SATURDAY RUBRICS: 6/14/25

FATHER'S DAY EDITION

SOME JOY

Tony Curtis and his daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, who has been sober now for 26 years and been married to Christopher Guest for 41. Her mother, Janet Leigh, was married to Curtis for 11. She was his first of six wives. Photo above by Allan Grant.

Jamie:

“Tony grew up in the streets of Manhattan. He was a Jewish boy, and he lived in the Jewish neighborhood. He said in order to go uptown you would start running at full speed because, by the time you crossed into the Italian neighborhood, the Irish neighborhood, the Polish neighborhood, you had to be running, because you’d get the shit beaten out of you if they caught you. That told me so much about the hardship of his life. And my mother’s life, in Merced, California—just both of them very poor, economically insecure.

…

“I knew my dad had an issue [with drugs] because I had an issue and he and I shared drugs. There was a period of time where I was the only child that was talking to him. I had six siblings. I have five. My brother, Nicholas, died of a heroin overdose when he was 21 years old. But I shared drugs with my dad. I did cocaine and freebased once with my dad. But that was the only time I did that, and I did that with him. He did end up getting sober for a short period of time and was very active in recovery for about three years. It didn’t last that long. But he found recovery for a minute.

…

“I’m breaking the cycle that has basically destroyed the lives of generations in my family. Getting sober remains my single greatest accomplishment… bigger than my husband, bigger than both of my children and bigger than any work, success, failure. Anything.

…

“Because I didn't really have a relationship with my father, he couldn't let me down. I just happened to be one of the last people who hadn't been disappointed too many times. For years, I didn't know who Tony Curtis was as much as other people told me who he was.

…

“Once in a while when the images of my parents find me unexpectedly, I'm caught by not only their extreme beauty but their deep love and ambition. As the product of 13 divorces in my immediate family I have often struggled with the idea of love, what happens to it? There are only a couple reminders to me that I was born from love and not resentment, competition, jealousy and rancor which are the cornerstones of any unpleasant divorce. I also forget that they were famous and loved worldwide.”

###

And just for the hell of it … as I was searching about to put together the above compendium of quotes, I found this anecdote that Jamie Lee Curtis told Rachel Syme in their Q and A for a 2019 issue of The New Yorker when Syme referenced Bette Davis.

Curtis:

Bette Davis! So, I lived in a building in Los Angeles called the Colonial House, and it was referred to as the Dakota West. Bette Davis lived in the building, along with other filmmakers. At twenty-seven, I became the president of the board. Nobody wanted the job, and I was, like, “I’ll do it.” I’m very organized.

And so, two things. One, Miss Davis would call me in July and August, saying, “I want the heat.” I’d be, like, “I’m so sorry, Miss Davis, it’s not possible, because it’s July, and it’s a hundred and five degrees, and we’re all dying, and I can’t turn on the boilers.” She goes, “I want the heat.” She would lay by the pool in a big black hat and a black maillot bathing suit with high heels, black sunglasses.

Then I was in a TV movie with her, set in Valdosta, Georgia. I played her spunky niece, and she was the Southern matriarch of a family where her brother died and left his estate, his plantation, to his African-American housekeeper. She had a sister in the show, played by Penny Fuller. It was called “As Summers Die.” The dénouement was when Bette Davis was going to testify, and we’re in one of those old Southern courtrooms with the mahogany, and it’s in the nineteen-fifties, and she’s in one of those Victorian wheelchairs. We’re coming in from the back of the courtroom. You can imagine: big, wide shot, full courtroom, people fanning, hot summer day. Halfway down the aisle, Miss Davis reaches up and grabs my hand, which is pushing the wheelchair, and says, “Take me back.” The camera people are going, “What are you doing?” Because we stopped. And I turned her around. I’m looking at everybody, like, “What? I don’t know.” I took her into her little dressing room. The director, the producers, everybody’s running in, like, “What did you do?” I was, like, “I didn’t do anything!” So they go in there for twenty minutes. Finally, the director walks out. He walks up to the front row, where Penny Fuller was sitting, and he whispers in her ear, and Penny Fuller says, “Oh, give me a break. Are you kidding me?” And there’s a flurry of people, and the wardrobe woman comes in with a selection of hats. Penny Fuller had to take off her hat because it was red. Miss Davis felt that it would draw attention away from the fact that it was Bette Davis’s scene.

###

JFK and his daughter, Caroline. Photo by Ed Clark.

On this particular weekend, let us not only honor our fathers but also focus on how Caroline and her children honored her father and their grandfather eight years ago on what would have been his 100th birthday.

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