Tony Curtis Movies

Want to know the best Tony Curtis movies?  How about the worst Tony Curtis movies?  Curious about Tony Curtis box office grosses or which Tony Curtis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Tony Curtis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.

Tony Curtis (1925-2010) was an Oscar®-nominated American actor whose career spanned over 7 decades.  His IMDb page shows 128 acting credits from 1949-2008. This page will rank 61 Tony Curtis movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television shows, shorts, cameos and movies that were not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.  This page was requested many moons ago by Dan and many other people.

Tony Curtis in 1959’s Some Like It Hot

Tony Curtis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Tony Curtis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Tony Curtis movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Tony Curtis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Tony Curtis movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Tony Curtis movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Tony Curtis movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Tony Curtis movie won.
  • Sort Tony Curtis movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Tony Curtis in 1958’s The Vikings

Ten Possibly Interesting Facts About Tony Curtis

1. Bernard Schwartz was born in the Bronx, New York in 1925.

2. How Bernard Schwartz became Tony Curtis?  The first name was from the novel Anthony Adverse and “Curtis” was from Kurtz. a surname in his mother’s family. In Curtis’ first film roles, he was credited as “Anthony Curtis”….which was quickly shortened to “Tony Curtis”.

3. Tony Curtis joined the United States Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He joined the Pacific submarine force after he was inspired by Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo and Tyrone Power in Crash Dive.   Curtis witnessed the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay from his ship’s (USS Proteus) signal bridge about a mile away.

4. After World War 2 ended, Tony Curtis attended City College of New York and studied acting at The New School.  His contemporaries included Elaine Stritch, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Beatrice Arthur, and Rod Steiger.

5. Tony Curtis was quickly discovered by talent agent Joyce Selznick (niece of David O. Selznick).  He arrived in Hollywood at the age of 23.

6. Tony Curtis was voted as a Top 25 Box Office star 5 times on Quigley Publications’ annual poll: 1954 (23rd), 1959 (18th), 1960 (6th), 1961 (9th) and 1962 (18th).

7. Tony Curtis broke a Hollywood taboo in the 1950s by insisting that an African-American actor, Sidney Poitier, have co-starring billing next to him in the movie 1958’s The Defiant Ones.

8. Tony Curtis was married six times…..he had six children.  One of his children is Jamie Lee Curtis.

9. Tony Curtis’ favorite actor was Cary Grant.  His favorite movie was Grant’s Gunga Din.

10. Tony Curtis was buried with some of his favorite possessions – a Stetson hat, an Armani scarf, driving gloves, an iPhone and a copy of his favorite novel, Anthony Adverse.

Check out Tony Curtis’ career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Steve’s Updated Tony Curtis Video

Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences.

Editor’s note:  Calculating adjusted is not an exact science.  Most of our calculations are based on solid sources that we have collected over the years.  A few of his early 1950s low budget movies required us to use biographies, movie books, articles and other sources that do not provide the best statistics.   So please keep that in mind when you are looking at the grosses of some of his low budget B movies.

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62 thoughts on “Tony Curtis Movies”

  1. Tony Curtis is not one of my favorites so I am surprised I have seen 30 of these movies. I really enjoyed Goodbye Charlie and Sweet Smell of Success. Trapeze is a good one too. Another wonderful job.

    Reply

    1. Hey Bern1960. 30 Curtis movies watched is currently the best tally out there. 30 for you, 19 for Flora, me at 18, Steve at 16, Laurent at 13 and 11 for Pierre. Unless Lupino tops your total victory will be yours. I will have to check out Goodbye Charlie. Thanks for the comment, tally and visit.

      Reply

      1. No worries, Bern’s victory is save 😉 I’ve only seen 24 TC movies, and my favorite is Sextette….
        NOT!
        I guess my fav has to be Some like it Hot, but I do like The Defiant Ones, Boston Strangler, List of Adrian Messenger, City across the River, Sweet Smell of Success- and yes, as I stated elsewhere, in it’s own peculiar way, Sextette, where he played Sexy Alexi. I also liked Trapeze, but it is ages ago that I saw that one (stored under good movie). As a Teenager, I’m sure I enjoyed his exotic romps with Piper Laurie more than I do as an adult. I’ve never been a fan of his TV show with Roger Moore, but I remember it as a big success on german TV somewhere in the 70’s. Tony Curtis was part of a few blockbusters, but films he had to carry on his own hardly broke records…still, remembered today as one of Hollywoods Greats, as the father of Jamie Lee and in Germany as the Ex-husband of Christine Kaufmann, whose Hollywood career fell flat but who had a good career in german films, stage and later on TV…last I’ve seen her, about 2 or 3 years ago, she still was a beautiful woman.

