
Relax, Bernie-You Made It!—Tony Curtis
At the Sands Hotel, a gay and gaudy Las Vegas establishment, there is a swimming pool, as there is at every other Las Vegas hotel. On this particular day, a young couple lay soaking up the sun by the side of the Sands’ pool. The girl, blonde and curvesome, was stretched on a lounge and the young man was flat on his back on a bright orange pad that accentuated the deep tan of his body.
Janet opened one eye and looked down at her husband. “What’s so wonderful?” she said. “You look like the Cheshire cat.”
Tony patted his chest contentedly and sighed. “I can purr, too. Want to hear me?”
He sat up then. “You know something? This is the first real vacation we’ve had since we were married.”
“It’s the first vacation you’ve had in seven years,” said Janet.
Seven years, mused Tony. It seemed now as though he’d been in Hollywood all his life. New York and the poverty and the slums and the dirty snow and sultry nights and then the war—all of it seemed so far away now.
“I’m glad I didn’t stay there,” he said out loud. “Stay where?”
“New York. I’ve been awfully lucky, you know that? I wanted to be a movie star, and no matter which way I turned everything seemed to lead to it.”
Janet giggled. “What do you suppose you’d have done for a living if you’d stayed back east?”
“I’d have ended up in the garment industry. Pushing one of those closets on wheels through the traffic.” He lighted a cigarette. “As a matter of fact, I bet I would have. There was a girl—her father owned a pants factory or something—and I think she had her eye on me.”
“Do tell,” said Janet.
“I was adorable, didn’t you know?” He flourished his cigarette in an exaggerated gesture. “No kidding, though, I bet Id have ended up with her. We’d have had a batch of kids and gone to the movies on Saturday nights. I’d have played stickball on Sundays and shot pool on Wednesday nights. And then, because I was his son-in-law, the old man would have given me a good job and wed have spent a month in Florida every year. And Id have been miserable.”
“At least you’d have had a month off every year. Out here you cant get more than five days to catch your breath.”
Tony grunted in agreement. This time he had had five whole weeks. Time to catch up and look back. Time for a breather.

The garment industry made him think of the day, not too long ago, when he had addressed hundreds of members of the California Apparel Creators, who had given him an award as the best-dressed man of 1954. That had tickled him, that award. He used to be criticized for his clothes, and no wonder. He’d gone hog wild when he began making good money and gone out and bought a wild assortment of stuff. Once he’d even gone in for string ties. He couldn’t figure why these people had chosen him and he thought to himself that they should see that drawer at home that was filled with bright red socks. Maybe it had been the fact that he’d switched to the new narrow trousers and shirts with pleated or lace fronts, the “Edwardian Look” that he’d taken to with some trepidation. Nonetheless, he’d made a speech to the people and ad libbed the whole thing. He’d told them his father was a schneider, the Hebrew word for tailor, and said when he got home that night and told Pop he’d talked to people from the garment industry, Manny would slap him on the back and say, “Congratulations, son! You’ve finally made it!” It had brought a laugh, and he wondered now at the ease with which he had spoken to all those people. Seven years ago he’d have dropped dead with fright.
He’d learned a lot, there was no doubt about it, and he was happy, really happy these days.
Hollywood, he mused, meant harder work than most people realized. Take the roles he’d played. Six Bridges To Cross was the only one for which he didn’t have to spend months of learning to do something. For The Rawhide Years he’d learned to ride like a cowhand. So This Is Paris had required singing and dancing. For Flesh And Fury he not only boxed, but had to learn to portray a deaf mute. In Purple Mask he fenced, in Johnny Dark he drove a racing car, in Houdini he mastered sleight-of-hand. For The All-American he’d had to learn football for those bone-bruising closeups. The next picture coming up, Trapeze, was going to mean learning how to be an aerialist—if he didn’t break his neck first. Even his screen test, he remembered, had required weeks of work with a stunt man, learning how to leap, dive and fall. He smiled to himself, thinking of the day he had gone home black-and-blue and Mom had covered her eyes with her hands and moaned, “Give all this up! It! isn’t worth it!”

Had it been, he asked himself, and knew the answer before the question formed in his mind. Sure it had been hard work, but he was doing what he liked. And furthermore his roles, difficult though they might have been, represented dreams come true. Hadn’t he wanted to be a cowboy when he was a kid? And hadn’t he daydreamed about the derring-do of fencing, of being a football hero and a fighter, of being a daring young man on a flying trapeze? Hollywood had given him all this, and he had found it stimulating and exciting. It was a challenge, he told himself, and a damned sight more interesting than he would have found the garment industry.
