Janet Leigh - Biography - IMDb Janet Leigh Biography Showing all 45 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (4) | Trade Mark (3) | Trivia (24) | Personal Quotes (7) | Salary (2) Overview (4) 5' 5½" (1.66 m) Mini Bio (1) Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly.

She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn , Gary Cooper , James Stewart , Orson Welles and Judy Garland . She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock , this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra .

For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana < tony.fontana@spacebbs.com> Spouse (4) Trivia (24) Was 'discovered' by Norma Shearer from a photo on the desk of Janet's father. Had appeared with third husband Tony Curtis in five films: Houdini (1953), The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), The Vikings (1958), The Perfect Furlough (1958) and Who Was That Lady? (1960).

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#99) (1995). Eloped at the age of 14 - marriage was later annulled. Thus, Tony Curtis was her third husband when she married him at 23. Actually made Touch of Evil (1958), with a broken arm. Her arm was in a cast when she showed up for production, so they took her arm out of the cast and used every trick they could to hide it. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California on May 14, 2004. She delivered an inspirational speech to graduating students, faculty, and administrators in accepting her award. Author Maxine Hong Kingston and US Solicitor General Ted Olson were also awarded honorary degrees on the same day. Attended and graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She and her actress daughter Jamie Lee Curtis appear together in John Carpenter 's The Fog (1980), though they do not meet until the film's end.

They also appear together in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) early in the film when Janet reports to Jamie on a problem with the girls' shower at a private school. In 2006, the city of Stockton, California renamed and dedicated a downtown cinema and plaza in her honor. "Janet Leigh Plaza" is in the central core of the redeveloped downtown two blocks away from the "Bob Hope Theater". In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by either Renata Marini or Rosetta Calavetta . She was occasionally dubbed by Germana Calderini , Dhia Cristiani , Micaela Giustiniani and Fiorella Betti . She was the daughter of Frederick Robert Morrison, and his wife, Helen Lita (Westergard). Her father had English, German, Northern Irish (Scots-Irish), and Swiss-German ancestry. Her mother was from a family of Danish immigrants. Interviewed in Tom Weaver 's book "Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes" (McFarland & Co., 1991). Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives".

Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 326-329. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007. In June 2010, Pacific Theatre, the campus movie theater of the University of the Pacific, was renamed and dedicated as Janet Leigh Theatre. The theater houses Janet Leigh movie posters, movie stills, college and family photos, and a display cabinet with many personal and professional Janet Leigh artifacts. The lavender gown worn by Ms. Leigh to the 1961 Academy Awards (and created by Edith Head ) is on display in the cabinet in the lobby. She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1777 Vine Street in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960. She was an active Democrat and appeared alongside Tony Curtis at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, California. Was portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in Hitchcock (2012). Gave birth to her 1st child at age 28, a daughter Kelly Curtis on June 17, 1956.

Child's father was her 3rd ex-husband, Tony Curtis . Gave birth to her 2nd child at age 31, a daughter Jamie Lee Curtis on November 22, 1958. Child's father was her 3rd ex-husband, Tony Curtis . She was cremated after death and her ashes are interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Became pregnant with her 1st child by husband Tony Curtis in May 1953 but she suffered a miscarriage on July 8, 1953 at age 26. Was 2 months pregnant with her daughter Kelly Curtis when she completed filming Safari (1956) and 5 months pregnant with her when she recorded her appearance on The Rosemary Clooney Show (1956). Said on TCM that Van Johnson was responsible for her stage name. While they were filming The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), he suggested she shorten her first name to Janet. He also thought that, since the film they were doing was a civil war drama, Lee would go well as her last name. But then he suggested she spell it Leigh.

She was concerned there might a problem in being confused with Vivien Leigh ; but then Van Johnson reminded her of Van Heflin . He said "there's two Van's and it hasn't hurt either of us". Janet Leigh wrote four books: "There Really Was a Hollywood" (1984--an autobiography); "Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller" (1995, co-authored with Christopher Nickens); "House of Destiny" (1996--a novel); and "The Dream Factory" (2002--a novel). Personal Quotes (7) [when asked if it was true that she doesn't take showers] It's actually, honestly true. And not because of the shooting of it. It was the seeing of it. It never dawned on me how truly vulnerable we are. But that's what [ Alfred Hitchcock ] did. A shower. A bird. All these things that are absolutely ordinary, he made extraordinary. Psycho (1960) gave me very wrinkled skin. I was in that shower for seven days - 70 setups. At least, he [ Alfred Hitchcock ] made sure the water was warm.

