LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Tony Curtis, whose dark hair and good looks made him a Hollywood star well before he became an accomplished actor in hit movies such as “Some Like It Hot” and “The Sweet Smell of Success,” died Wednesday night at his home in Nevada. He was 85.
Curtis, one of the biggest box-office stars of the 1950s and 1960s and one of Hollywood’s busiest playboys, died a natural death due to cardiac arrest with his doctor at his bedside in Henderson, Nevada, outside Las Vegas, the Clark County coroner’s office said.
The handsome leading man starred in more than 140 films including the classic gladiator drama “Spartacus,” and he received an Academy Award nomination for 1958’s “The Defiant Ones.”
Yet, his career got off to a rocky start. In one of his first major roles, playing an Arabian in “Son of Ali Baba” in 1952, he wrote that he was roundly mocked for proclaiming in a thick New York accent, “Yonduh in the valley of the sun is my fadder’s castle.”
Still, Universal Pictures’ star-making machinery and teen fan magazines managed to make him a heartthrob, and movie-goers loved his dark-haired sex appeal and impish grin.
