It's the 83rd birthday today of Tony Curtis.
A gorgeous heart-throb in his younger days, he was adored by hordes of female fans (and vast numbers of queens, no doubt), and gained a reputation as a ladies' man - he was married five times.
An unintentionally hilarious magazine article from the 1950s that I recently discovered relied heavily on the good looks and sex appeal of Tony Curtis and his "chum" Rock Hudson, (and the lesser-known Hugh O'Brian, Scott Brady and John Bromfield) to appeal to women readers. However, its homoerotic subject matter and pictures (to modern cynical eyes at least) give completely the opposite impression...
Take a look at it on the Bijou Follies website!
Curtis was always more than just a pin-up however, and was nominated for several acting awards over the years, appearing in classics such as
Sweet Smell of Success,
The Defiant Ones and
Spartacus.
It was his sublime and comic double act with Jack Lemmon in one of my all-time favourite films
Some Like It Hot (in which they famously spend most of the film in drag) that brought him the most lasting fame, and for very good reason - he was brilliant! happy Birthday, Josephine...
Tony Curtis on IMDB