I don't know what it is I exude. But whatever it is, it's whatever I am! [on working with Alfred Hitchcock ] Hitch relished scaring me. When we were making Psycho (1960), he experimented with the mother's corpse, using me as his gauge. I would return from lunch, open the door to the dressing room and propped up in my chair would be this hideous monstrosity. The horror in my scream, registered on his Richter scale, decided which dummy he'd use as the Madame. [on her Psycho (1960) co-star, the late Anthony Perkins ] To me he was a leading man. But to the rest of the world, he'll always be "Norman Bates". People just wouldn't let him be anything else. [on Night of the Lepus (1972)] I've forgotten as much as I could about that picture. [in 1953, on getting second billing to Tony Curtis in Houdini (1953)] I don't care if he's made one picture and I've made a hundred. I will always take second billing to my husband.

Salary (2) Janet Leigh | The Independent Janet Leigh Beautiful ingÃ©nue actress who was married to Tony Curtis and murdered by Alfred Hitchcock in 'Psycho' Monday 4 October 2004 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online Jeanette Helen Morrison (Janet Leigh), actress: born Merced, California 6 July 1927; married 1942 John Carlyle (marriage dissolved), 1946 Stanley Reames (marriage dissolved 1948), 1951 Tony Curtis (two daughters; marriage dissolved 1962), 1962 Robert Brandt; died Beverly Hills, California 3 October 2004. Janet Leigh played arguably the most famous screen murder victim in history. As Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, she was the embezzler who, just after having a change of heart, is gruesomely knifed to death in her shower. The scene, besides being genuinely shocking, has become one of the most analysed sequences on film, and the actress gave countless interviews regarding its filming and her personal attitude towards her role.

At the time of the film's making, she was its biggest star, and part of the scene's impact was the audacious removal of her character only half an hour into the film. Though few audiences now come to the film unaware of the ploy, Psycho is a great enough movie for the knowledge to have no effect on its impact. However, it is not the only masterpiece in which Leigh appeared. Her impressive career included such fine works as George Sidney's Scaramouche, Orson Welles's Touch of Evil and John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. She was also one of the most beautiful ingénues of her time, had a marriage to the actor Tony Curtis that made them favourites of the fan magazines for several years, and was the mother of the actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. Born Jeanette Helen Morrison in Merced, California, in 1927, she was the only child of a sales clerk, Fred Morrison, and his wife Helen, who was of Scandinavian descent. Her childhood was unsettled, as her parents frequently moved from town to town. Leigh owed her discovery to the former MGM star Norma Shearer.

In 1946, Leigh's parents had taken jobs at the Sugar Bowl Ski Lodge in Soda Springs, California, where her father worked as a receptionist and her mother in the dining room. Shearer, on holiday with her husband, spotted Leigh's photograph on her father's desk and, taken with her fresh-faced beauty, asked for a copy to show friends in Hollywood. Though retired, Shearer was influential and owned a large share of MGM stock. The result was a screen test. Leigh was still a student at the College of the Pacific, majoring in music (though already married to her second husband), when signed by MGM in 1947. "We were living over my aunt's garage and the money was welcome," she later said. She had no acting experience, but her pretty looks and bright-eyed wholesomeness made her a pleasing ingénue, though one columnist wrote of an early performance, "She is over-eager, over-nice, over-everything." The studio renamed her Janet Leigh, and, after some preparation with drama coach Lillian Burns, she tested successfully for the female lead opposite Van Johnson in the rustic drama The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947).

