He also leaves behind fans all over the world.”ĭescribing Curtis’ death as “a personal loss for me,” actor Kirk Douglas said in a statement Thursday: “Tony and I were two Jewish kids from poverty-level families who could not believe our luck in making it as big Hollywood stars. “He leaves behind children and their families who loved him and respected him and a wife and in-laws who were devoted to him.

“My father leaves behind a legacy of great performances in movies and in his paintings and assemblages,” Jamie Lee Curtis said in a statement. He also lived like a movie star and was married five times, most notably to actress Janet Leigh, a union that produced another movie star, Jamie Lee Curtis. The former Bernie Schwartz went on to become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 1950s and ‘60s, one whose early reputation as a “pretty boy” tended to blur recognition of his growth and range as an actor who starred in some of his era’s landmark films.Ĭurtis, who died of cardiopulmonary arrest Wednesday night at his home in Henderson, Nev., at age 85, delivered memorable performances in films such as Billy Wilder’s classic comedy “Some Like It Hot” and dramatic roles in “The Defiant Ones” and “Sweet Smell of Success.”Īnd in 1959, he received an Academy Award nomination for best actor in “The Defiant Ones,” the convict-escape film in which he was chained to costar Sidney Poitier.

“I got into movies so easy it was scary,” Curtis told the Denver Post in 1996. Sent west for a screen test, he signed a seven-year contract at $75 a week. Tony Curtis was a strikingly handsome 23-year-old native New Yorker playing the lead in an off-Broadway production of “Golden Boy” in 1948 when he was spotted by a Universal Pictures talent scout.

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