American actor in more than 100 films from 1948, including bombs and classics such as “Sweet Smell of Success,” 1957 and “Some Like It Hot,” 1959, plus his Oscar-nominated “The Defiant Ones.”
Born Bernard Schwartz, the son of Hungarian immigrants, Curtis escaped a life of poverty, anti-Semitism and an abusive mother by dropping out of high school and joining the Navy at 16. His father was a tailor. A brother aged nine years was hit by a truck and young twelve-year-old Curtis had to identify the body. Another brother was afflicted with mental illness and lives in an institution. Following his stint in the Navy he went to Hollywood with a seven-year contract after an agent from Universal Studios saw him in “Golden Boy” in New York. His handsome looks turned him into a teen idol.
He appeared in a series of films including “Houdini,” “Trapeze,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The Great Impostor,” “The Outsider,” “Sex and the Single Girl,” “The Vikings,” “Taras Bulba” and “Spartacus.” After two TV series foundered in 1971 and 1979 his career gave him time to author a first novel. From youthful promise and talent, he moved into a personal life that was a jaded morass of entanglements and indulgences, progressing to younger women as he aged. He claimed that he bedded every one of his leading ladies, including Marilyn Monroe in 1950. He had four marriages with bitter divorces and a total of six kids. His first marriage was to actress Janet Leigh. Their second daughter Jamie Lee Curtis has gone on to stardom. His son Nicholas with his third wife, Leslie Allen, died of a drug O.D. in Provincetown, MA on 7/02/1994. He made a fourth marriage 2/28/1993 to Los Angeles attorney Lisa Deutsch, 30, that lasted 17 months. (A fifth marriage was made to horse trainer Jill Vanden Berg, 11/06/1998 with 75 guests and family members in attendance at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, NV.)
Curtis indulged in barbiturates in the 1960s to cocaine in the 1970s and 1980s. Friend Peter Lawford helped him check into the Betty Ford Clinic in 1984. Curtis now claims to be happy, enjoying life. He paints and sells his art.
He suffered fatal cardiac arrest on September 29, 2010 at his Henderson, NV home.
Link to Wikipedia biography