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      LAS VEGAS (AP) - Tony Curtis, the Bronx tailor's son who became
a 1950s movie heartthrob and then a respected actor with such films
as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like
It Hot," has died. He was 85.

      The actor died about 9:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas
area home of a cardiac arrest, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy
said Thursday.

      After a series of frivolous movies that exploited his handsome
physique and appealing personality, Curtis moved to more
substantial roles, starting in 1957 in the harrowing show business
tale "Sweet Smell of Success."

      In 1958, "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Academy Award
nomination as best actor for his portrayal of a white racist
escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The
following year, he donned women's clothing and sparred with Marilyn
Monroe in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy
Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."

      His first wife was actress Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame;
actress Jamie Leigh Curtis is their daughter.

      In later years, he returned to film and television as a
character actor after battling drug and alcohol abuse. His brash
optimism returned, and he allowed his once-shiny black hair to turn
silver.

      "I'm not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman,
sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane," he said at 60. "I've
got a helluva lot of living to do."


      He also became a painter whose canvasses sold for as much as
$20,000.

      "He was a fine actor ... I shall miss him," said British actor
Roger Moore, who starred alongside Curtis in TV's "The
Persuaders."

      "He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humour and
wonderful ad libs," Moore told Sky News. "We had the best of
times."


      Curtis perfected his craft in forgettable films such as
"Francis," "I Was a Shoplifter," "No Room for the Groom" and
"Son of Ali Baba."


      He first attracted critical notice as Sidney Falco, the press
agent seeking favor with a sadistic columnist, played by Burt
Lancaster, in the 1957 classic "Sweet Smell of Success."

      In her book "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," Pauline Kael wrote that in
the film, "Curtis grew up into an actor and gave the best
performance of his career."


      Other prestigious films followed: Stanley Kubrick's
"Spartacus," "Captain Newman, M.D.," "The Vikings," "Kings
Go Forth," "Operation Petticoat" and "Some Like It Hot." He
also found time to do a voice acting gig as his prehistoric
lookalike, Stony Curtis, in an episode of "The Flintstones."


      "The Defiant Ones" remained his only Oscar-nominated role.

      "I think it has nothing to do with good performances or bad
performances," he told The Washington Post in 2002. "After the
number of movies I made where I thought there should be some
acknowledgment, there was nothing from the Academy."

      "My happiness and privilege is that my audience around the
world is supportive of me, so I don't need the Academy."


      In 2000, an American Film Institute survey of the funniest films
in history ranked "Some Like It Hot" at No. 1. Curtis - famously
imitating Cary Grant's accent - and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians
who dress up as women to escape retribution after witnessing a
gangland massacre.

      Monroe was their co-star, and he and Lemmon were repeatedly kept
waiting as Monroe lingered in her dressing room out of fear and
insecurity. Curtis fumed over her unprofessionalism. When someone
remarked that it must be thrilling to kiss Monroe in the film's
love scenes, the actor snapped, "It's like kissing Hitler." In
later years, his opinion of Monroe softened, and in interviews he
praised her unique talent.


      In 2002, Curtis toured in "Some Like It Hot" - a revised and
retitled version of the 1972 Broadway musical "Sugar," which was
based on the film. In the touring show, the actor graduated to the
role of Osgood Fielding III, the part played in the movie by Joe E.
Brown.


      After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser
roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol
addiction.

      "From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview
magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting
the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had
to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to
grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that
people weren't picking on me."

      He recovered in the early '80s after a 30-day treatment at the
Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage.

      "Mine was a textbook case," he said in a 1985 interview. "My
life had become unmanageable because of booze and dope. Work became
a strain and a struggle. Because I didn't want to face the
challenge, I simply made myself unavailable."

      One role during that era of struggle did bring him an Emmy
nomination: his portrayal of David O. Selznick in the TV movie
"The Scarlett O'Hara War," in 1980.

      His health remained vigorous, though he did get heart bypass
surgery in 1994.

      Curtis took a fatherly pride in daughter Jamie Leigh's success.
They were estranged for a long period, then reconciled. "I
understand him better now," she said, "perhaps not as a father
but as a man."


      He also had five other children. Daughters Kelly, also with
Leigh, and Allegra, with second wife Christine Kaufmann, also
became actresses. His other wives were Leslie Allen, Lisa Deutsch
and Jill VandenBerg, whom he married in 1998.


      He had married Janet Leigh in 1951, when they were both rising
young stars; they divorced in 1963.


      "Tony and I had a wonderful time together; it was an exciting,
glamorous period in Hollywood," Leigh, who died in 2004, once
said. "A lot of great things happened, most of all, two beautiful
children."


      Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925, the son
of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after
World War I. His father, Manny Schwartz, had yearned to be an
actor, but work was hard to find with his heavy accent. He settled
for tailoring jobs, moving the family repeatedly as he sought work.


      "I was always the new kid on the block, so I got beat up by the
other kids," Curtis recalled in 1959. "I had to figure a way to
avoid getting my nose broken. So I became the crazy new kid on the
block."


      His sidewalk histrionics helped avoid beatings and led to acting
in plays at a settlement house. He also grew to love movies. "My
whole culture as a boy was movies," he said. "For 11 cents, you
could sit in the front row of a theater for 10 hours, which I did
constantly."


      After serving in the Pacific during World War II and being
wounded at Guam, he returned to New York and studied acting under
the G.I. Bill. He appeared in summer stock theater and on the
Borscht Circuit in the Catskills. Then an agent lined up an
audition with a Universal-International talent scout. In 1948, at
23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio, starting at
$100 a week.


      Bernie Schwartz sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, so the
studio gave him a new name: Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite
novel, "Anthony Adverse," and the Anglicized name of a favorite
uncle. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis.


      The studio helped smooth the rough edges off the ambitious young
actor. The last to go was his street-tinged Bronx accent. His
diction became a Hollywood joke, as when he uttered to Piper Laurie
in a medieval potboiler "The Prince Who Was a Thief": "Yonder
lies the castle of my fodder."


      Curtis pursued another career as an artist, creating
Matisse-like still lifes with astonishing speed. "I'm a recovering
alcoholic," he said in 1990 as he concluded a painting in 40
minutes in the garden of the Bel-Air Hotel. "Painting has given me
such a great pleasure in life, helped me to recover."


      He also turned to writing, producing a 1977 novel, "Kid Cody
and Julie Sparrow." In 1993, he wrote "Tony Curtis: The
Autobiography."


      Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles contributed to
this report.
      

Gallery

Tony Curtis, the Bronx tailor's son who became
a 1950s movie heartthrob and then a respected actor with such films
as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like
It Hot," has died. He was 85.

Actor Tony Curtis dies at Las Vegas-area home

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