Weird Scenes Week 81 - Tony Curtis

Third Eye Cinema / Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine podcast

Born in abject poverty to a Hungarian immigrant tailor, a young Bernie Schwartz learned one of life's most important lessons at a tender age: you can't rely on anyone but yourself.

Making his way through adversities of language, impoverishment, deaths of loved ones and even a stint in an orphanage, he turned things around after service in the military, using the G.I. Bill to fund his attendance in acting school. One quick change of name, and straight out of some absurd Horatio Alger story, he wound up fast tracked to Hollywood and fame.

Following a run of big budget historical epics, he found a niche in fluffy, sexless comedies, somewhere between the goofy antics of Martin and Lewis and the pillow talk of Rock Hudson and Doris Day. Young, handsome and affable, he became a darling of the teenage fanclub set, to the point where he even spoofed himself on an episode of the Flintstones, voicing a thinly veiled cartoon analogue.
Falling on hard times and still striving for stretch roles outside this typecast safe zone, he wound up shaking the tree in extremis with a dramatization of early serial killer Albert DeSalvo, finding himself critically acclaimed...but seemingly unable to land further roles of note. Struggling with drug use, he still managed to bring a unique character and often riveting if decidedly off kilter sensibility to films as diverse and often absurd as The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, The Manitou and the Mae West oddity Sextette.

Turning increasingly to television in his later years, he used a sleazy Hollywood gossip show as a platform to share some wholly unrelated memories of his past career, drumming up enough interest to publish a successful autobiography and launch a late sideline in painting, before taking one last truly bizarre turn at the very end of his life...

Join us tonight as we speak to the quirky, often questionable but undeniably loveable Tony Curtis, only here on Weird Scenes!

Week 81: Bronx Boy Breaks Box Office - the unusual tale of Tony Curtis

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