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In the heady Wild West days of 1970s New Hollywood, relatively few people knew what would work. That especially included the older studio executives who still ostensibly ran things. So when the opportunity came to transfer the bizarre, decadent, and delightfully queer curio The Rocky Horror Show from the London stage to the big screen—hence the new title of The Rocky Horror PICTURE Show (1975)—execs were adamant about getting a popular rock star like Mick Jagger or David Bowie to play Dr. Frank-N-Furter, that oh, so sweet, sweet transvestite from transexual Transylvania. (Dated vernacular being his own.)
Luckily, there was one person who knew absolutely what was needed: the man who created Frank on the stage, Tim Curry. With ruby red lipstick, too-tight tights made from fishnets, and an air of superiority that oozed all the way from West End to Hollywood, Curry always made the sharpest choices with the material, including giving this mad scientist in Goth makeup positively perfect Received Pronunciation via Frank’s posh English accent. In Curry’s mind, if Frank was going to hold court in the Hammer Horror house of Riff Raff, Magenta, Brad and Janet (gag), and all the rest, he simply must to speak the Queen’s English as beautifully as Queen Elizabeth II herself. Fortunately, film director Jim Sharman also revealed good instincts (about casting, anyway) when he demanded the studio bring Curry to Hollywood to play what has become his signature role.
The preternatural instincts of Curry as a performer unafraid to vamp across a soundstage, and how often those gifts went undervalued, is on my mind this afternoon following news of the actor’s passing. As confirmed by his longtime manager and agent, Marcia Hurwitz, Curry passed away at his LA home Tuesday at the age of 80. Following a longtime recovery from a stroke he suffered in 2012, Curry now leaves behind a career that is best defined by Frank-N-Furter’s devilishly arched eyebrows. Nevertheless, his talents lasted a lot longer than even Frank’s impossibly drawn out lisp.
An actor obviously unafraid to go ham and embrace the joys of artifice, Curry nonetheless had a character actor’s range and instincts. He offered a combination of gravitas and goof, and at the height of his career, the British born thespian enjoyed immersing himself fully into characterizations that some of the most popular stars of his day avoided. Famously, Curry was considered as a back-up option for the role of the Joker in Tim Burton’s original Batman movie, although ultimately that opportunity, along with studio alternatives like Willem Dafoe and even Robin Williams, was merely a negotiating tactic by producers to get mega-star Jack Nicholson closer to signing on.
Yet we did see Curry play cartoonish villains in ways that were unrecognizable. The satanic prosthetic designs applied by makeup artist Rob Bottin to Curry in Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985) drowned the actor in fantasy iconography. Even so, Curry’s delicious wickedness in the role of Lord of Darkness overwhelms the movie, dominating the screen in a way a young Tom Cruise as the boy hero could never hope to compete with. And of course despite dealing with the vast limitations of TV censorship as the original Pennywise performer in ABC’s 1990 adaptation of Stephen King’s It, Curry was still able to traumatize a generation of pint-sized millennials with a maliciousness that would have seemed shocking to even the most seasoned of Rocky Horror midnight revelers.
On the completely other side of the spectrum is Wadsworth, Curry’s underrated screwball comedy triumph in Clue (1985). Despite playing a character who never appears in the Parker Brothers board game on which the movie is based—at least if you go with either of the film’s first two endings—Curry tackled the most cliché of Agatha Christie-styled drawing room murder mystery suspects, the butler, and turned him into a manic, wide-eyed antihero who was equal parts Poirot and Cary Grant in Arsenic and Old Lace. The film’s third and final ending is a particular showcase in which Curry gets to parody and mimic each of his many gifted comic co-stars, including Michael McKean, Christopher Lloyd, and Madeline Kahn.
In retrospect, it’s a calling card that should’ve led to more comic leads, but Curry ultimately found himself taking more supporting roles, including those where he stole scenes. Indeed, the first time this impressionable millennial met the actor was in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York where Curry played a smugly incompetent Manhattan concierge so charmingly that in a single shot he is able to do a better impression of the Grinch than Jim Carrey could muster in 105 minutes.
Curry had a great career, which also included memorable character work in films like The Hunt for Red October (1990), FerngGully: The Last Rain Forest (1992), and even a stint as Long John Silver opposite Kermit the Frog in Muppet Treasure Island (1996). There were no small roles for Mr. Curry, although I cannot help but wish he got more opportunities to own the spotlight like when Frank-N-Furter announced he at long last was going home.
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