„Tony Curtis was something of a fixture in my household growing up – he almost seemed like part of the family. Isn’t it funny how movies stars can become like part of your family? Back when classic movies used to run on television much more frequently then they do now (classic movies having been – for better and for worse, relegated completely to Turner Classic Movies), Tony Curtis’ cherubic face and delightfully unsoftened Bronx accent would appear all the time on TV – and my father would stop and point at the screen and say, »Look – there’s Tony Curtis!« And I would look, and smile, and always for the same reason: that it just seemed so improbable that this charming, ethnic kid from the Bronx with the soft face and jarring accent would actually be a movie star. And married to Janet Leigh. And would be someone who played heroes, such as the the Viking Erik in The Vikings. All of it seemed so improbable – the kind of thing that could only happen in America.
He seemed to be living The Dream.
Only years later did I learn that things were much more complicated for him – that Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) grew up desperately poor, speaking only Hungarian until he was age 6. His father was a Jewish tailor, and the family lived in the back of the shop. His mother was apparently a somewhat abusive figure in Curtis’ life; she was at one point diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental disease which may have been passed on in some form to Curtis’ brother Robert, who was institutionalized. Things were basically very tough for Tony Curtis in his young life. How tough? He and his younger brother Julius were at one point placed in an orphanage for a month because their parents couldn’t afford to feed them. Four years later, Julius was struck and killed by a truck.”