of Houdini, I had learned how to do magic tricks. The studio hired George Boston, a magician who never had a big career but who was a wonderful teacher, to work with me and show me what magic was all about. I spent four months studying with George before we started shooting. I would drive my Rolls-Royce to work at Paramount, holding the wheel with one hand and doing one-handed cuts with a deck of cards in the other. I wanted my hands to have a feel for the cards the way a musician had a feel for his instruments. After a while I could do great card tricks for people, which made me a popular fixture at Hollywood parties. People were fascinated by how I did my tricks, and I wanted to bring that quality of fascination to the movie.

I’m very proud of the fact that I did all my own stunts for that film. In one scene Houdini is dropped into the Hudson River during wintertime, chained and handcuffed in a big box. Ice freezes over the hole where he’s supposed to come out, and for a moment in the movie it looks like I’m going to drown under the ice. The “ice” we used was really a sheet of wax, suspended a couple of inches above the water. I knew that if I came up under the wax, I’d be able to breathe. I did all the swimming scenes myself too. All that work in the pool was really paying off now, not to mention those years of climbing the El trestles, boxing, and wrestling. Sometimes studio execs came on the set just to see what was going on; making this movie was as much fun as I’d ever had.

At the end of the movie Houdini was handcuffed and immersed upside down in a tank of water. For this scene I had to learn how to get out of handcuffs in a hurry. It wasn’t that difficult, really; there was a certain way of twisting them that freed you. Still, for this shot I had to hold my breath while I escaped the handcuffs and then I had to maneuver my body in a very tight space so I was right side up. There was barely enough room to do it, and honestly, the stunt was a little dangerous. But I pulled it off just fine. In fact, I was feeling so much in control that I started acting like I was choking and running out of air, just to make the scene more exciting. Then I heard thud, thud, and the next thing I knew all the water was running out onto the floor, and I was spilling out along with it. The propmen were standing there with axes, looking scared and very worried.

I scrambled to my feet and said to George Pal, “Why the hell did they do that?”

George said calmly, “Because they thought you were in trouble, Tony. Why else?”

It turned out that my acting was a little too good that time. But the cameraman had filmed the entire sequence and had some good footage, so thankfully we didn’t have to film it again.

No one expected
Houdini
to be a big hit, but it was very successful. My secret hope, however, was that
Houdini
was going to propel me into a whole new kind of filmmaking, where I would be recognized as the serious actor I had always wanted to be. When that didn’t happen, I was terribly disappointed.

The Hollywood Scene

A
fter I married
Janet, I sensed some antagonism from people in Hollywood, perhaps because this Jewish kid had married a shiksa screen idol. It’s possible that I was misreading the signs, but that’s the way I felt. At the same time, marrying Janet also gave me instant entrée to an important Hollywood crowd, the WASP actors and actresses whose axis seemed to be Debbie Reynolds, the popular film and singing star. That group included Gene Kelly and his wife, Henry Fonda and his wife, and George Sidney and his wife. If Debbie liked you, her crowd would put up with you; but if for any reason she didn’t like you, you’d have a lot of trouble in Hollywood. Because of Janet, Debbie and her friends accepted me.

Debbie was a real firecracker—a talented, compassionate person with many good qualities. She had the smash hit “Aba Daba Honeymoon,” and she sang the song “Tammy” and played the title role in the movie
Tammy and the Bachelor.
She also starred in
Singin’ in the Rain
with Gene Kelly. For a long time she was America’s sweetheart, and she still performs on TV. Debbie’s a dynamo.

After Janet and I got married, Janet took me around to all the MGM studio parties, which was all part of working in Hollywood. We’d go to two or three studio parties a week, even if I had to go on the set the next day. I’d drink at a party, I’d go home wasted, and I’d still have to get up at six in the morning to go to work. I didn’t know the ropes well enough yet to ask for a driver, so I drove myself to the studio. And I was never late. I wouldn’t say I followed every studio rule, but when I was working on a film, I showed up on time.

Janet introduced me to all her chums. They were curious to meet me because I had had an impact very quickly, and they wanted to see what this shooting star was all about. For my part, I couldn’t believe that this brash kid from New York was getting to know people like Gene Kelly. I got close to Gene because he had seen some of my work and was impressed that I was such a good fencer. Gene, a major jewel in the MGM crown, starred in a string of Hollywood musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, including
Cover Girl,
with Rita Hayworth, and
Anchors Aweigh,
in which he designed his own dance routines. In 1951 he starred in
An American in Paris,
and of course he was a sensation in
Singin’ in the Rain
in 1952.