        Reply

        1. Hey Lupino….thanks for checking out our Tony Curtis page. So Bern1960 will probably be the winner in our tally contest. 24 is pretty good….but not as good as her tally.

          Bern1960 30 movies…gold
          Lupino 24 movies….silver
          Flora 19 movies…..bronze
          Cogerson 18, Steve 16, Laurent 13, Pierre 11

          So we finally have somebody who was not a fan of The Persuaders….some of the earlier comments have high high praise for that show.

          I did not even know the Laurie/Curtis movies even existed before doing this page.

          Trapeze is the one Curtis movie that is high on my list of movies to watch.

          JLC is indeed a very beautiful woman.

          Thanks for the feedback.

          Reply

  2. HI STEVE:

    1 Swamp Fire is now firmly ingrained in my mind and next time I call it Swamp Fever I will probably be coming down with the fever !

    2 You did indeed do a Tony Curtis video and I have just drafted a post to Bruce in which I have referred to your excellent video. I am holding back on posts to El Commandant as he seems to be swamped [no pun intended] with them at the moment.

    3 As Dana is one of my fifties faves I am quite happy for El C to keep slipping in Dana’s name
    until the mentions equal the number of times Our Leader has promoted Myrna on this site.

    Reply

    1. Thanks Bob, as Dana Andrews is one of your favorites I will add him to my list of future video topics, I think I can guess which of his films will top the chart though Bruce’s sources might have other ideas.

      Now here’s a puzzler since this is Tony Curtis page how do we connect Andrews to Curtis quicker than the average “six degrees of separation”. 🙂

      Reply

      1. We can do it only with Dan like co-star links of which there are many on the Andrews/Curtis pages – for example Smoke Signal starred Dana Andrews whose co-star was Piper Laurie who was Tony Curtis’ leading lady in The Prince Who was a Thief and Son of Ali Baba.

        Reply

          2. STEVE
            1 I can recall seeing Piper and Tony in 4 films which are the 3 that you and I have mentioned and No Room for the Groom (1952). Later in her career Piper dismissed Son of Ali Baba and Prince who was a Thief as highly profitable “T**s and sand “ trivia. It was in one of those two movies that Tony is supposed to have uttered the lines with which he was taunted for the rest of his career and which he partly blames for his lack of Oscar success “Yonda lies de castle of my faddah!”

            2 If you had Dan’s knowledge you could probably extend links indefinitely and end up squaring the circle as the following brief example shows:

            Mentioned on this Tony Curtis page is Dana Andrews who starred in Smoke Signal with Piper Laurie who was Tony Curtis’ leading lady in 4 movies and who was molested in The Hustler by George C Scott who starred with Tony Curtis in Not with My Wife You Don’t

            3 Anyway you’ve put in much hard work on your videos over the past few weeks so you deserve to have a good weekend and I wish you that.

          3. Hey Bob and Steve.
            1. Good Bacon connections.
            2. Piper Laurie was one of the most underrated actresses of that time.
            3. By the time she got her Oscar nomination for Carrie her career was already a quarter century old.
            4. As many errors that I make, I am sure we can give Bob a break on his Swamp naming issue…..lol. In my area we have a place called The Great Dismal Swamp…sounds like a movie title. 🙂

  3. I think I did a video on Tony Curtis a few months ago. I can’t be bothered to check. I have the memory of a gnat.

    I’ve seen 16 of 61 films listed, probably more way back in my ‘watching anything on TV’ days. Favorites include The Manitou and… well… that’s about it.

    Alrighty Spartacus is my favorite film here and probably in my top 5 movies of all time along with Ben-Hur, 2001, Psycho and Lawrence of Arabia.

    Also enjoyed Taras Bulba, Trapeze, Some Like it Hot, Sweet Smell of Success, The Vikings and The Defiant Ones.