Leigh recalled, An established actress on the lot, Beverly Tyler, had practically been cast, but later I heard that Louis B. Mayer felt she was a little too sophisticated to play a farm girl. They wanted a more naïve type, and they sure got her. She played another country girl in The Hills of Home (1948), starring the collie Lassie, and then a hapless young girl who becomes pregnant and commits suicide in an inane soap opera, If Winter Comes (1948). The critic James Agee labelled the film "pretty awful", but praised "an overdone, but promising performance by Janet Leigh". Leigh was then cast in Words and Music (1948), a biography of the composers Rodgers and Hart. Richard Rodgers, who loathed the film's inaccuracies, later said, The only good thing about that picture was that they had Janet Leigh play my wife. I found that highly acceptable. Leigh found the film exciting for the chance to work with Judy Garland.

"I actually had a scene with her, which gave me goose bumps." In Fred Zinnemann's bleak film noir Act of Violence (1949), she had her most demanding role to date as a housewife whose husband, a former prison-camp informer, is stalked by a vengeful survivor. She then made a perfect Meg March in Mervyn LeRoy's loving transcription of Little Women (1949), a perennial favourite. "The picture has such wonderful warmth," she said: It kind of brings you back to the values we all had as children. June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien and myself really did assume the aura of four sisters and had a ball. We cracked up all the time. Mr LeRoy was great - he put up with us and still turned out one of the most beautiful films I was in. A less successful literary adaptation, of The Forsyte Saga, retitled That Forsyte Woman (1949), cast her as the trusting June Forsyte who loses her architect lover (Robert Young) to her aunt, Irene (Greer Garson).

Leigh's charms meanwhile had attracted the attentions of the millionaire producer Howard Hughes: I was at Mr Mayer's house one evening and was introduced to this tall, taciturn, thin man with a moustache. It was Howard Hughes, who had just bought RKO studios. As the evening wore on, I realised that he was being overly attentive, which I really did not appreciate. He was twice my age and, besides, I was dating someone else. He made me uncomfortable. Subsequently, I got to know him better, which made me even more nervous about him. Leigh, who later stated that her parents frequently bickered throughout their lifetime, had married first at the age of 15, when she eloped with a 19-year-old named John Carlyle, but the marriage was annulled four months later. In 1946 she married Stanley Reames, a sailor and aspiring bandleader who hoped to break into the big band league when he journeyed with Leigh to Los Angeles. It was a time when the big-band era was coming to an end and he had little success.

In 1948 he and Leigh were divorced, after which Leigh entered into a long relationship with the actor Barry Nelson. In 1949 Howard Hughes and MGM agreed to a loan-out deal by which Leigh appeared in three RKO films. The first was a bright, romantic comedy, Holiday Affair (1949) co-starring Robert Mitchum, in which Leigh played a "comparison shopper", who buys goods to compare their prices and value with those of the store that employs her. Josef von Sternberg ("an unbearable dictator") directed her second RKO movie, Jet Pilot, in which she played a jet-flying Russian spy converted to "the American way" by John Wayne (as an air-force colonel). It started shooting in December 1949, but was not released until 1957 because of the aviation enthusiast Hughes's attempts to keep up to date with aircraft developments. Her last RKO movie was a musical, Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), in which Leigh sang and danced with flair as a college graduate who joins two chorus girls (Ann Miller and Gloria DeHaven) in their search for stardom.

Unusually for its time, the film featured television as its background rather than the theatre or movies. Hughes kept the film in production for several months ordering retakes in his search for perfection, though some averred that he simply liked to watch Leigh at work. "His pursuit continued," said Leigh, "but he never caught me. Tony Curtis, a rising young actor at Universal, did." Leigh and Curtis met at a Hollywood party in 1950, and Curtis later recorded his reaction: Her face was exquisite - and those beautiful bosoms and tiny waist. It just devastated me to look at this woman. The pair eloped to Greenwich, Connecticut, in June 1951. They made an attractive young couple and were heavily featured in the fan magazines of the day. "There was no bigger pair," wrote Curtis: No other husband-and-wife team came close to us until Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, but that was 10 years later. They did it through scandal. We did it through the movies and people's affection.

