I can't wait to work with you again

Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis made three films together, i.e. the WWII drama Kings Go Forth (1958) and the two comedies Sex and the Single Girl (1964) and The Great Race (1965). Curtis later said that he and Wood became great friends and claimed in his autobiography American Prince (2008) that they were also romantically involved during production of The Great Race*. In her book Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, published several years prior to Curtis' book (in 2001), Suzanne Finstad said that the two actors were not on the best of terms while shooting their last film. According to Finstad's sources, Curtis' ex-wife Janet Leigh and producer Martin Jurow, Curtis and Wood had become "estranged" some time between the end of Sex and the Single Girl and the start of The Great Race. Jurow said that during the shoot of The Great Race Curtis' behaviour towards Wood was "very juvenile" ("like little boys in the playground pick on certain little girls ...") and at one point they even stopped speaking to each other. Wood biographer Gavin Lambert (Natalie Wood: A Life, 2004) never mentioned a friendship or estrangement between the two but stated that from their first film on Wood had found Curtis "agressively self-important".

*While Curtis liked to boast about his affairs with famous actresses, I'm always inclined to take his stories with a pinch of salt, especially when the women involved were no longer alive to confirm or deny his claims, like Natalie Wood or Marilyn Monroe.

Well, whatever the relationship between them, Wood wrote Curtis this sweet (undated) note after her first day at work on either Sex and the Single Girl or The Great Race. She thanked Curtis for his flowers and also told him that she was looking forward to working with him again. (Obviously I don't know whether she was being truthful or not.)

Source: Julien's Auctions

Transcript:

Dear Tony — 

Just wanted to thank you again for the marvelous flowers that greeted me on my first day. It was most thoughtful + made me feel so good most of the butterflies went away. Well almost. Anyway I can't wait to work with you again. You're terrific!

Love,

Natalie

Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis in The Great Race, a Warner Bros. film directed by Blake Edwards. Wood was emotionally fragile at the time, following her divorce from Robert Wagner and also because she was unhappy with her career. She hated her role in The Great Race and didn't want to do it. Studio boss Jack Warner asked Curtis if he would give a percentage of his film earnings to Wood to make her accept but Curtis refused ("I couldn't give her anything to make her want to do the movie"). Only after Warner had promised to cast Wood in Inside Daisy Clover (1965), a film she really wanted to do, she accepted the role. 

Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis & the Hitler Quote

In 1959, Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis shared a kissing scene in Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot and afterwards Curtis made his infamous remark about Marilyn, that kissing her was "like kissing Hitler". Throughout the years, when interviewed about the subject, Curtis kept denying he had made the remark. His constant denial seems strange, given the fact that there were multiple witnesses who heard him say it. 

The now notorious line was uttered by Curtis when he and others were watching the rushes of the kissing scene in the screening room. Co-star Jack Lemmon and still photographer Richard Miller were among those present and describe the incident in the 2001 documentary Nobody's perfect: The Making of Some Like It Hot (watch in full here). After the rushes had ended, Curtis stood up and made the Hitler comment, causing everybody in the room to fall silent. While shocked when he heard it, in the docu Lemmon 'defends' Curtis, saying "he didn't really mean it, of course", and that if he (Lemmon) had said it he'd probably deny it too. At that point Marilyn was impossible to work with, unable to remember even the simplest of lines, requiring numerous retakes, and always showing up late or not showing up at all. Curtis was clearly fed up with her (as was the rest of the cast and crew) and, according to Richard Miller, he was also mad at Marilyn for having refused to kiss him during rehearsal. (Billy Wilder wanted to rehearse the kiss so the cameraman could check the lighting etc., but Marilyn wouldn't kiss Curtis until they were shooting the actual scene.)

Towards the end of his life, Curtis finally admitted to making the vicious remark. In his 2009 memoir The Making of Some Like It Hot: My Memories of Marilyn Monroe and the Classic American Movie, co-written by Mark Vieira and published a year before Curtis' death, the actor implied it wasn't serious but meant sarcastically: "The lights came up. I had to leave. On my way out, some guy whom I didn’t recognize called out to me. "Tony," he said. "That was terrific. Hey. Tell me. What was it like kissing Marilyn?" I didn’t stop to acknowledge him. I kept walking. "What do you think it was like, buddy?" I got to the door. "Like kissing Hitler?" I went through the door and slammed it after me". 