Not only was Gene a great dancer, he was one of the most extraordinary athletes I’d ever seen. He could do anything a stuntman could do, which gave us something in common. He also showed himself to be a very generous man when he started inviting me to his house on weekends so he could teach me some of the secrets of performing stunts. I’ll always be grateful to him for that. Gene Kelly was one of the truly outstanding people in the movie profession. He could never have understood the great impact his kindness had on me. To be taught by Gene Kelly was to be taught by the best.

Around this time Janet and I began spending a lot more time with Jerry Lewis. She and I were among the few friends who didn’t succumb to Jerry’s powerful ego—or weren’t put off by it. He liked to make amateur movies at home with a 16mm camera, and we had fun acting in them, along with Sammy Davis Jr. and Jerry’s two little boys, Gary and Ronnie. Jerry put a lot of work into those amateur films, but his photography was not terrific, so his homemade movies were always either under exposed or overexposed.

I didn’t think much of Jerry’s cinematography, but I thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie at his house. Knowing that the door was always open, Janet and I went to Jerry’s almost every night. I saw very little of Dean Martin during that time, because at that time you had to choose one man or the other. The public didn’t know it, but although Dean and Jerry were partners, they weren’t close friends off stage.

Jerry and Dean had met in New York City and decided to form an act. For their first time on stage together, at a club in Atlantic City, they worked from a prepared script of jokes and songs. They absolutely bombed. The club owner told them that if they didn’t do a better job with the next show that evening, they were through. So they threw out the script and decided to ad-lib the whole thing. While Dean sang, Jerry came out in a busboy’s uniform and dropped plates and generally drove Dean crazy while he tried to perform. The audience loved it, and that was the start of Martin and Lewis. After headlining at the Copacabana in New York, they signed a contract with Paramount. Whenever Jerry and Dean would open their show someplace new, we’d all go to see them to show our support. They were the funniest. Jerry played a buffoon with uncanny skill, and Dean smoothly played off whatever Jerry wanted to do.

One of the reasons Jerry embraced Janet and me was because we had become part of the Hollywood establishment. I didn’t know it at the time, but I learned later that Jerry badly wanted to be a part of that firmament. Jerry was very insecure, and sometimes his insecurity made him mean, even nasty. He would say the most awful things about people, sometimes right to their faces. He could turn to me and say, “You think you’re going to be a star? You’ll never be bigger than me.” He treated Dean the same way. Somehow I found a way to just accept this about Jerry and still enjoy him as a friend.

After I’d hung out with Jerry for a while, I got curious about what kind of person Dean was, so I started to seek him out. I soon discovered what a wonderful man he was. After Dean and Jerry broke up in 1956, Dean became a serious dramatic actor. He never stopped singing, of course, and his song “Everybody Loves Somebody” knocked the Beatles song “A Hard Day’s Night” out of the number-one slot on the charts in 1964. In Las Vegas, Dean became a megastar.

Dean introduced me to Frank Sinatra. Frank was from New Jersey, so he liked the fact that I was from New York. We hit it off right away. One night Frank called up and asked Janet and me to come to party he was holding at his house on Carrolwood Drive, high up on a mountain. Ciro’s, the fancy restaurant in town, catered all of Frank’s parties. At dinnertime a van would come up the hill, and two men would unload mountains of food into Frank’s kitchen. When we went to Frank’s we knew we could count on an amazing Italian dinner.

I ended up going up there a lot. By meeting Frank and Dean, all of a sudden I had a new circle of friends, guys I really liked, although they were usually eight or nine years older than I was. I became an honorary member of Frank’s Rat Pack; I never went on stage with Frank, Dean, Sammy, Joey Bishop, or Peter Lawford, but anytime they had a get-together, I was invited. Whenever those guys got up to any kind of mischief, I was there. They treated me like a kid brother, which brought out the best in everyone.

Frank Sinatra was a very important player in the Hollywood game. He was like the sun, with a lot of people revolving around him. Frank represented much of what I admired in a person. He was independent, a free spirit who never spent time worrying about what other people thought of him. When Frank was living in Beverly Hills he wanted to get a license so he could land a helicopter in his backyard. When he was off traveling around the world somewhere, he wanted to fly from wherever he was to the Los Angeles airport, hop in his helicopter at the airport, and fly home. But the neighbors didn’t want the noise, so they blocked the license. Frank was mad as hell, but even he was powerless to do anything about it.

As engaging and interesting as Frank was, he could also be antagonistic, quick-tempered, and dictatorial. He knew that when politically savvy people in Hollywood said, “Don’t worry about that now,” what they really meant was,
Don’t worry about it now because one day you’ll be in a position to fuck ’em.
But Frank didn’t think like that; he wasn’t one to bide his time if he didn’t have to. If Frank got screwed by someone, he would get right on the phone and tell that person how he felt. And that was the end of it. If you screwed Frank, he took your name out of his address book. Forever. You didn’t get a second chance.