At MGM, Leigh continued to play undemanding ingénue roles, in some major films such as a superb version of Rafael Sabatini's swashbuckler Scaramouche (1951), and Anthony Mann's gripping western The Naked Spur (1953), and in such inconsequential comedies as Stanley Donen's Fearless Fagan (1952) and Eddie Buzell's Confidentially Connie (1953). At Universal, a weak musical with Donald O'Connor, Walkin' My Baby Back Home (1953) wasted the talents of both its stars, with Leigh's singing voice inappropriately dubbed by Paula Kelly. She and Curtis then made a film together, Houdini (1953), a biography of the famous escapologist, directed by George Marshall. Reviews were mixed, but the chemistry of the stars was acknowledged ("Paired, they are a harmonious, ingratiating team," said Daily Variety), and audiences flocked to see the young couple in their first co-starring feature. It was quickly followed by another, The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), an undemanding swashbuckler.

With her marriage to Curtis, Leigh had acquired a sexier and more mature image, and better roles were coming her way. Rogue Cop (1954), the last film under her MGM contract, was a gritty thriller with Robert Taylor and George Raft, and Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) was a flawed but fascinating attempt to reconstruct the jazz world of the 1920s. In My Sister Eileen (1955), a musical version of the hit play first filmed by Columbia in 1943, she was cast as Eileen, the prettier of two sisters who leave their small-town home to try their luck in New York City. The film had been intended as a vehicle for Judy Holliday, who was to play the other sister, Ruth, but she had seen Rosalind Russell play the role in the Broadway musical Wonderful Town, based on the same play. Wary of following in Russell's footsteps, she turned the film down when the studio refused to pay for the rights to the Broadway score by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

When Holliday was replaced by Betty Garrett, not as big a star at the time, the subsidiary romance between Leigh and Bob Fosse was built up, giving Leigh some charming song-and-dance moments with both Garrett and Fosse (with whom she had a brief affair). With tuneful songs by Jule Styne and Leo Robin, fine performances by Garrett, Leigh and upcoming Jack Lemmon, and outstanding dancing by Fosse and Tommy Rall, My Sister Eileen proved to be one of the best musicals of the Fifties. Leigh was next asked by Richard Rodgers to audition for the forthcoming Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical Pipe Dream. Offered the role, she first accepted, then turned it down when Curtis pointed out that it would mean being separated from him for at least six months. (Judy Tyler played the part in what became one the composing team's less successful ventures.) Leigh's next film was to be one of her most memorable, Orson Welles's baroque thriller Touch of Evil (1956). Leigh was initially puzzled when she received a telegram from Welles stating how delighted he was that they were to be working together.

She knew nothing about the project, but Welles had correctly surmised that she would be so pleased at the idea of being directed by him that he would get her at a lower price than if he had to negotiate with her agent first. She thought she had lost the role, though, when she broke her arm shooting a television movie just before filming was to start. At first Welles considered having her character, a young newly wed, sport a broken arm throughout the film, but he changed his mind and managed to shoot in ingenious ways that concealed the injury: I did the entire movie with a broken arm and no one knew. During the motel sequence and less-clothed scenes, the doctor sawed the cast in half lengthwise. We would take it off, do the shot, and strap it back on again. Leigh found Welles's acceptance of improvisation fascinating, and entirely different to her later experience with the meticulously prepared Hitchcock.

"With Mr Hitchcock the film is over for him before he even begins shooting." The renowned opening scene of Touch of Evil, a continuous shot of several minutes, started with a time bomb being planted in a car, then panned to a drunken man and a blonde leaving a café and getting into the car to drive towards the border. Leigh wrote, The shot included Chuck [Charlton Heston] and me approaching the checkpoint, waited through our exchanges with the official and the passing through of the drunken man and his bimbo, lingered while we kissed, and zoomed to the convertible and the explosion in the distance. The technical prowess needed for this was beyond my comprehension. The offbeat film about a corrupt cop and a honeymooning Mexican lawyer (Charlton Heston) who exposes him proved too non-linear for the studio, who later ordered retakes by another director. "Both Chuck and I resented changing it and bastardising it," said Leigh, "because what we did made it almost normal." Leigh later stated, The release of Touch of Evil was disappointing. But it warms the cockles of my heart to at least know that it now is considered a cult classic and honours Orson Welles.

