Tony Curtis chats with TCM host Robert Osborne about his life in the movies in Private Screenings: Tony Curtis (1999). The Bronx born Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) made a quick leap from the navy to New York stage to Hollywood in just three years. His first film was Robert Siodmak's film noir Criss Cross (1948) where Curtis appeared in a small part dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. The film also starred Burt Lancaster, who Curtis would team with again in Trapeze (1956) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

Curtis touches on his relationship with wife Janet Leigh in the special. He names Stanley Kubrick, who directed him in Spartacus (1960), as the best director he ever worked with. And he describes working with his idol Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat (1959). Among the other greats Curtis had the pleasure of working - Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones (1958) (the movie which earned Curtis his only Best Actor® nomination) and Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder's cross dressing comedy Some Like it Hot (1959). But Curtis's favorite of his own performances came twenty years after his film debut in Richard Fleischer's crime drama The Boston Strangler (1968).

BW & C-54m. Closed Captioning.

by Stephanie Thames