Hollywood Icon Tony Curtis

From 1949 to 2008, Hollywood icon Tony Curtis made over 100 films including The Vikings (1958, with Kurt Douglas), Some like it Hot (1959, with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe), Spartacus (1960, with Kurt Douglas), The Great Imposter (1961, with Karl Malden), Sex and the Single Girl (1964, with Natalie Wood and Henry Fonda), and The Boston Strangler (1968, with Henry Fonda).  An older generation remember him from his earlier films like The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951), Houdini (1953), The Purple Mask (1955), and, of course, The Sweet Smell of Success (1957).  Throughout his life, Curtis enjoyed painting--a surrealist claiming Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso, and Magritte as influences, and since the early 1980s painted as a second career, his work commanding more than $25,000 a canvas. In one of his final interviews he said, “I still make movies but I'm not that interested in them any more.  But I paint all the time.”  In 2007, his painting “The Red Table” was on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and today his paintings can be seen at the Tony Vanderploeg Gallery in Carmel, California.  Read more . . .

The Great Houdini

The Great Houdini (Erich Weisz) was born on March 24th, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary.  One of seven children, Erich moved with his family to Appleton, Wisconsin, as a child.  At the age of 13, he moved with his father to New York City where the two took on odd jobs while living in a boarding house before bringing the rest of the family to join them.  It was during this time that he became interested in trapeze arts and considered working in the circus.  In 1894, Erich launched his professional career as a magician, and renamed himself Harry Houdini, the first name taken from his childhood nickname, “Ehrie,” and the last an homage to the great French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.  Though his magic met with little immediate success, it wasn’t long before he drew sizable crowds for his amazing feats of escape from handcuffs.   Read more . . .