(The film has since been restored to a version approximating Welles's original cut.) In 1956 Leigh gave birth to her first daughter, Kelly Lee Curtis, then she returned to the screen as an English princess, Morgana, in the impressive epic The Vikings (1957), directed by Richard Fleischer and co-starring Kirk Douglas and Curtis. After giving birth to a second daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, in 1958, Janet and Tony then starred in an amusing lightweight comedy, The Perfect Furlough (1959), directed by their good friend Blake Edwards, and followed it with another farce, Who Was That Lady? (1960). Columnists sometimes pondered whether Leigh was sacrificing her career to her marriage, making inconsequential movies with her husband, who in between was acting in such prestigious films as Sweet Smell of Success, The Defiant Ones, Some Like It Hot and Spartacus. But in 1960 Leigh was given a great role and the one for which she will be best remembered, that of Marion Crane in Psycho.

The early sequences of the film, depicting Marion's stealing of the money, her encounter with a patrolman, her increasingly ominous night drive through the rain, her discovery of the remote Bates Motel and her equivocal conversations with the proprietor, display both director and star at their best. Of the famous shower scene, Leigh wrote, The brilliant artist Saul Bass did a thorough storyboard for the shower-scene montage. Hitchcock diligently adhered to Bass's blueprint. The combined endowments of these two gave us a course in fantasy . . . I believe that class of film-making was more effective than the current standard. The censorship obliged creators to find a way to show, without showing, thus giving the viewers liberal range for their imaginations. Regarding consistent rumours (and Hitchcock's own statement) that a model was used, Leigh insisted that only the scene where Perkins puts the body in a sheet and drags it to the car utilised a model. "Hitch told me there was no reason to subject me to the discomfort since it was a distant high angle anyway." Leigh won an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her performance, but lost to Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry.

In her autobiography, There Really Was a Hollywood (1984), Leigh mentions that Psycho was "an enormous commercial success, but oddly not critically acclaimed in the beginning". She then adds, "And, for the record, no, I do not take showers." The Leigh-Curtis marriage had long been the subject of rumours that the couple fought a lot, even on the sets of their films, and in 1957 Curtis took the advice of Blake Edwards and entered analysis. In 1961 Leigh holidayed without him on the Riviera, but had to return to Los Angeles when her father committed suicide in his real estate office. Although he was having financial problems, he left a note blaming marital difficulties, plus a personal, vitriolic note for his wife, which relatives managed to keep from her. In March the following year Curtis and Leigh separated legally, and a few days later Leigh was found in a coma on the floor of a hotel bathroom in New York, with an accidental pill overdose blamed. The couple's California divorce became final in July 1963, but Leigh obtained a quickie divorce in Mexico in September 1962, so that she could marry Robert Brandt, a stockbroker.

She kept the children, and Curtis wrote in 1993, Those girls turned out wonderfully, and Janet deserves most of the credit for that . . . She's a very fine and very gentle and very sensitive woman, and I admire her. Leigh gave one of her most accomplished performances in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), that of the enigmatic Rosie, who meets a troubled serviceman (Frank Sinatra) during a train journey and falls in love with him in the course of a cryptic conversation: Rosie was one of my most difficult roles, not in length, but in content. The character was plunked down in the middle of the script, with no apparent connection to anyone, transmitting non sequiturs while sending meaningful rays through her eyes. A brilliant study of brainwashing and political chicanery, The Manchurian Candidate, in the famous words of George Axelrod, who adapted Richard Condon's novel, "went from failure to classic without ever passing through success". Leigh played another Rosie in the musical Bye Bye Birdie (1963).

In the original Broadway show that part had been the leading one, played by Chita Rivera, but the film was heavily adapted to showcase the studio's new contractee (and protégée of the director George Sidney) Ann-Margret. After she appeared in the comedy Wives and Lovers (1963) with her old pal Van Johnson, Leigh's screen roles became more sporadic, though her fine performance as the ex-wife of private eye Paul Newman in the thriller Harper (1966) was lauded as one of the best things in the film. She made her Broadway début starring with Jack Cassidy in Bob Barry's thriller Murder Among Friends (1975) and she worked regularly on television. In 1966 she appeared in two episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. which were released in Europe as a feature film, The Spy in the Green Hat. She was a guest star on such series as Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, and in 1975 she starred in an unsettling Columbo episode entitled "Forgotten Lady", in which she played an ageing, reclusive movie star constantly watching one of her old films - clips from Walkin' My Baby Back Home.

