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Tony Curtis was beaten when he was a kid because his Hungarian origins
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Everybody talked in Hungarian around him, so he thought they were living in Hungary – he said in an interview. Tony Curtis (1925-2010) was born in New York under the name of Bernát Schwartz on June 3.
His father arrived in the USA at the beginning of the 1920s in search of a better life – blikk.hu reported. He met his later wife in New York. She was a Hungarian, as well, coming from Debrecen. Their first son, Bernard Schwartz, was born in 1925. Interestingly, they spoke Hungarian at home since they did not know English, so Tony Curtis, as a small kid,
thought he was living in Hungary.
“I thought I was living in Hungary until I was six. Then, in New York’s Bronx, I realized that I do not. I was beaten many times because I was different, I was Hungarian – he said later in an interview. Later, he took the stage name Tony Curtis in a tribute towards Michael Curtiz being the first American director of Hungarian origins.
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His father ran a tailoring workshop, but the business did not go well, so he lived in poverty with his two brothers.
“My father was not a happy man, that could be seen on his face. He smoked a box of Lucky Strike each day which killed his lungs by he became 40.
He was nervous because we did not have a house,
Cabbage rolls, crepes and the other basic Hungarian foods that were not absent from his father’s table would have helped to keep traditions and culture an integral part of life wherever they were, separately or as a family. As a new immigrant preteen to Toronto in the early ’60s I absolutely fell in love with the big screen actors such as Tony Curtis. Elvis’s Kissing Cousins was my very 1st movie but many with Tony, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis and of course, Shirley Temple & Doris Day. Such memories. Such escapes from a very violent home-life.
I read an article about his daughter Jamie Lee Curtis. I think she has been to Hungary before. She is proud of her Hungarian background and also proud of her trans daughter. I know people who met Tony in California and said he was always a proud Hungarian. He might have known some of my cousins who lived in the Bronx in the 1920s, also Hungarians of course.