Curtleigh Productions was an American independent film and television production company established by actor and actress husband-and-wife team Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. The company was formed in 1955 and produced a handful of major motion pictures during its span, including Mister Cory, Sweet Smell of Success, The Vikings, The Defiant Ones, and Taras Bulba. Although plans originally called for co-starring vehicles for the couple, Leigh took little interest in developing properties. Following the couple's divorce in 1962, Curtis continued to develop and produce properties previously acquired through Curtleigh Productions, first channeling the corporate structure through his own outfit, Curtis Enterprises, then forming a new film production company, Reynard Productions.
Four of Curtleigh Productions' films have won and been nominated for awards and prizes at various ceremonies and film festivals, including the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Bodil Awards, the Directors Guild of America Award, the Writers Guild of America Awards, the Laurel Awards, the Bambi Award, the Golden Reel Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the International Film Music Critics Award, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and at the Berlin International Film Festival and the San Sebastián International Film Festival. In addition, Sweet Smell of Success was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States National Film Preservation Board in 1993 and was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.
History Development and contractual obligations (1949–1956) Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh first worked together on How to Smuggle a Hernia Across the Border, a short film co-starring and directed by Jerry Lewis in 1949. At the time, Curtis was signed to an exclusive seven-year contract with Universal-International Pictures, while Leigh was signed to an exclusive seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The couple married on June 4, 1951. As a husband-and-wife team, they were loaned out from their respective contracted studios to appear together in Paramount Pictures' Houdini (1953), and a year later Leigh was borrowed for Universal-International Pictures' The Black Shield of Falworth (1954). In January 1955, Curtis and Leigh expressed a desire to co-star in a remake of Seventh Heaven, a property owned by 20th Century-Fox Films.
In April 1955, Leigh's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract expired and she opted to sign two non-exclusive contracts: one was a five-year deal with Columbia Pictures for one film a year; the other was a four-picture contract with Universal-International Pictures. Curtis' Universal-International Pictures contract was set to expire five months later, in September 1955, and so the couple immediately began looking into forming their independent film production company, hoping for the freedom of choosing their own starring vehicles. In late May 1955, Leigh announced that if the pair was to go into a film production partnership, the name of the company would be Curtleigh Productions.
In late July 1955, it was reported that Music Corporation of America, which represented Curtis, was negotiating a new non-exclusive two-pictures a year for four years contract for the actor with Universal-International Pictures. The original deal, however, granted Universal-International Pictures a first-pick privilege on any property Curtis wished to make outside of his contract, which meant that if the studio liked the story, it would have to be made in-house. The new contract was to come into effect following his completion of the Hecht-Lancaster Productions film Trapeze, for which he was borrowed, and would be filmed in Paris, France from August to November 1955. Curtis was loaned out to Hecht-Lancaster Productions for $150,000, most of which went to Universal-International Pictures, but the actor reported that a sizable portion of his salary was already reserved to launch Curtleigh Productions later in the year. While filming Trapeze, Curtis gained a lot of insight into the world of independent filmmaking from producers Burt Lancaster and Harold Hecht, who were operating the most successful independent film production company in the United States at the time."The Struggle for Survival", Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin, September 2, 1957, p23"What's With Hecht-Hill-Lancaster?", The Tuscaloosa News, September 24, 1959, p5"Burt Lancaster Termed Enigma", The Spokesman Review, May 27, 1961, p77 Hecht and Lancaster were very supportive of Curtis' independent freedom and would later set up a Curtleigh Productions office in their headquarters in Beverly Hills, California.
In early August 1955, before Curtis left for Europe, Curtleigh Productions announced that it had purchased its first property: a high-budget adult Western written by Blake Edwards titled Massacre. The film was to be co-produced by Curtis and Milton Bren, starring Curtis, and directed by Edwards in the summer of 1956. In mid-September 1955, Curtleigh Productions acquired the filming rights to Leo Rosten's short story Cory, a yarn concerning a gambler and his rise in high society, which had earlier been published in Cosmopolitan magazine. Curtis, who was planning to star in the picture, immediately assigned Edwards to develop the screenplay and offered the job of directing it to British director Carol Reed, with whom he was filming Trapeze in France.
