If you want to confirm an unnamed film star's identity in an old photo, you can't beat getting the star in question to do it.
Happily, the American Prince himself graciously granted me an audience after studying an e-mailed photo of his younger self and actor Dan Duryea taken at Victoria's Odeon theatre in 1949.
To his amusement, the image appeared sideways on his computer.
"Sideways or not, upside down or not, that was me," Tony Curtis, 83, said in that instantly recognizable gravelly voice from the home in Las Vegas he shares with his wife Jill. "That guy in the middle was the manager of the theatre."
Of the nearly 400 readers who wrote, e-mailed and phoned in responses to my invitation last week to identify the actor on the far right of the photo, 98 per cent correctly identified him as the Oscar-nominated film star.
Other guesses ranged from intriguing to bizarre. They included Rock Hudson, George C. Scott, Eddie Fisher, Robert Goulet, Roger Moore, "a fattened-up Frank Sinatra" and two actors who hadn't even been born yet -- Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta (!)
(The winner of the prize -- a copy of Curtis's hardcover Hollywood memoir American Prince -- is JoAnne McLeod.)
Curtis said he had vague memories of being here that year to promote Johnny Stool Pigeon, a 1949 black-and-white gangster flick directed by future horror king William Castle. Duryea played Johnny Evans, a convict persuaded by a federal agent (Howard Duff) to infiltrate and help break up a gang with the aid of a reformed gangster's moll (Shelley Winters).
Curtis, who made his film debut in Criss Cross in 1949, had a non-speaking role as mobster Joey Hyatt.
He said Universal International Pictures press agent Jack Diamond hatched schemes to send actors out of town to promote studio pictures.
"I was getting so much action from fans, and there would always be girls waiting in the lobby," the Hollywood heartthrob recalled. "When I got to the lobby the girls would start screaming and carrying on like you wouldn't believe."
Beautiful rugs would often be laid down to accommodate big stars, he said. Curtis, who has been married six times -- most famously to Janet Leigh -- and romanced Marilyn Monroe among other screen beauties, is way up there.
"All the girls are peeing on my rug!" he laughingly recalled, impersonating one theatre manager who was exasperated by the fan fervor.
While Johnny Stool Pigeon doesn't rank with such Curtis classics as Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959) or The Boston Strangler (1968), he says that film and other "early ones" were integral to his career.
"I never judged them. I just made them," Curtis said. "I was like an intern in a hospital. Good, bad or miserable, I made the movie. That shows what my taste was like."
Whatever the calibre, the actor said he was fulfilling his childhood dream: to be in the movies. "I loved them all, my friend," Curtis said. "They're part of my life. That's what makes me feel good."
One filmgoer who saw the "oh-so-handsome Tony" at the Victoria premiere is Phyllis Becker. Her father drove for C&C Cabs and delivered film reels to the Atlas, Dominion, Capitol and newly opened Odeon. Instead of tips, he got movie passes.
"I think we were in awe because we'd never seen a movie star come up here," recalled Becker, who was a teenager at the time movie tickets sold for 45 cents.
"We were a quiet group in those days, not like the bobby-soxers of the '40s," said Becker, 73.
Many moviegoers couldn't place the gentleman whom we assumed was an actor standing between Curtis and Duryea.
Dozens of unsolicited guesses streamed in. The list included Paul Newman, Will Geer, Howard Duff, Kirk Douglas, Stephen McNally, Martin Milner and director Castle.
"I'm sure Al Davidson would be pleased to be known as a Hollywood star," wrote an amused Doreen Brunsden, 80.
She recognized the lean, nattily attired man as a family friend who became the Odeon's first manager after managing the Plaza at the northeast corner of Yates and Blanshard.
Retired forestry worker Don Ritson, 81, also recognized his old pal Davidson, whom he describes as "a very nice man and one of the sharpest poker players I've ever played with."
Ritson met Davidson at a popular pre-movie hangout -- Bill Rogers's confectionery store, next to the Plaza.
"They had pinball machines and it'd cost you five cents for a Coke or a chocolate bar," he said.
Hearing such memories has been a fringe benefit of what began as a simple column item about an old photograph. The ensuing blizzard of entries, anecdotes and kind words has been flabbergasting. We'll do this again some time. Meanwhile, thanks for reading and warmest season's greetings to you and yours.