When Frank asked you to do him a favor, you didn’t want to say no, so when he asked me if I’d make a cameo appearance as a member of the audience in the movie
Meet Danny Wilson,
naturally I agreed to it. In the movie Frank played a hard-nosed, jaded singer in a club that attracted a lot of celebrities, so the actor Jeff Chandler and I sat there in the club audience, playing ourselves, listening to Frank while he sang.

Frank could be difficult, but I loved being around him. Sometimes it would be eleven thirty at night when he’d call and say, “Get over here.” He’d add, “And don’t bring Janet.” I’d tell Janet, “Frank called, and he wants me to come up to the house. Boys only, he said.” She’d say fine.

I’d arrive, and Frank would say, “We’re going to run a movie.” He had a beautiful screening room at his place where he showed movies whenever he felt like it. He liked action movies, and he particularly liked Gregory Peck. So I’d get up there after midnight, get a drink or two in me, and then once the movie started, often I would fall asleep in one of his comfortable chairs. When it was over, the lights would come up, I’d wake from my slumber, and Frank would serve food while I flirted a little with a couple of the pretty girls who were always part of the scene. Then I’d make my way home about four in the morning. I’d take a shower, go to bed, and a few hours later get up and go to work. It was tiring, but it was always fun.

As a boy, Frank had desperately wanted a set of electric trains, but he never got one; so after he became rich and famous, he decided to make up for what he had missed as a kid. He bought himself an incredibly elaborate set of Lionel trains and had them set up in his house in Palm Springs. The tracks ran through almost every room. You’d come in the front door, step over some train tracks, and go sit in the living room.

“Let me show you my trains,” Frank would shout from the kitchen.

I’d sit down on the couch and yell, “I’m sitting, Frank. Let her roll.”

While I sat there, in came the train, complete with steam whistle, running under my feet, under a table, through a tunnel, then out of the room.

“It’s gone,” I’d yell.

“It’ll be back,” he’d shout.

Then he’d come running in, jump over tracks, and sit down next to me. We’d both sit there, marveling at his fabulous electric trains.

When I met Frank, he was on Hollywood’s shit list because he had left his wife for Ava Gardner, one of the sexiest women in the history of Hollywood. Ava was the one who saw to it that Harry Cohn gave Frank the Oscar-winning role in
From Here to Eternity.
Ava was incredibly beautiful, and anyone who looked at her could see why Frank—and a lot of other people—wanted her. She had married and divorced Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw before she met Frank. All the studio execs had the hots for Ava, including my friend Howard Duff. Ava also went with Howard Hughes, but she dumped him. Frank, of course, had bedded a whole roster of Hollywood stars himself. His appetite for women was well known. He was relentless. But when he and Ava saw each other, that was it, and they got married in 1951.

Unfortunately, Ava’s temper was almost as bad as Frank’s, so the two of them had a very stormy marriage. It lasted six years, though, which wasn’t bad by Hollywood standards. After Ava left Frank, he moved into an apartment in Beverly Hills with a beautiful actress named Jeannie Carmen. But Frank became chronically depressed after he and Ava got divorced. When I met Jeannie, she told me that all Frank did was sit around and play his own music.

Jeannie told me that one night they had been up late talking when she had asked him who his favorite movie star was. He said, “Tony Curtis.” She asked him why. “Because he beat the fucking odds,” Frank said. Hearing that only made me love Frank more. Now I understood why Frank liked me so much. He could relate; he’d beaten the odds too.

You had to know how to handle Frank, and not everyone did. One night Frank invited Nat “King” Cole and me over to see his new hi-fi set. It was huge, about seven feet wide, floor to ceiling. Frank was going with Lauren Bacall then (her husband, Humphrey Bogart, had died about a year before) and they were throwing a dinner party. The food, as always, was catered by Frank’s buddy who owned Ciro’s restaurant in Hollywood.

While Frank was talking to Nat and me, describing the features of the hi-fi set, Lauren Bacall came over.

“Frank, dear, time to eat,” she said.

“We’ll be there in a minute,” Frank said, and continued talking about the hi-fi.

Lauren went over and filled a plate with food, and then she came back and handed the plate to Frank.

“You’ve got to eat, Frank,” she said.

Frank looked at her. While she stood there holding Frank’s silver ware and napkin, he turned the plate upside down, dumped the food onto the floor, and gave the plate back to her. Nat and I just looked at each other. I think Lauren made the right decision when she turned down Frank’s proposal of marriage. They just didn’t bring out the best in each other.