In late September 1955, Curtleigh Productions, Incorporated was officially registered and the corporation's executives were assigned: Curtis was President; his father Emanuel Schwartz was appointed vice-president; Myrt Blum was appointed Secretary; Roger Graham was appointed treasurer; and E. W. Wheeler and Fred Morrison were appointed Assistant Secretaries. Leigh chose not to be included in the executive corporate structure because she was already involved in a dress manufacturing company with her father. In mid-November 1955, with Curtis still in France filming Trapeze, Curtleigh Productions announced that it had acquired the filming rights to French author Jules Verne's adventure novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, a story about the exploration of Africa from a hot-air balloon. Curtleigh Productions hired British writer Kathleen Dormer to adapt the novel into a comedy screenplay. Curtis planned to co-star in the picture with Alec Guinness, and hoped to film on location in Paris, France during the spring of 1956. A film was eventually made six years later through a different film production company and with a different cast.
In January 1956, Curtleigh Productions acquired Paul Gallico's 1953 novel The Foolish Immortals, after Leigh had read the serialized version in The Saturday Evening Post. It was to be the couple's first co-starring and co-producing project. The plot was to have Leigh playing the secretary of an elder woman, one of the richest in the world and willing to pay any amount of money to get her youth back; Curtis was to play a promoter who works for a man claiming to have the coveted recipe for eternal youth.
Co-production deal with Hecht-Lancaster Productions (1956–1957) In February 1956, Music Corporation of America finalized the negotiations of Curtis' new contract with Universal-International Pictures. The new non-exclusive seven-year contract allowed Curtis to choose his independent film projects without the approbation of the major studio. However, by the time that the new deal was activated, Curtis had already consented to make Curtleigh Productions' film Cory in-house at Universal-International Pictures. On the one hand, this gave the picture security by assuring that it would be made, but on the other hand, it meant that Curtleigh Productions and Curtis would receive no screen credits for the production. In the spring of 1956, Universal-International Pictures assigned Robert Arthur to co-produce Cory; Arthur would go on to work on several more projects with Curtis, Leigh and Curtleigh Productions.
By the end of February 1956, Curtleigh Productions had entered into a multi-picture co-producing deal with Hecht-Lancaster Productions (soon to be renamed Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions with the addition of James Hill). Curtleigh Productions was given its own lavish office, with complimentary secretary Bobbie LaPask, inside the Hecht-Lancaster Productions Building at 202 North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills, California. While Curtis and Leigh had planned to film The Foolish Immortals in the late summer of 1956, immediately after Curtis finished shooting Cory at Universal-International Pictures, plans were altered when Leigh became sickly during her pregnancy of Kelly Curtis. Instead, Curtis accepted to co-star in and co-produce the film noir The Sweet Smell of Success as his first collaborative engagement with Hecht-Lancaster Productions. The Sweet Smell of Success, a drama about a manipulative newspaper columnist and a shady press agent, was written by Ernest Lehman, based on his personal experience as a press agent and working with Walter Winchell. The story had originally been published in Cosmopolitan as a novelette under the title Tell Me About It Tomorrow, which Hecht-Lancaster Productions optioned in 1955 as part of a multi-picture financing and distribution deal with United Artists. The screenplay was co-written with Clifford Odets and Lehman was one of the co-producers and shareholders in the film.
In April 1956, Curtleigh Productions announced that Curtis would be starring in two more films in collaboration with Hecht-Lancaster Productions. One was to be Cry Tough, a film noir about the corruption of the garment union trade by the Brooklyn Jewish mob, based on a novel by Irving Shulman and to be co-produced by William Schorr. The other was to be The Ballad of Cat Ballou, a musical western comedy based on Roy Chanslor's novel, which would pair Lancaster and Curtis as estranged brothers shooting it out. By mid-May 1956, Cory had been retitled Mister Cory; filming began on May 21, 1956 using CinemaScope cameras and Eastmancolor film at Universal Studios and on location at Lake Arrowhead, California. The color film noir co-starred Curtis, Martha Hyer, Charles Bickford and Kathryn Grant, and was directed by Blake Edwards. Before filming The Sweet Smell of Success, Curtis made The Midnight Story as part of his Universal-International Pictures commitment.
In early July 1956, Curtleigh Productions purchased a new story by Edwards, varyingly reported under the titles Jada or Jadda. Edwards would adapt his own screenplay and also direct the film, with Curtis and Kathryn Grant set to co-star, recreating their chemistry from Mister Cory. The story was set in Chicago during the 1920s and dealt with gangsters and racketeers during prohibition. Filming began on The Sweet Smell of Success on October 21, 1956, on location in New York City with director Alexander Mackendrick; by the end of November 1956, filming had moved to studio takes at Samuel Goldywn Studio in West Hollywood, California. The film co-started Curtis and Lancaster and featured Barbara Nichols, Susan Harrison, Martin Milner and Sam Levene.