She appeared with her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in John Carpenter's ghost story The Fog (1980), and more recently had a supporting role in Steve Miner's Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), which starred Jamie in the role she had created in the original Halloween (1978). A lifelong Democrat, Leigh was an active political campaigner in the 1960s, particularly for Adlai Stevenson and then the Kennedys, with whom she became good friends. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson asked her to be ambassador to Finland, but she felt it was too early in her marriage to contemplate separation. For years she worked tirelessly for the charity Share (Share Happiness and Reap Endlessly), on behalf of retarded children.

Tom Vallance Tony Curtis, Hollywood Leading Man, Dies at 85 - The New York Times The New York Times Movies |Tony Curtis, Hollywood Leading Man, Dies at 85 Search Continue reading the main story Tony Curtis , a classically handsome movie star who came out of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s to find both wide popularity and critical acclaim in dramatic and comic roles alike, from “The Defiant Ones” to “Some Like It Hot,” died on Wednesday at his home in Henderson, Nev., near Las Vegas. He was 85. The cause was cardiac arrest, the Clark County coroner said. Mr. Curtis, one of the last survivors of Hollywood’s golden age, became a respected dramatic actor, earning an Oscar nomination as an escaped convict in “The Defiant Ones,” a 1958 Stanley Kramer film. But he was equally adept in comedies; his public even seemed to prefer him in those roles, flocking to see him, for example, in the 1965 slapstick hit “The Great Race.” As a performer, Mr. Curtis drew on his startlingly good looks.

With his dark, curly hair worn in a sculptural style later imitated by Elvis Presley and his plucked eyebrows framing pale blue eyes and full lips, Mr. Curtis embodied a new kind of feminized male beauty that came into vogue in the early ’50s. A vigorous heterosexual in his widely publicized (not least by himself) private life, he was often cast in roles that drew on a perceived ambiguity: his full-drag impersonation of a female jazz musician in “Some Like It Hot” (1959); a slave who attracts the interest of an aristocratic Roman general (Laurence Olivier) in Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus” (1960); a man attracted to a mysterious blonde (Debbie Reynolds) who turns out to be the reincarnation of his male best friend in Vincente Minnelli’s “Goodbye Charlie” (1964). Continue reading the main story But behind the pretty-boy looks was a dramatically potent combination of naked ambition and deep vulnerability, both likely products of his Dickensian childhood in the Bronx. Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, to Helen and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary.

Emanuel operated a tailor shop in a poor neighborhood, and the family occupied cramped quarters behind the store; the parents in one room and little Bernard sharing another with his two brothers, Julius and Robert. Helen Schwartz suffered from schizophrenia and frequently beat the three boys. (Robert was later found to have the same disease.) Advertisement Continue reading the main story In 1933, at the height of the Depression, his parents found they could not properly provide for their children, and Bernard and Julius were placed in a state institution. (Julius was hit by a truck and killed in 1938.) Returning to his old neighborhood, Bernard became caught up in gang warfare and the target of anti-Semitic hostility. As he recalled, he learned to dodge the stones and fists to protect his face, which he realized even then would be his ticket to greater things. In search of stability, Bernard made his way to Seward Park High School on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. During World War II he served in the Navy aboard the submarine tender U.S.S. Proteus. His ship was present in Tokyo Bay in 1945 for the formal surrender of Japan aboard the U.S.S.

Missouri, which Signalman Schwartz watched through a pair of binoculars. Back in New York, he enrolled in acting classes in the workshop headed by Erwin Piscator at the New School for Social Research, where one of his colleagues was another Seward alumnus, Walter Matthau. He began getting theater work in the Catskills and caught the eye of the casting agent Joyce Selznick, who helped him win a contract with Universal Pictures in 1948. After experimenting with James Curtis, he settled on Anthony Curtis as his stage name and began turning up in bit parts in films like Anthony Mann’s “Winchester ’73” alongside another Universal bit player, Rock Hudson. Mr. Curtis’s career advanced rapidly at first.

