When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house....some of you may remember when I wrote about practically living in a ditch behind their house playing amongst all the chemicals dumped in there by the factory up the road.
Well, every weekday afternoon at 3:00, a local TV station aired a show called "Dialing for Dollars". Basically what happened is that people from all over the viewing area were invited to mail in their name, address and telephone number. Every day at 3:00, "Dialing for Dollars" would show an old movie (always from the 1930's, 1940's or MAYBE 1950's if they were getting ultra-modern). They would announce the name of the movie only once at 3:00 and then start showing it. Towards the end of movie...about 5:00, they would draw a name and call that person up. If they called and you could tell them the name of the movie, then you would win.....some dollars, I guess. I don't remember exactly what the money amount you would win.
But anyway, my grandmother was totally convinced that one day, "Dialing for Dollars" would be calling her. And by god, she was going to be ready. We always had to stop playing in our chermical ditch and come inside and help her get the name of the movie written down in case "Dialing for Dollars" called. We couldn't watch any another channel and we couldn't make phone calls because you never knew.....that day just MIGHT be the day "Dialing for Dollars" called . So unless we went back outside to stew in the chemicals, we had to watch these old movies. At the time I hated it, because they seemed so hopelessly old-fashioned. I came of age in the era of color television.......black-and-white TV was unbelievably ancient to me. But I learned who a lot of the stars from back then were from enforced "Dialing for Dollars" viewing and now I find myself more interested in Hollywood's bygone days because of it.
And no, "Dialing for Dollars" never called my grandmother. Dammit. I sincerely hope there is "Dialing for Dollars" in heaven.
A few days ago I was at a friend's house who is on a different cable system than me, and they have a movie channel that is exclusively old movies from the 30's, 40's and 50's. I found myself watching some flick when I noticed a couple of people I recognized from those old days.
HEY! There's Officer Malloy from Adam-12!!!!!!
And whaddaya know, ol' Larry Tate from Bewitched was in the same movie!!!
But who in the heck was this cutie? I had never seen him before.
Turns out it was Tony Curtis. I had heard his name before, but I wasn't familiar with him at all. To me this picture, and the other ones I found, don't really do him justice. He was quite the handsome guy......for a black-and-white movie dude, that is. He's my latest Hollywood crush.
I came home and looked Tony Curtis up on the internet and found this site: http://www.tonycurtisfan.com/ which is run by a Tony Curtis fan named Judy. Using the info from her site, I was able to determine that the name of the movie I saw was called "Sweet Smell of Success" from 1957. Maybe some of you reading this would remember it. I also found out that he was once married to Janet Leigh and that he is Jamie Lee Curtis' DAD! So how about that! And even more interesting, he is still alive. Here is a somewhat recent photo of Tony Curtis: Photo Credit: www.tonycurtisfan.com
Believe it or not, the lady with him is his wife. Apparently this sexy guy still has it going on and isn't about to let something trivial like age stop him. You go, Tony.
