Tony Curtis on Judaism and the film industry - Hay 09 Speaker Interviews

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Tony Curtis on Judaism and the film industry - Hay 09 Speaker Interviews

May 2009

Speakers: Tony Curtis

Why Now?

Tony Curtis, star of Spartacus, Oscar winner for The Defiant Ones and, in his later years, witty raconteur, died this week aged 85. His most famous role in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot saw him playing an impoverished saxophone player who dresses up as a woman to escape the mob. It meant sharing a bunk with Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe and gave rise to the world's most famous Cary Grant impression.

Watch Tony Curtis reminisce about the golden age of Hollywood, an age that he thinks we will never see again. He reveals that the magic that he and Marilyn Monroe shared was simply to make an audience “fall nuts in love with you”, nothing more.

He also reveals that this was in part a learnt magic, one practised in the only school he ever went to, acting school. Upon leaving the navy at the end of World War II he needed to reinvent himself, so said goodbye to his Jewish name, Bernie Shwartz, and chose a new one; “I wanted to be free to create a life of my own.”

“The handsomest boy in town” for a while (cast your mind back to the bath scene in Spartacus) he felt that he had been discriminated against because of his good looks. Watch as he works his roguish charm on Lisa Dwan at last year’s Hay Festival.