American Prince

American Prince Read Free Page B

Book: American Prince Read Free
Author: Tony Curtis
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often tried sex at a much younger age, so they were more comfortable with themselves, and with men.
    I remember some of those girls with great affection. Debbie from Iowa had an apartment in Beverly Hills, a pretty, little place. We’d go out for dinner, she’d invite me upstairs, and then we’d spend the night together. Her boyfriend happened to be an executive at one of Universal’s distribution companies, and he had brought her to LA for a six-month tryout. I found out that this wasn’t uncommon. Producers would bring these beautiful girls out from their hometowns, put them under contract for six months, give them bit parts in movies, and screw them the whole time. Then bim, bam, thank you ma’am, they’d go back to wherever they’d come from.
    The Universal executive never found out about Debbie and me. I was very discreet. I respected the girls, so I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to get them into any kind of trouble.
    In addition to aspiring actresses, I was surrounded by girls whom the studio hired to deliver the mail, beautiful young ladies who rode bicycles from stage to stage and office to office, bringing scripts and messages. There wasn’t one I didn’t find attractive. If a girl gave me a look, letting me know she was interested, I’d show my interest right back. I was still shy, but I was teaching myself to get over it.
    I had lots of different experiences with these girls. Sometimes things would lead straight to sex, and other times we’d just neck. Whatever happened was fine with me. I was just happy that they seemed to like me. One of the girls lived in a house with a little porch, and we’d sit out there, kissing. We’d go to screenings at the studio and hold hands until her hands got sweaty. But that was it. If I had pushed a little harder, maybe we could have had a relationship, but I wasn’t ready to do that. I didn’t want to cut off the opportunity to go out with all those other girls.
    I couldn’t believe how much fun I was having. To make it seem a little more real I started to keep a romantic diary; when I went out with a girl I would take a Polaroid picture of her and put it in my book along with some cryptic notes that only I could decipher. This book was proof that I wasn’t dreaming the whole thing up. Without it I might wake up one morning and find myself in my parents’ apartment in New York!
    One of the girls who came to Hollywood looking for a contract in the fall of 1948 was a very young actress who had recently changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. I first saw her at Universal just walking down the street. She was breathtakingly voluptuous in a see-through blouse that revealed her bra. Her beauty was intimidating, but there was something about her smile that made her seem approachable. She and I were about the same age.
    When I walked by her I gave her my usual friendly greeting: “Hi-i-i.” She smiled. I smiled back.
    By this time I had more or less settled on a new name for myself. The one and only book that I had read while I was in the Navy was
Anthony Adverse,
by Hervey Allen, a historical novel set during the days of Napoleon. I had decided to call myself Anthony Adverse, but when I mentioned that one day to a casting director, he said, “There’s already an actor in town with that name.” So I kept the Anthony, and I added Curtis; I had a relative, Janush Kertiz, whom I liked very much, so I took his last name for mine. Kertiz is actually a very common Hungarian name. What a perfect name that is, I thought to myself: Tony Curtis. I had wanted a name that was a little mysterious, and this seemed just right.
    I said to this beautiful girl, “My name is Tony.”
    “My name is Marilyn,” she said.
    “I’m driving into town,” I said. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
    She paused, looked at me for a moment, and then said, “Okay.”
    We walked together to my car, and I held the door open for her. I got behind the wheel, drove out the gate at Universal,

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