REMEMBERING BERNIE SCHWARTZ

An Internet home page described him as a “legendary actor,” but my surmise is that the author responsible for that never witnessed his performing. Legendary, he was not.

The last photo of Tony Curtis I saw was in a foreign equivalent of People Magazine, and it portrayed his as a gross, ugly, leering old man with a twenty-year-old whore on each side.

He had five wives and other affinities for booze and illegal drugs.

Earlier, he was a handsome dude, all right, but I suspect that if he hadn’t been a Jew, we’d never heard of him. The same may be said for goodly numbers of other actors, film-makers, authors, artists, publishers, editors, journalists, and assorted celebrities.

The web biography reported that “Some Like it Hot” had been rated as one of the funniest films since the dawn of creation, but the fact that the two stars were Jews likely influenced that choice. Another contributing factor is that their characters spent most of their time in women’s clothes – in modern times a highly effective stratagem for gaining popularity, in certain quarters.

It seems Tony was also an artist and – you guessed it – a novelist. These achievements should be interpreted in the same way that Steve Martin is a playwright, slut Madonna a children’s book author, and Bill Cosby, an expert on fatherhood. Tee hee.

The commendable item in the obituary was Tony’s honorable service, in fact wounding, in World War II. Above all, that deserves recognition and respect.

Legendary, however, he was not. Speaking about his acting, David Susskind characterized him as “a passionate amoeba.”

I pray for the repose of his soul.