    I don’t think I’ve seen Captain Newman MD, The Rat Race or Francis.

    Good to see Spartacus and Some Like it Hot (another top 10 favorite of mine) topping the charts here. I did see The Manitou at the cinema back in the late 70s, it was awful but I still bought it on DVD a few years later.

    You and Bernie Schwarz have something in common Bruce, both huge Archie Leach fans. 🙂

    Another excellent movie page. Voted Up!

    p.s. Dana Andrews seems to have sneaked into your first paragraph, don’t tell Bob he’ll never let you forget it. [wink wink]

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve
      1. Since your comment, I see your poster page has been linked to the page. That should help the memory….lol.
      2. Thanks for the tally. Current results: Bern1960 30, Flora 19, Cogerson 18, Steve 16, Laurent 13, Pierre 11.
      3. I actually saw Bad News Bears Go To Japan….a truly horrible movie….and I realized that when I was a kid.
      4. I wish I would have read this comment when I was home…now that Andrews error will remain for a few more hours until I get home.
      5. Happy day when you agree with our rankings.
      6. Yep me and Bernie are Grant fans… I imagine working with Grant was a career highlight for him.
      Thanks for the visit and the comment.

      Reply

      1. Thanks Bruce, what page is the video link on btw?

        This must be a near record number of comments you’ve responded to these past few hours, you must be getting tired with all this typing. It must have been a lot easier a year ago. 🙂

        Reply

        1. Actually it was a link to just one Curtis page. Between last night and this morning I have been commenting up a storm. I think at one point I was over 60 comments behind….finally reached yesterday’s Curtis comments. This is a good problem to have….lol.

          Reply

  4. hello Bruce,
    a very good page for an actor i like
    i saw eleven of his films and i like very much the Vikings and Some like it hot, i remenbered Boeing Boeing too which was a lot of fun;
    I agree with my compatriot he became so famous with the part of Dany Wilde american play boy opposite to the flegme of Moore, british aristocrat and the generique was so good.
    thank you again and have a nice day
    pierre

    Reply

    1. Hey Pierre. 11 Curtis movies watched is pretty good. Thanks for backing up Laurent’s comments on the Persuaders. I bet only Moore and Curtis fans even know the show existed here in the States.

      My dad loved the Vikings. I want to see his Boeing Boeing movie….good to know it is a fun movie to watch. Good feedback….thank you.

      Reply

  5. Hello Bruce,

    It’s a good choice. Tony Curtis was a good actor. I love Spartacus, Vikings and Some Like It Hot, who is one of my favorite movie. Although he played in big success in France (Spartacus, Trapeze, Some Like It Hot and vikings, in decreasing order), he was not a big star. He was long regarded as a second quality role, more than a star. In fact, his films where he starred alone were far less successful.
    Paradoxically it was in 1972 that it became very popular in France, with a TV serie which was a failure in the whole world;The Persuaders, with Roger Moore. But in my country this show was a very huge success. The 24 episodes were broadcast a multitude of times. Almost once a year for more than thirty years. It must be said that during the dubbing in French, the dialogues were rewritten, with more umour and replications more funny. In addition Tony Curtis and Roger Moore were dubbed by two great and popular theater actors, Michel Roux and Claude Bertrand). Persuaders was named in France, Amicalement Votre (friendly yours), and all the episode are available on Youtube in french version as well as VHS, DVD and Blu-ray. The success was such that there was even an adaptation to the cartoon strip (in Pif Gadget), and credits is very cult. Michel Roux says that Tony Curtis was very pleased with his French voice, to the point that he would have asked him to contract all his dubbing to come. Roux doubled him until Lois and Clark, the new adventures of Superman.
    I’ve seen 13 movies of the list.

    Reply

    1. I remember that at the time, when people talked about him, often they said Dany Wilde (the name of his character in Persuaders), instead of Tony Curtis …

      Reply

    2. Hey Laurent
      1. Thanks for the information on how Curtis was thought about in France.
      2. Very cool information how The Persuaders was so popular there….have to admit I had never even heard of the show before your comment.
      3. I think Spartacus was huge everywhere….easily one of his Top3 movies.
      4. 13 Curtis movies seen….not too bad….thanks for the tally count.
      Thanks for checking out our latest page.

      Reply

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