TCM Star of the Month July 2020: Tony Curtis

We're into the first full week of a new month, which means it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM, that being Tony Curtis. TCM is running Curtis' movies every Monday in prime time, with a surprisingly low number of his movies, just 17. The movies are grouped somewhat by theme, with his early movies tonight, two nights of comedies (July 13 and 27), and one of dramas (July 20).



A movie which surprised me in its absence is Operation Petticoat, since it's one that Curtis talks about in the Star of the Month piece he did for Cary Grant many years back. But then I looked it up and it turns out the movie was made at Universal; for some reason I was thinking it was an MGM movie which would be easier for TCM to get.



Curtis got an Oscar nomination for The Defiant Ones, which is on tonight at 10:00 PM and is somewhat surprisingly not the first movie in the salute, that honor going to the Trapeze.



I was fortunate to have a pair of related pictures to use since The Defiant Ones is followed at 11:45 PM by The Vikings, which isn't all that good but is a fun movie to watch.

It's not surprising that the first of the comedies on July 13 would be Some Like It Hot, since it's one of the great movies ever made, with Tony Curtis being fun as the guy who gets poor Jack Lemmon into the crazy scheme of dressing as women to get away from a bunch of mobsters they witnessed committing a mob hit. Of course, Joe E. Brown and Jack Lemmon are the ones to get the memorable finale.



One other omission is Sweet Smell of Success, another movie for which Curtis would have been a worthy Oscar nominee. Curtis only got the one nomination for The Defiant Ones as mentioned above, but it's not the only role for which he probably should have gotten one. There's also The Boston Strangler, which is on the schedule, at 1:30 AM on July 21 (which is of course still July 20 on the west coast).