He thought of himself as he had been when he came to Hollywood seven years ago. A brash kid, consumed with ambition, who didn’t known a camera from a mike boom, least of all the protocol of the town. He grinned, remembering how uninhibited he had been, how he used to walk into producers’ offices unasked, and talk to them as though they were his uncles. How he even used to borrow money from them. They had seemed to take it with good grace, but it was a wonder he hadn’t been fired twenty times over. In retrospect, he could see now why some people had looked at him askance and wondered what kind of a bit he was pulling off; how others, trusting him more, were bowled over by his candor and seemingly refreshed by it. He recalled the woman who had met him at one of the first Hollywood shindigs he had attended, and how he had overheard her say later, “How disarming that boy is!” He had wondered at the time what disarming meant. Without arms, he had figured, taking the word apart, and didn’t know whether he should be pleased or angry.

He thought about the places he’d lived, that little house they had when Mom and Pop first came out, and how he used to ride to the studio on a bike, and then wash his clothes on Sundays to help Mom. And the second house, the one in the valley that he’d bought that furniture for. And then rooming with Marlon for a while, and what a ball that had been. He’d gone home again with his parents and brother Bobbie before he married Janet, and then they’d had the apartment on Wilshire Boulevard. Him, Bernie Schwartz, on Wilshire Boulevard yet. And then the penthouse with all those stairs, and a flash of pain crossed his mind as he wondered for the thousandth time if it had been those stairs that had caused Janet to lose the baby. And the last place, the one where they lived now on Coldwater Canyon. This was the best, and the happiest, he told himself. It had all been like steps—up, up, all the time.
It hadn’t been easy, of course. Hollywood was difficult to absorb. It wasn’t so much the elegant manners. Things like the proper silverware had never given him much trouble, All you had to do was watch your hostess and remember the next time that the funny little fork was the one to use for seafood cocktails. His mother had drummed it into him to always be kind and considerate of others and with training like that, being a gentleman came easily. The trouble had come with learning the complexities of the industry and most of all in controlling himself, in watching himself carefully, in not letting his job drive him nuts. The responsibilities to all those people who worked with him, the living of days jammed with appointments; he had not been cut out for living by a schedule, but he had made himself do it. He realized suddenly that he had learned a great deal, that by now he had a pretty good grasp of the whole picture. He guessed he wasn’t an idiot after all. He knew what he wanted now and knew how to get it. He didn’t let people push him around any more. He wanted the right kind of publicity, something with class and a little dignity, and as the thought occurred to him he wondered why this kind of thing was more important to him now than it used to be.
The answer was probably his attitude toward acting. At first it had been a game. The athletics for the screen had been fun, real fun, but now he was more serious about it. He valued the rare chances he had to bring moments of truth to the screen. That’s where Marlon was so smart. He never did anything hokey, he didn’t use trickery in his acting, he brought the truth to the screen and people were impressed by it. Tony thought how much he really wanted to prove himself a fine actor, to have authority in his work. This life was his slot, and he was suited to it.

He crushed out his cigarette and lay back on the pad. It was silly of him even to question the disadvantages of stardom. Hollywood had gotten him out of the slums, and he no longer had to fight for a buck. That was a great part of it, he thought, that relief from chasing a dollar. He had found what he wanted to do in life, and he was suited for it. He could never be happy in a stagnant job.
Not that he disliked New York. He wouldn’t change his background or his childhood for the world. People could talk all they wanted about country life for kids—the sweet-smelling hay, the clear air, all that poetic stuff. All they really got, he thought, was too much fat in their systems from all that gooey cream and thick milk. He’d been lucky if he’d had a bottle of skim milk every day, but what New York had given him was the education of its streets, the knowledge of how to get along with the other guy, the decency of knowing how to help the neighbor who’s down and out.
He remembered going back and how it had saddened him. He’d gone around to some of the old neighborhoods, full of nostalgia, almost wallowing in it, and how shocked he’d been. The old landmarks were gone, the kids he’d known had moved away and nobody knew what had become of them. His initials had been traced in cement on that street in the Bronx, but now the whole pavement had been ripped up, and even old man Hauptmann’s grocery store had disappeared. He’d located some of the old gang, but somehow there wasn’t much to talk to them about any more. It was as if he had come from a different world. He had moped about it and it had been Janet who’d given him the answer.
“You can’t go home again, Tony,” she’d said. “Of course it’s sad, but you’re looking for things that aren’t there. And as for the people changing, it’s only natural. It’s egotistical of you to think they have no right to change.”
She had been right, of course. It had taken him a few days to get over it, but it had made him realize that his childhood was framed in one setting, his adult life in another. They were two things separate and distinct. New York to him now was a strange city, as much as Walla Walla—it didn’t have the emotional ties it used to. The people had changed and he’d changed.
