It's Not Over Till the Fat Lady Writes Her Memoirs

This brings us, logically, inevitably, to Tony Curtis, whose co-author, Barry Paris, says that he only took the job co-writing Tony Curtis: The Autobiography because he was impressed by Curtis's "flights of existential fancy." At first, I couldn't tell what he meant by this. Then I got to the part of the book where Tony compares his life to Marlon Brando's, and concludes that the star of The Black Shield of Falworth had a more successful career than the star of A Streetcar Named Desire. Then I got to the part where clothing designer Orry-Kelly decides that Tony Curtis has a nicer ass than Marilyn Monroe's. Then I got to the three-quarter-page photograph of Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier and Sammy Davis Jr. looking quite... quite...fanciful. Finally, I got to the part where Tony declares, "I'm cut from a different cloth. I know who the major players are, and I was one of them. So were Marlon and Elvis and Sinatra and Cary Grant and not a whole lot of others."

But surely, Tony, if you make the list there's room for Pia Zadora?

As opposed to Bette Davis, a vindictive egomaniac who could actually act, or Zsa Zsa Gabor, a harmless airhead who could not, Tony Curtis comes across in his autobiography as a complete and utter schmuck. Who cannot act. Hopelessly oblivious to the yawning chasm that separates him from Brando, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant and even Kirk Douglas, Curtis uses his book to trash his ex-wives, bad-mouth more talented actors and actresses, and whine that he never got the credit he deserved. An unimaginably dishonorable man, Curtis says that anyone making fun of his famous line, "Yondah lies the castle of my faddah," in The Son of Ali Baba is guilty of anti-Semitism. Right, just as anyone making fun of Meg Tilly's ludicrous German-by-way-of-Vancouver accent in The Girl in a Swing must be guilty of Germanophobia.

Born to Hungarian immigrants who clearly had no idea what they were getting into, Tony Curtis survived getting poison ivy on his balls while growing up on the tough streets of the Upper East Side of Manhattan--a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum--and became one of the most successful awful actors in the history of motion pictures. After a hitch in--what else?--the Navy, Curtis avoided the decaying charms of ZaSu Pitts and others of her ilk and became famous as a classic Hollywood pretty boy. While many of his peers vanished into what he charmingly refers to as "The Toilet of No Return," he went on to a huge career in the Urinal of No Return, appearing with far more gifted actors in such good films as Spartacus, Some Like It Hot and The Defiant Ones, and in such bad films as every other Tony Curtis movie.

Though his career has been in rapid decline for as long as anyone reading this article has been alive, Curtis does not seem to have noticed the abyss where he now resides, gamely shilling to this very day as if low-budget trash such as Where is Parsifal? and Lobster Man From Mars or, even worse, co-starring with Dyan Cannon in a TNT remake of a bad 1945 Barbara Stanwyck movie were the signs of a still-vibrant career. A thoroughly awful man who claims he cannot remember the name of his third wife, Curtis provides us with verse and chapter about his assorted drug addictions, trysts with prostitutes and an obligatory stay at the Betty Ford Center, but is largely mute on the subject of his widely-rumored bisexuality. Which is a good thing to be mute about in Hollywood if you still have any hopes of landing a bit part in Lobster Man From Mars II.

Curtis takes pride in the fact that he has never had a bodyguard, though this is probably because even hardened criminals have better things to do with their time than kidnap people like Tony Curtis. He also takes great pride in his paintings--bland ripoffs of Henri Matisse and Joseph Cornell that are several cuts below Anthony Quinn's bold ripoffs of Pablo Picasso and Alberto Giacometti. When all is said and done, he is what he is: one of the biggest schmucks in history.

In the final analysis, what do we learn from reading autobiographies of faded, jaded movie stars? We learn that we should find better things to do with our time. Especially if you consider yourself to be in any way--how shall I say this?--normal. Between Tony Curtis's fond reminiscences about Mae West's daily enemas, Zsa Zsa getting into bed with Burhan the Belgian and Fido, and Bette Davis poised at the top of the landing, radiantly vulgar in that see-through nightie, requesting a glass of warm milk or a red rose that she could suck dry, I was just about ready for a rerun of "Walton Family Thanksgiving" by the time I finished their books. The whole experience taught me one thing: that our entire relationship with movie stars should be limited to watching them on the silver screen, obtaining their autographs or signing their petitions to protect our children from carcinogenic apples. But that's the absolute limit, for movie stars should be seen, but not heard.

As Tony Curtis so aptly puts it: "I don't care if it's Mrs. Sylvester Stallone. There isn't a name anybody can say that will impress me. I've spent too many years being herded by that goat who gets all those sheep into the slaughterhouse. The sheep know there's something wrong, but their instinct to follow is so overwhelming that they go along until it's too late. I can be herded too, but nowadays, my antennae are up. I've learned to take a different approach."

I don't have the faintest idea what the fuck Tony Curtis is talking about here, but my antennae are up and I'm taking a different approach, too. No more celebrity autobiographies for me.

Unless they have plenty of coat hangers, and they're all being used on the authors...

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Joe Queenan wrote "See No Evil" for the April Movieline.

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