Arts
e
ent
Still 9Elot'
The "best-looking Jewish kid in the world" takes the
stage in a musical version of a silver screen classic.
ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER
Special to the Jewish News
away from doing theater. He blames the avoidance
on a bad experience at the beginning of his career.
"I was working with Neil Simon and Herbert Ross
in the play I Oughta Be in Pictures, and it was so
demeaning for me," he recalls. "Those two men
were cruel and impossible to work with, and they
soured me for doing theater again."
Luckily, Curtis says, his experience with this play
has been great.
"The people I am working with now are so generous
and nice and pleasant to be around. It's a whole differ-
ent feeling," says Curtis, who took dancing lessons and
practiced his singing in preparation for the musical.
Rehearsals for the show were in New York, and
Curtis, who lives in Las Vegas, admits that being
there brought back memories of growing up in the
I is been more than four decades since
screen legend Tony Curtis starred in
the movie comedy classic Some Like It
Hot, and now he is traveling around
the country starring in the musical stage ver-
sion. From Dec. 3-22, Some Like It Hot and
Curtis will be in Detroit at the Fisher
Theatre.
"The movie has always been a part of
my life," . says Curtis, 77. "So doing it on
stage means a lot.
Some Like It Hot, set in the
Prohibition era, features
songs (some never per-
formed) with music and lyrics
by the late Jule Styne and Bob
Merrill, and a new book by Peter
Stone. Directed by Dan Siretta, it
adheres more closely to the original
plot than an earlier stage version of the
film called Sugar.
Some Like It Hot follows Joe and Jerry,
two down-on-their-luck musicians who
witness a gangland murder in Chicago.
Looking for a quick way out of town,
they hear about job openings in a band
headed for Florida. The problem: It's an
all-female band.
So they dress up as women and call
themselves Josephine and Daphne. But
Tony Curtis in "Some Like It Hot':• "I'll only play guys like myself;
they wind up falling in love with Sugar,
who are vital and active."
the beautiful blonde (played by Marilyn
Monroe in the movie), who is the fea-
tured singer in the band.
Bronx and Manhattan — "but they were not all
Meanwhile, Jerry/Daphne has an admirer —
wonderful memories," he says.
eccentric billionaire Osgood Fielding III.
In the 1959 Billy Wilder film, Curtis played the
Joe/Josephine role, but this time around Curtis is
Growing Up
Osgood Fielding III, portrayed in the movie by Joe
Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in411925 to
E. Brown.
Hungarian-born Jews — his mother, Helen, and
"My Osgood is different from Joe's," laughs
father, Emanuel, a handsome, impeccably dressed
Curtis. "My Osgood is charming, freer, loaded with
man who longed to perform but supported his fami-
dough, generous, happy to be alive, blue eyes, dark
ly as a tailor. Curtis spent much of his childhood
hair, slim figure, handsome — hey — I am describ-
dodging anti-Semitic classmates.
ing myself?"
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, the
Schwartz family landed on the Upper East Side of
Theater Novice
Manhattan at 78th Street and York Avenue. "In
those days it was Nazi land and I was constantly
Until now, Curtis, who has 120 film credits, shied
"
,