He was promoted to supporting player, billed as Tony Curtis for the first time, in the 1950 western “Kansas Raiders,” and became, he recalled, first prize in a Universal promotional contest, “Win a Weekend With Tony Curtis.” He received top billing in 1951 in the Technicolor Arabian Nights adventure “The Prince Who Was a Thief.” His co-star was Piper Laurie, and they were paired in three subsequent films at Universal, including Douglas Sirk’s “No Room for the Groom,” a 1952 comedy that allowed Mr. Curtis to explore his comic gifts for the first time. In 1951 Mr. Curtis married the ravishing MGM contract player Janet Leigh. Highly photogenic, the couple became a favorite of the fan magazines, and their first movie together, George Marshall’s “Houdini” (1953), was Mr. Curtis’s first substantial hit. Perhaps the character of Houdini — like Mr. Curtis, a handsome young man of Hungarian Jewish ancestry who reinvented himself through show business — touched something in Mr. Curtis.

In any case, it was in that film that his most consistent screen personality, the eager young outsider who draws on his charm and wiles to achieve success in the American mainstream, was born. Mr. Curtis endured several more Universal costume pictures, including the infamous 1954 film “The Black Shield of Falworth,” in which he starred with Ms. Leigh but did not utter the line, “Yondah lies da castle of my foddah,” that legend has attributed to him. His career seemed stalled until Burt Lancaster, another actor who survived a difficult childhood in New York City, took him under his wing. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Lancaster cast Mr. Curtis as his protégé, a circus performer who becomes his romantic rival, in his company’s 1956 production “Trapeze.” But it was Mr. Curtis’s next appearance with Lancaster — as the hustling Broadway press agent Sidney Falco, desperately eager to ingratiate himself with Lancaster’s sadistic Broadway columnist J. J. Hunsecker in “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957) — that proved that Mr. Curtis could be an actor of genuine power and subtlety.

Photo Tony Curtis with his wife Janet Leigh in 1961. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images The late ’50s and early ’60s were Mr. Curtis’s heyday. Taking his career into his own hands, he formed a production company, Curtleigh Productions, and in partnership with Kirk Douglas assembled the 1958 independent feature “The Vikings,” a rousing adventure film directed by Richard Fleischer. Later that year the producer-director Stanley Kramer cast Mr. Curtis in “The Defiant Ones” as a prisoner who escapes from a Southern chain gang while chained to a fellow convict, who happens to be black (Sidney Poitier). “The Defiant Ones” may seem schematic and simplistic today, but at the time it spoke with hope to a nation in the violent first stages of the civil rights movement and was rewarded with nine Oscar nominations, including one for Mr. Curtis as best actor. It was the only acknowledgment he received from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in his career. Mr.

Curtis began a creatively rewarding relationship with the director Blake Edwards with a semi-autobiographical role as a hustler working a Wisconsin resort in “Mister Cory” (1957). That was followed by two hugely successful 1959 military comedies: “The Perfect Furlough” (with Ms. Leigh) and “Operation Petticoat,” in which he played a submarine officer serving under a captain played by Cary Grant. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Under Billy Wilder’s direction in “Some Like It Hot,” another 1959 release, Mr. Curtis employed a spot-on imitation of Grant’s mid-Atlantic accent when his character, posing as an oil heir, tries to seduce a voluptuous singer (Marilyn Monroe). His role in that film — as a Chicago musician who, with his best friend (Jack Lemmon), witnesses the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and flees to Florida in women’s clothing as a member of an all-girl dance band — remains Mr. Curtis’s best-known performance. Success in comedy kindled Mr.

