Remembering Tony Curtis 1925 - 2010

Tony Curtis, who died Wednesday at age 85, was one of my favorite actors when I was growing up. The Dialing for Dollars Early Show - a Central Illinois afternoon movie back in the 1970s - always played many of his comedic films. A few of my favorites were Sex and the Single Girl (1964) with Natalie Wood, Boeing Boeing (1965) with Jerry Lewis, The Great Race (1965) with Wood, Jack Lemmon and a terrific pie fight, and, of course, the classic Some Like It Hot (1959) with Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, which I still consider to be one of his best screen performances (he makes a wonderful "Josephine").

It wasn't until years later that I saw Curtis in one of his best dramatic roles in Sweet Smell of Success (1957), in which he plays press agent Sidney Falco opposite Burt Lancaster's powerful newspaper columnist, J.J. Hunsecker. Some of his other memorable movies include Houdini (1953), Trapeze (1956), The Defiant Ones (1958), Operation Petticoat (1959), Spartacus (1960), The Boston Strangler (1968), and The Mirror Crack'd (1980). He also appeared on television in such shows as The Persuaders! (1971-72), McCoy (1975-76), The Users (1978 TV movie), Vega$ (1978-81), Moviola: The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980 TV movie), Roseanne (1996), and The Flintstones (1965), in which he played "Stony Curtis". The handsome actor was married six times, and he and his first wife, actress Janet Leigh (Psycho), were the parents of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Below you can watch Curtis on TV's What's My Line? and Late Night with David Letterman and in a few of his films - Trapeze, Sex and the Single Girl, Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like It Hot and The Great Race.