Tony Curtis reminisces about "The Persuaders!"
Taken from the book "Tony Curtis - The Autobiography" by Tony Curtis and Barry Paris", Mandarin 1995, pp. 237-238
In April 1970 I went to London to discuss a television show with Sir Lew Grade, who was "Mr. Show Business" in England and who wanted to create a new adventure series called 'The Friendly Persuaders' with me and Roger Moore - that funny, fine, handsome man who became one of my best friends - as a pair of wealthy playboys. At Heathrow Airport I was arrested for possessing marijuana and fined $120. The yentas back home all leaped on that, of course. It was very unpleasant. But I decided to do the series. A few months later I went back to England with Leslie to shoot it, and I bought a fine house on Chester Square in London.
Along the way, they dropped the "Friendly" and just called it 'The Persuaders'. My character was 'Danny Wilde', and he was not unlike myself: born and bred in the Bronx, not taken in by bullshit. It worked well, but to sustain that character in a series, there had to be more development, and they didn't have enough American writers on the job. I was saying things like, 'Give me the gat!' No American gangster says that. It became a cartoon, like "Batman" - mythical men chasing mythical spies in mythical countries. But I did twenty-four of those fifty-minute 'Persuaders' in color - the equivalent of twelve movies - and they were a huge success in Europe. England, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany all named it Best Telecast. I got a "Bambi" for it and the same in England, and the French Tele 7 Jours best actor award of 1971.
I decided to go to Paris to accept that one personally. They took over the Versailles palace for the ceremony. Jeanne Moreau and a lot of other people were getting awards, but I was getting the most important one and was the star attraction. When I drove up in a big Rolls limousine, the guards stood erect, and all the photographers got in line. These guys in livery opened the door and waltzed me in - and there I was in the entry of Versailles. I looked around and instantly thought of Louis XIV. Everybody was so deferential, it was extraordinary. Suddenly, I knew what Louis XIV must have felt like coming home from a hunt. "Hi, mom, I'm home!" Everybody would back off and, before he even finished the phrase, give him whatever he wanted.
I walked through those corridors and out to the back of the palace, looking at those thousand acres of manicured gardens and flowers and maze hedges. Every hundred feet for as far as the eye could see stood a guy with a French horn. As I stepped out, the horns tooted. I was standing there in the forefront. Everybody was behind me. I looked around at this pageantry and said to the majordomo, 'I feel like I'm the king'. He looked back at me and said, 'You are the king'.
So for sixty seconds or so, I was Louis XIV. I saw it like he saw it. I was smart enough to notice it. I knew exactly where I was standing.
'The Persuaders' ran two seasons in England, but just one in the United States, 1971-72. I couldn't care less that it failed in America. It wouldn't have if they had given it a better time slot. It was more tongue-in-cheek and less violent than American audiences were used to. But it still could have been a monster hit, because Roger Moore and I were both powerhouse players then, and the success of it was proved all over Europe. In global terms six hundred million people saw 'The Persuaders'. I owned 25 percent and made over $1.5 million on it.
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