Curtis’s ambitions as a dramatic actor. He appeared in Mr. Douglas’s epic production of “Spartacus,” directed by Stanley Kubrick, and reached unsuccessfully for another Oscar nomination in “The Outsider” (1961), directed by Delbert Mann, as Ira Hayes, a Native American who helped to raise the flag at Iwo Jima. In “The Great Impostor,” directed by Robert Mulligan, he played a role closer to his established screen personality: an ambitious young man from the wrong side of the tracks who fakes his way through a series of professions, including a monk, a prison warden and a surgeon. Mr. Curtis’s popularity was damaged by his divorce from Ms.

Leigh in 1962, following an affair with the 17-year-old German actress Christine Kaufmann, who was his co-star in the costume epic “Taras Bulba.” He retreated into comedies, playing out his long association with Universal in a series of undistinguished efforts including “40 Pounds of Trouble” (1962), “Captain Newman, M.D.” (1963) and the disastrous “Wild and Wonderful” (1964), in which he starred with Ms. Kaufmann, whom he married in 1963. In “The Great Race,” Blake Edwards’s celebration of slapstick comedy, Mr. Curtis parodied himself as an impossibly handsome daredevil named the Great Leslie, and in 1967 he reunited with Alexander Mackendrick, director of “Sweet Smell of Success,” for an enjoyable satire on California mores, “Don’t Make Waves.” Mr. Curtis made one final, ambitious attempt to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor with “The Boston Strangler” in 1968, putting on weight to play the suspected serial killer Albert DeSalvo.

Again under Richard Fleischer’s direction, he gave a rigorously deglamorized performance, but the film was dismissed as exploitative in many quarters and failed to reignite Mr. Curtis’s career. That year, he divorced Ms. Kaufmann and married a 23-year-old model, Leslie Allen. Advertisement Continue reading the main story After two unsuccessful efforts to establish himself in series television — “The Persuaders” (1971-72) and “McCoy” (1975-76) — Mr. Curtis fell into a seemingly endless series of guest appearances on television (he had a recurring role on “Vegas” from 1978 to 1981) and supporting roles in ever more unfortunate movies, including Mae West’s excruciating 1978 comeback attempt, “Sextette.” A stay at the Betty Ford Center — he had struggled with drug and alcohol abuse — followed his 1982 divorce from Ms. Allen, but Mr. Curtis never lost his work ethic. He continued to appear in low-budget movies and occasionally in independent films of quality.

He took up painting, selling his boldly signed, Matisse-influenced canvases through galleries and stores. After divorcing Ms. Allen, Mr. Curtis was married to the actress Andrea Savio (1984-92) and, briefly, to the lawyer Lisa Deutsch (1993-94). He married his sixth wife, the horse trainer Jill VandenBerg, in 1998, and with her operated a nonprofit refuge for abused and neglected horses. In addition to his wife, Mr. Curtis’s survivors include Kelly Lee Curtis and the actress Jamie Lee Curtis, his two daughters with Janet Leigh; Alexandra Curtis and Allegra Curtis, his two daughters with Christine Kaufmann; and a son, Benjamin, with Leslie Allen. A second son with Ms. Allen, Nicholas, died of a drug overdose in 1994.

He published “Tony Curtis: The Autobiography,” written with Barry Paris, in 1994 and a second autobiography, “American Prince: A Memoir,” written with Peter Golenbock, in 2008, and in it he described a romance with Marilyn Monroe in 1948, when both were young, relatively unknown performers who had recently arrived in Hollywood. The affair was only a memory when they worked together a decade later, both as major stars, in “Some Like It Hot.” “Somehow working with her on ‘Some Like It Hot’ had brought a sense of completion to my feelings for her,” he wrote. “The more we talked, the more I realized that another love affair had bitten the dust.” In 2002 he toured in a musical adaptation of “Some Like It Hot,” in which he played the role of the love-addled millionaire originated by Joe E. Brown in the film. This time, the curtain line was his: “Nobody’s perfect.” His final screen appearance was in 2008, when he played a small role in “David & Fatima,” an independent budget film about a romance between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Muslim.

His character’s name was Mr. Schwartz. A version of this article appears in print on October 1, 2010, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Tony Curtis, Hollywood Leading Man, Dies at 85. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: In which film of 1958 did Janet Leigh play a character named Morganna ?
Answer: THE VIKINGS