Hollywood Chronicle

THE MAKING OF “SOME LIKE IT HOT”
By Tony Curtis with Mark A. Vieira,
Wiley $25.95

AMERICAN REBEL
By Marc Eliot, Harmony $25.99

Curtis’s writing in this memoir of Billy Wilder’s 1959 comic masterpiece is staccato, repetitive and occasionally baffling. But even if the voice is a little insane — on Wilder: “He was wiry. Energetic. I don’t think I ever saw him stand still. Not a guy given to repose. Always moving. Like his pictures” — it suits the edgy, emotionally charged set of Some Like It Hot perfectly. There are sexual encounters with Marilyn Monroe, whom Curtis describes as his “first adult relationship”.
They slept together both before she was a major star and later, when they were working together on this film. It’s left an open question whether Monroe was subsequently pregnant by Curtis or by her husband at the time, Arthur Miller. What is definite is that the racy seduction scene on the yacht in Some Like It Hot was Method acting at its finest.
Speaking of the Method, Curtis suggests that Lee and Paula Strasberg were to blame for Monroe’s neurotic behaviour on the set and her failure to get there with any regularity. “Before going to the Actors Studio she was like a tightrope walker who doesn’t know there was a pit she could fall into,” Curtis quotes Wilder as saying. “After the Strasbergs got to her, she thought of nothing but the pit”. Sometimes Curtis’s revelations about Monroe feel invasive (especially when it comes to her abortions and miscarriages) or borderline mean (were her hips really those of “a Polish washerwoman”?). But to the extent that he could overcome his own dazzling narcissism, Curtis was clearly under her spell. His book (written with Mark A. Vieira) may be more feverish than fluent, but it’s a wonderful tribute to one of the funniest movies ever made.
Eliot’s formulaic and occasionally overblown analysis of Clint Eastwood’s life in Hollywood (“And on it went, the low din of whispers that had followed Clint around for his entire career, like Shakespeare’s infamous sound and fury”) paints Eastwood as shrewd, gifted and a bit of a cad.
For Eliot, Eastwood is the ultimate alpha male, and not always in a good way. His movies have often placed women in the category of “murderer, witch, prostitute, deceiver or helpless victim.” In his personal life, he’s had seven children by five different women: evidence, Eliot suggests, that while Eastwood has played “the role of the happy Hollywood husband,” he was always “a lone-wolf womaniser”.
Sondra Locke, his former longtime companion, has said Eastwood pressured her into repeat abortions and set her up with a career-devastating sham development deal at Warner Brothers. Eliot’s Eastwood is the kind of guy you’d kill to have starring in or directing your movie — but not someone who’s been as dependable on the home front.