They’re Scared Stiff!—Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh
No matter what they tell you about Hollywood marriages, there’s nothing like them anywhere. Every Hollywood marriage is jam-packed with danger right from the start. Gossip, jealousy, and business interference are constant threats to marital success, and too often these threats grow up into divorce suits.
No Hollywood newlyweds are more aware of this than Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis who, since their marriage, have spent more time away from each other than together.
Last summer, when they were married in Connecticut against studio advice, Janet had to fly back to California alone. Tony had to continue his personal appearance tour with Piper Laurie for The Prince Who Was A Thief.
“That was the start of our separation,” Janet says, “and even though we’re living together now, we hardly get to see each other. Every time we plan a honeymoon, Tony’s studio says, “Wait until you finish one more picture,’ or mine says the same thing. We thought we’d go on a honeymoon in June just after we were married, but I had to go into a picture with . Peter Lawford. When that one was over, Universal had a script ready for Tony.
“Since our marriage, neither of us has been free at the same time. We’re supposed to go to Hawaii on a honeymoon this winter, but we’re not counting on it. The only thing we can really count on are those darn rumors.”
These rumors, and you’ve probably heard some of them, insist that (a) Janet is pregnant (b) Janet and Tony aren’t getting along too well (c) Janet and Tony are both having studio trouble.
“The situation can change any time,” Tony says, “but as of yesterday, Janet wasn’t pregnant. How that story got started as far back as September, I don’t will arrange a new $4,000- or $5,000-a-week deal for her.
No honeymoon yet! Picture work keeps interfering. Since their marriage Tony and Janet have been separated more than they’ve been together.
At the moment, her paramount interest is her marriage, which she insists is infinitely more valuable than her career.
Janet was married when she was 15, but the marriage was annulled, and she never lived with her husband.
She was married again when she was 18, this time to Stanley Reames, and she learned what Hollywood can do to a marriage when the wife is breadwinner, and the husband is a non-professional trying futilely to get ahead. She is convinced that present husband Tony will develop into one of the most talented young actors in the business. “In two or three years,” she says, “I’ll just be known as Tony’s wife.”
A basically shrewd young woman whose prattle occasionally fools people into believing her naive, Janet says this because she feels that in two or three years she will become a mother.
She feels that motherhood will not necessarily interfere with a career, and that after seven years of low-salaried apprenticeship, she would be silly to give up a profession just as she’s about ready for the big-time brackets.
Right now, most of her efforts are concentrated on making Tony happy. She babies him constantly. Whenever he has the chance, she lets him sleep late, prepares breakfast, tiptoes out cf the house. She lets-him make all the decisions as to friends, dates, household expenses.
Having been married previously, Janet knows that a girl has to fight for her love and happiness, that it just doesn’t happen; that marriage is a working partnership.
Fortunately for her, Tony is happy in his work. He wants to act constantly. Inactivity makes him restless. For a while there was talk at Universal of letting Audie Murphy play the role of the deaf-mute prizefighter in Hear No Evil. When Tony was finally given the part, he was ecstatic. He’d like to make five or six pictures a year. “I go crazy when I’m not working,” he says. “My friends work all the time.”
Tony is quick to say that Universal has been wonderful to him. “I love this studio. I love all the guys in it. You couldn’t find a nicer bunch anywhere. When it comes to new deals and contracts, what do I know about that? I’ve got an agent. Let him do the worrying. All I want to do is work.”
When asked if he’s working at his marriage, Tony says, “Working at it? Listen, that’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me. That Janet! You couldn’t find a better wife. Anything I want to do, she wants to do. I want to see my folks, she wants to see them. I want to go down to the beach, she wants to go down to the beach. I like steak and potatoes for supper. She likes steak and potatoes. Any rumors about our being unhappy are strictly phony. We are the two happiest kids in California. All I can say is that everybody should have the trouble we’re having. It would be a great world.”
When a man thinks that his marriage is perfect through some divine intervention (“It just happened that way. Janet and I were meant for each other”) you can rest assured that the wife in question is doing one sensational job.
The reason that Tony is so sublimely ecstatic these days is that there are no lengths to which Janet Leigh won’t go to maintain their love.
“The advantage in having been married before,” she says, “is that a girl learns.”
Janet Leigh has learned plenty. To her the price of a happy marriage is eternal vigilance of the most subtle and unobtrusive sort.
THE END
—BY JIM BURTON
It is a quote. MODERN SCREEN MAGAZINE JANUARY 1952
