"The most popular movie comedy there ever was"

Tony Curtis (left) played Joe/Josephine and Jack Lemmon played Jerry/Daphne in Billy Wilder's comedy masterpiece "Some Like It Hot" in 1959.

You can have your "Tootsie," "La Cage Aux Folles" and "Victor/Victoria." But for me, the granddaddy of all cross-dressing movie comedies was 1959's ribald and raucous "Some Like It Hot."

Tony Curtis, who starred in the film with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, died yesterday. He was 85.

I interviewed Curtis six years ago for Style Weekly, just before he came to Richmond for a screening of "Some Like It Hot" at the Byrd Theater. We spoke for about a half hour by telephone. I was at my kitchen table, and Curtis was at his home in Las Vegas. He was charming and gracious, despite the fact that he must have answered questions like mine hundreds of times.

"It's still the most popular movie comedy there ever was," he told me.

In the film, set in 1929, Curtis and Lemmon play out-of-work musicians who accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and then hide from the Mob by disguising themselves as women and joining an all-girl band.

Curtis told me that the key to the success of the movie's cross-dressing element was that "there was no reason for us to be in drag except that our lives depended on it." Both he and Lemmon enjoyed playing in drag. "Jack loved it. He went to pieces over it. We weren't embarrassed or afraid of it. I didn't want to look like my character enjoyed it too much, but I was never worried about it really."

Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx and was the son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary. He told me that director Billy Wilder, who left Berlin and came to Hollywood when Hitler rose to power, was tough on the set of "Some Like It Hot."

"Billy Wilder was an Oberstandartenfuhrer -- he was Austrian, you know -- and he kept a good strong hand on the project. But he allowed Jack and me to develop the characters."

In one of the film's funniest scenes, Curtis drops his Josephine character to pretend he is a wealthy businessman in order to woo Monroe's character.

"I decided that morning to use a Cary Grant accent for that scene" to give the character comic sophistication, Curtis told me. "Wilder let us work out our own roles to a great extent."

When we talked six years ago, Curtis, who served in the Navy during World War II before becoming a star, said he was enjoying living in Las Vegas and was spending a lot of time working on his paintings. He said his art was being shown in prestigious galleries. His plans at the time, he said, included a movie about the Holocaust. The film never materialized.

I was far from Tony Curtis's biggest fan. I enjoyed his movies more for the stories than for his personal appeal. But I was impressed by his intelligence, his charm and his sense of humor. He made our 2004 conversation easy and relaxed.

Curtis was the last of the principals from "Some Like It Hot" to die. Monroe died in died in 1962. Lemmon died in 2001. Wilder died in 2002.