Film critic Mick LaSalle argued in this interesting article (and I think his argument makes a lot of sense) that if Curtis had really meant to be sarcastic, he wouldn't have chosen Hitler but someone else, like Milton Berle for example. LaSalle said that "Hitler may be a reference point, but not for ugliness or physical revulsion. He's a reference point for moral horror, for someone you really, really hate".

Below: Marilyn and Curtis talking on the set of Some Like It Hot, with Paula Strasberg behind Marilyn looking on.

Marilyn herself was not in the screening room to hear Curtis say it but her drama coach and confidante Paula Strasberg was. Whether Marilyn heard it from Strasberg or from someone else, the remark got back to her and she would later comment on it in a 1962 interview.

.... You’ve read there was some actor that once said about me that kissing me was like kissing Hitler. Well, I think that’s, you know, his problem. And if I really have to do intimate love scenes with an individual who really has these kind of feelings towards me, then my fantasy can come into play. In other words, out with him, in with somebody else. There was somebody else there, not him. He was never there. [To hear Marilyn say the words, go here.]

It is believed that the following note from Marilyn was also a reaction to Curtis' Hitler remark. Moreover, the note contradicts the claims that Curtis would make decades after Marilyn's death of having been romantically involved with her. In his 2008 memoir American Prince, Curtis said they had an affair before Marilyn became famous. And in his 2009 book he went even further, claiming they rekindled the affair during Some Like It Hot and that she got pregnant with hís child, not Arthur Miller's (i.e. the child she later miscarried). While Marilyn wasn't alive anymore to deny what sounds like a fantastical story, this one-line note, handwritten by Marilyn, seems to refute Curtis' claims. As said, the note was reportedly written in response to the "kissing Hitler" remark.

Source: Julien's Auctions

Transcript:

There is only one way he could comment on my sexuality and I'm afraid he has never had the opportunity.

Credit: gif made by my twin sister who runs this great classic Hollywood blog.

Dear Number One

Here is a very cryptic letter from Cary Grant to Tony Curtis, written on 25 October 1963. I have no idea what the letter is about, but I found it funny and intriguing so I thought I'd share it with you. Grant wrote the letter four years after he made his only film with Tony Curtis, Operation Petticoat (1959), apparently as a reply to something Curtis had written to him earlier. Browsing the web for information on what Grant could have possibly meant with his cryptic "Number One" and "Number Two", I found that the submarine in Operation Petticoat had problems with engines "number one" and "number two" (in particular with engine number one). So perhaps Grant and Curtis shared an inside joke or a secret code dating back to their Operation Petticoat days? Well, I have no idea, but you can check out Grant's mysterious note yourself below.

Incidentally, Tony Curtis' real name was Bernard Schwartz, hence Grant calling him Bernard Curtis. And Grant signs the letter with Archie Grant, Archibald Leach being Grant's real name.

Source: Julien's Live

Transcript:

October 25, 1963

Dear Mr. Bernard Curtis:

Wel yes yes. Thank you.

I loved LOVED Number Two: but I haven't seen Number One yet!

Please. I want to see Number One, dear Number One.
Because that's such a fine Number Two.

signed 'Archie Grant'
(Number Two)

Tony Curtis always idolised Cary Grant and once did a funny Grant impersonation on screen (in Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959)). About his big idol Curtis once said: "Cary Grant, the most gracious man, extremely intelligent, very perceptive about life. I admired him a lot and I emulated a lot of him. Not in my behaviour so much but so much rubbed off on me. I’m a gentleman now. I’m very appreciative of people’s friendship. I like to be gallant. I like to kiss ladies’ hands. All these little things that I felt Cary Grant did automatically, I decided I would do." Picture below: Grant and Curtis are having a laugh with Janet Leigh, to whom Curtis was married from 1951 till 1962.