Tony Curtis was one of Hollywood’s top stars of the 1950s and ‘60s. After starring in such mindless fodder as NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM (‘52), he proved he was far more than just an uber-handsome face by delivering dramatic performances of complexity and nuance in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (‘57) and THE DEFIANT ONES (‘58), earning an Oscar nomination for best actor for the latter. And he was also a first-rate farceur in such comedy classics as Billy Wilder’s SOME LIKE IT HOT (‘59).

Curtis and his frequent co-star Janet Leigh, his first wife from 1951 to 1962, were La La Land’s golden couple. And it was big news when Leigh gave birth to her daughters Kelly and Jamie Lee, who went on to become a major film star. But the ‘70s weren’t as fruitful. By 1979, he had separated from his third wife, Leslie, and had a raging drug problem. He was very frank during a 1999 TCM Private Screenings interview with Robert Osborne. “Drugs were very important to me,” he confessed. “I used to freebase, smoke cocaine, a lot of alcohol. I did some heroin. I couldn’t work. I didn’t lose jobs. I just didn’t get them.“

He did get a big job during this time, however. Curtis was hired to star at the Mark Taper Forum in late 1979 in Neil Simon’s new play I Ought to Be in Pictures, which would open on Broadway the following spring. The actor left the production before the run ended in Los Angeles. Curtis was equally frank with me in a 2009 Los Angeles Times interview about the experience.

“I hated it,” he said. “I had no place to live. I wasn’t living at home. The marriage was over. I was living in the back of my Trans Am. I was really strung out, and you would think [director] Herb Ross and Neil Simon would have compassion enough to take this coward’s hand if they wanted to. That was really a very difficult time for me.”

Still, it would be four years after the stage experience before he sought help at the Betty Ford Center. But once he got clean, “one thing I found was I was still the same kid I was in New York City who used to run around and mimic people. All of a sudden, I got back to my roots.” The reason why Curtis was so good at playing hard-scrabble characters is that he, too, had a hard knock early life.

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in 1925 in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants from Hungary. His father operated a tailor shop. His mother suffered from schizophrenia and beat Bernie and his two brothers. Finances were so bad at one point, his parents put him and his beloved brother Julius in a state institution. When they returned home, Julius was hit by a car and died in 1938. Young Bernie also had to deal with gangs and anti-Semitism. He got out of the neighborhood during World War II, serving in the Navy on the submarine U.S.S. Proteus.

After the war, he enrolled in acting classes at the New School for Social Research. Curtis captured the attention of casting agent Joyce Selznick, and in 1948, he was signed to a contract at Universal, making his debut in the film noir CRISS CROSS (‘48) as a rumba dancer who makes Burt Lancaster jealous when he cuts a rug with Burt’s girlfriend, played by Yvonne De Carlo. “What a time that was,” he told me in our 2009 interview, a year before his death at 75. “I had never been to California except for when I was in the Navy, and here I was coming out with a movie contract.”

He had noted that coming to Hollywood was an overwhelming experience. “I was a handsome boy. It helped. I didn’t have to kiss anything. I didn’t have to kiss anybody. I was 22 years old. I started doing good, and suddenly I was King Kong at Universal for seven or eight years.” But he had to endure not only such films as NO ROOM FOR THE GROOM but also such lame costume dramas as THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (‘51), which marked his first starring role.

The studio kept casting him in these lightweight vehicles because, “they cost absolutely nothing. Those pictures cost about $200,000, and we shot them in 18 days. They went out and grossed $2.5 million, and that was on a .30 cent movie ticket. There was nobody in town who was grossing that kind of money. I never thought that I didn’t deserve it. I just loved being in movies, you know. I loved the acting lessons and going on set.”

Paramount’s bio-pic HOUDINI (‘53), his first film with Leigh, gave him his first role of heft. Curtis was more than up to the task. He began to get frustrated with the roles at Universal. “I didn’t have guys looking after me,” he said. His agent Lew Wasserman, Curtis noted, “was not on my horizon yet. But as soon I got connected with Wasserman, then the quality of my pictures changed with TRAPEZE, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, THE DEFIANT ONES (‘58) and SOME LIKE IT HOT. I never ended up with an important player until Burt Lancaster in TRAPEZE (‘56).

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS is an extraordinary piece of work, way ahead of its time. The drama, directed by Alexander McKendrick, was not a hit when released but has grown in reputation over the decades. It’s not a comfortable watch, but some of the most brilliant films aren’t. Curtis is remarkable as Sidney Falco, an ambitious, fast-talking Broadway press agent trying to get in good with vile Broadway columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Lancaster).

After that, both Curtis and Sidney Poitier earned Oscar nominations for Stanley Kramer’s THE DEFIANT ONES, a landmark racial drama in which they played escapees from a chain gang. Curtis honed his comedic chops in such Blake Edwards comedies as THE PERFECT FURLOUGH (‘58) with Leigh and OPERATION PETTICOAT (‘59) with Cary Grant before making his mark in the iconic SOME LIKE IT HOT.

Though Lemmon earned an Oscar nomination for his iconic performance, Curtis is equally funny – and downright gorgeous – in this gender-bending farce about two musicians who witness the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and disguises themselves as women in order to hide out in an all-girl dance band. Curtis does a spot-on impression of Grant in SOME LIKE IT HOT when he pretends to be rich oil heir in order to seduce the band singer played by Marilyn Monroe. Over 30 years later, he toured in a theatrical version of the classic comedy, taking the role as the much-married wealthy mama’s boy played by Joe E. Brown in the movie. He ended up leaving the production after a near-fatal bought of pneumonia.

In the 1960s, he appeared in epics like SPARTACUS (‘60) and TARAS BULBA (‘62) and in such dramas as the underrated THE RAT RACE (‘60) with Debbie Reynolds and THE OUTSIDER (‘61), in which he earned strong notices as Native American Ira Hayes, one of the Marines who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. Edwards and Curtis reunited in 1965 for the extravagant comedy THE GREAT RACE, probably his best comedy of that decade. And the hit marked a reunion with his SOME LIKE IT HOT co-star Jack Lemmon.

Curtis lost fans when he had an affair with his 17-year-old TARAS BULBA costar Christine Kaufmann. Curtis divorced Leigh in 1962 and married Kaufmann the following year. Their only other film together was the dreadful WILD AND WONDERFUL (‘64), which was neither. In fact, most of his comedies during the decade wasted his talents, including BOEING BOEING (‘65), a boring sex romp with Jerry Lewis, and ON THE WAY TO THE CRUSADES, I MET A GIRL WHO…(‘67).

I do remember he hit the talk show circuit really hard in 1968 to promote THE BOSTON STRANGLER, his return to dramatic fare. He gives a scary, brave performance as infamous serial killer Albert DeSalvo. Though an Oscar nomination was not in the cards, he did earn a Golden Globe nomination. But the film let him down, and its stereotypical depictions of the LGBQT community are difficult to watch in 2020.

When I interviewed him in at his Brentwood house in 1999, Curtis seemed happy. He had married his sixth wife, horse trainer Jill Vandenberg, and was surrounded by his paintings (he was a well-respected artist) and many cats. The couple would eventually move to Las Vegas, where they operated a horse refuge.

Curtis noted he didn’t have any film projects in the offing. “I don’t like the quality,” he said. “I don’t want to play old men because I ain’t no old man. I’m 73 ½ and that’s what I am. There is nothing in me that equates to what they call age. The most perfect romantic movie I would love to make would be me with a 23-year-old girl. It’s her first time and it’s his last time. Two people who just met at the right time in their lives. Time is not a dilemma. They both need each other. That is what I call a great movie.”