He demanded much more of himself now, demanded a better-paying job, a better understanding of his craft and of where he stood in the business. Writers had admired him, he remembered, for his drive, for his insistence on perfection. Actually it was nothing to admire, he thought, because it stemmed from a selfish motive. He knocked himself out only because he wanted to prove to himself that he could master something, and he got such great satisfaction out of doing a good job. Besides, it had brought him the roles he’d enjoyed so much. Would they have given him all those pictures if they’d had any doubts about his being able to learn riding and magician stuff and all that? Particularly, would they have offered him this role in Trapeze, under the direction of the great Carol Reed, if they hadn’t known that he’d take to the trapeze like a monkey? Thank God, he thought, for his health, for without it all this would have been impossible. And thanks, too, for the sense that made him realize his body’s value, how he remembered to take care of himself and rest his body once in a while.
There had been times when he had caught himself feeling pretty self-satisfied. He’d be stretched out by the pool at home with a couple of hours between studio chores and think to himself, “Boy, everything is real crazy,” and then he’d stop and say, “Wait a minute. For every good day you’re going to have a bad day, so come off the smug bit.”
Had he gone Hollywood? Whatever that meant. He asked himself honestly and then told himself no. If it was sense of values they meant by it, he certainly hadn’t changed in that respect. He was no different than he’d been seven years ago. Sure, he had a nice home and good food and an expensive car and servants and all those material things and it was great, but he still felt that he could drop it all tomorrow if he had to, and adjust to living in a cave without too much damage to his nervous system. As a matter of fact, he thought with a grin, should the bottom ever drop out of everything, he might take off for India and be a Yogi. The idea fascinated him.
The toughest part of Hollywood, he thought, was the pressure of advice and criticism. He had gone through what every other star had gone through—he had wanted people to like him and tried hard to please. Then he’d found he couldn’t please everybody and had gotten angry with both himself and others. He’d told himself he didn’t care, but the truth was that he did care. And finally he’d come to understand, like the others, that there was nothing he could do about it, that he simply had to fit himself into his niche, one that was true and comfortable, and stay there. And he had learned that no one could be depended upon for advice, that he had to make decisions himself. It was the last stage, he hoped, because he felt now he had the problem settled.
As for the criticism from Hollywood that never ended, the hell with it, he thought. The only people he really had to answer to were the fans. They were the ones who counted because they had put him where he was. It was that simple.
The interviews had been rough, sure, but the thing that made it easier was that he had nothing to hide. The lack of privacy might bother some stars, but he didn’t feel it really bothered him. He didn’t need much of it and if he did want it he could always get it. He remembered the number of times, particularly at Hollywood cocktail parties, that his eyes had glazed over. And it wasn’t from the one highball that he limited himself to; it was merely a withdrawal into his own world. When he wanted to be alone, even in a crowded room, he always could be.
One bad thing about being an actor, it made you restless. You were never Satisfied, always wanting a new kind of part, a new leading lady, always reaching. But then, on second thought, was that really bad? It was his nature to be that way. If he’d ended up in the garment industry, he bet he would have talked the old man into adding vests and knee warmers to the line.
He was happy where he was. He’d found his place. Brother Bobbie was growing up healthy and sweet, and his parents were happy living out here and gradually making new friends to replace the ones they’d left behind in New York. Come to think of it, he guessed they’d gone more Hollywood than he had. Momola some-times nearly busted at the seams when she met new people, trying not to announce that her son was Tony Curtis, the movie star. And when they went to see his pictures, Bobby always punched Momola in the ribs and said, “Whyn’t you tell the lady up front that you’re Tony’s mother?” And Momola would giggle and tell Bobbie to hush up.
He stretched himself and looked up at Janet and thought, she’s another thing, the most important thing Hollywood’s given. He couldn’t imagine himself single any more. At first, after they were married he’d tried to keep his foot outside the door—he didn’t like the idea of losing his bachelor freedom. But by now, for years in fact, he’d known that marriage was the only way for a man to live. When you came right down to it, he’d been luckier than anybody he knew. He valued his childhood, his family, his wife, his career—and his future looked rosier than ever. He began singing softly, “He flies through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young man on the flying trapeze—”
Janet laughed and leaned over the arm of the lounge. “I don’t have to pay you for your thoughts. Listen, promise me something. Promise you’ll be careful when you make that picture. Don’t get reckless sixty feet up. I love your neck.”
“Sure, sure,” said Tony.
“I don’t know why it is you’re always given these strenuous things. You’d think they could put you in a drawing room for a change.”
“Maybe some day I’ll be a basket, weaver in a picture,” said Tony. “Don’t give up hope.”
“Hmphh,” said Janet. “If you are, they’ll have you weaving your baskets in a submarine full of holes.”
Tony laughed, and the laughter came easily. He was finally rested, even anxious to get back to work next week. He stood up and ran his hand over Janet’s hair. “Let’s go get a hamburger. And stop fretting. Life can be beautiful.”
THE END
—BY IMOGENE COLLINS
It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 1955