Legendary actor Tony Curtis shares his Hollywood experiences in his memoir, "American Prince." In this excerpt, he recounts his foray into the industry and his relationship with a budding starlet by the name of Marilyn Monroe.

Chapter one: New kid in town
All my life I had one dream, and that was to be in the movies. Maybe it was because I had a pretty rough childhood, or perhaps it was because I was always more than a little insecure, but as a kid I longed to see myself ten feet tall on the big screen. Through no fault of my teachers, I received almost no formal education, but after I spent three years in the Navy dur­ing World War II, the GI Bill allowed me to go to acting school on the government’s nickel. I may not have had much schooling, but it turned out I had a gift for acting. When I walked out on that stage, it felt like a hand in a velvet glove. I wasn’t scared; I wasn’t even nervous. I just loved being the center of attention, just like I’d always known I would.

I performed in summer stock, and I acted in Clifford Odets’s play "Golden Boy" exactly twice over a single weekend, but before I knew it I had been summoned to meet a studio executive at Universal Studios. It was the spring of 1948. I was excited, but I wasn’t surprised. Going to Hollywood had been my life’s plan since I could remember, and I was too naive to know it almost never works out that way.

I got myself out to New York’s Idlewild Airport (now JFK) and boarded a TWA Super Constellation, a four-engine prop plane bound for Los Angeles. I had never been on a Super Constella­tion before, but I knew all about it from movies and magazines. I was served a little lunch. The stewardesses were real nice to me. One of them was very pretty, so I had a chance to fiirt. I was just a kid, but already I loved fiirting. Mostly I succeeded in sparking some kind of response, which was what I lived for.

On my first flight to LA, I sat in coach. In those days the sec­tions weren’t partitioned, so I could see into first class, where a man with a mustache and a herringbone suit was being tended to by what was clearly a personal assistant. The guy in the suit would whisper something to the other man, who would jump up and do his bidding.

To my surprise, a little while after we took off the assistant came over and asked me, “Could you join my friend in first class?”

“Sure,” I said. I got up and walked forward to Herringbone Suit. I had no idea who he was, but he was cordial and expressed interest in why I was going to LA.

“I’m going to be an actor.”

“I figured you might be,” he said.

“I’ve got a meeting at Universal,” I said.

“Do you know anything about the other studios?” he asked.

I had heard the same Hollywood gossip as everyone else, but I had paid special attention to it, knowing that this was where I would work one day. So I said, “Warner Brothers is a tough studio to work for. Twentieth Century Fox makes action pictures. At MGM you have to sing and dance a little bit. RKO wants actors who are stable. And Universal wants young people. So that’s where I’m going.”

We talked for a few moments, and then I went back to my seat and fell asleep. After we landed, I went to pick up my lug­gage and there was Herringbone Suit, waiting for his assistant to fetch his bags. He saw me and said, “Can I offer you a ride?”

“That would be great, thanks. I’m staying at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel.”

He said, “My driver will take me home first, then he’ll be happy to drop you off at your hotel.”

We drove through the winding streets of Beverly Hills for a while before finally pulling up to a big metal gate. Barely visible through the trees and groomed shrubbery was a tasteful man­sion. After we pulled up to it and my benefactor’s bags were un­loaded, he reached over and shook my hand.

I said, “Well, it was a pleasure meeting you. And thanks for the ride. My name is Bernie Schwartz. What’s yours?”

“Jack Warner,” he said. “Let me tell you something, kid. If Universal ever drops you, come see me. I’ll change your name to Tyrone Goldfarb and make you a star all over the world!”

We both laughed. Warner got out, and his limo driver took me to the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel, where I slept like a baby.

The next morning I walked from the hotel to a big intersec­tion at Highland Avenue, where a trolley took me into the San Fernando Valley, up the middle of the street, ending up at Uni­versal Studios. After I got off, I walked under a bridge with the freeway overhead until I came to the Universal lot.

I walked right up to the gate. Now it was starting to hit me. This was an absolutely thrilling experience for a twenty-two­-year-old kid fresh from the streets of New York. My whole life I had dreamed of being an actor in a movie studio, and here I was about to walk through the entrance of Universal Pictures as a prospective employee. I pinched myself, but the dream contin­ued. The gatekeeper told me to go to a door marked casting. I walked through it and up to a big, gleaming desk.

“I’ve been invited to come to the studio for a meeting,” I said.

A girl behind the desk looked up at me and said, “What’s your name?”

“Bernie Schwartz.” Now I had my heart in my throat. I thought, Suppose this is a big f---ing joke? I was pretty sure it had to be more than that because the studio had sent me a plane ticket. But what was a hundred and twelve dollars to a movie studio? So I held my breath for the long moment before she said, “Yes. Here you are on the list. Welcome to Universal Studios, Mr. Schwartz. You have an appointment this morning with Mr. Goldstein. To get to his office, turn right when you come out of the gate across from the barbershop, go up the path, and you’ll see his name on the door.”

I was amazed. Not only had she known my name, but she was sending me directly to the office of the man who ran things at Universal. As soon as I left her, though, I got completely lost, so I figured maybe this was an opportunity to make a spur-of­-the-moment detour. In New York I had gone to see some filming of "The Naked City", a Universal picture. Howard Duff was the star. While I stood there watching the location shoot, I struck up a conversation with the propman. We talked, and I told him I wanted to be in the movies.

He laughed, but not unkindly. “Don’t break your heart,” he said to me. “Just enjoy going to the pictures and don’t even think about working in the business. It’s just too tough. You have no chance at all.”

So while I was wandering around lost on my way to see Mr. Goldstein, I decided to see if I could find my friend the propman. It turned out the props department was right nearby, and there he was.

He remembered me. “Hey, kid. How are you? How did you get in the lot?”

“I’m here to sign a contract,” I said.

“No!”

“Yep.”

He was genuinely happy to see me and took obvious pleasure in my good fortune. He gave me directions to Bob Goldstein’s office, and not long after that I arrived at the studio’s inner sanc­tum, where all the executives had bungalows interspersed with perfectly groomed lawns. I walked along the path to an office marked goldstein, where a well-dressed woman looked me over coolly.

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