Tony The Tiger

"Yondah lies the castle of my faddah, da king." I can't say for sure if Tony Curtis every uttered these words. That line may be of the same stripe as "Play it again, Sam," from Bogart or "Judy! Judy! Judy!" from Cary Grant. No matter. It's what people hear in their minds when they think of Tony Curtis. At least that's where they start.
Then they think about the rest of his career. I think about "The Vikings." As historical epics go, it's no "Spartacus," but then again, I didn't get to spend three days in my high school English class watching "Spartacus." Tony and Kirk Douglas play half-brothers named Eric and Einar. Their father is Ragnar, played by the Ernest Borgnine at his most Borgniniest. And, spoiler alert, Tony gets the girl in the end. It probably helps that he was married to her at the time, but we wouldn't expect anything less. It also features one of the most insidious earworm of a musical theme. Just a few seconds of it drifting from the TV as I flip by on cable is enough to keep it in my head for weeks.
Speaking of being in my head, for years before I ever saw a photograph of the real Harry Houdini, I could only imagine that he was the spitting image of Mister Curtis. Janet Leigh was in this one too, as his lovely assistant and wife Bess. This was the film that gave me a thorough grounding in both magic and skepticism. It helped me look for the strings connected to the floating ghosts, but gave me hope to imagine that if anyone could escape death's icy grip, it would be the Great Houdini.
Alas, Tony couldn't do the same. He went away and won't be coming back, but we can all keep him alive in our favorite moments: seducing Marilyn Monroe in "Some Like It Hot," or going toe to toe with Burt Lancaster. This was a movie star. Aloha, Tony.