When David de Alba Met Tony Curtis

This is a story of synchronicity, or perhaps coincidence. Our friend-of-TGForum, David de Alba, was a performer at Finocchio’s nightclub in San Francisco up until the 1980s. He also owned a hair salon in the Potrero Hill District of that city by the bay. Being a female impersonator, Finocchio’s only Cuban F.I. at that, brought publicity to David’s hair salon when local news media would do stories on the “hairdresser by day, drag entertainer by night.” The salon was called Heri The Hairstylist (Heri is David’s given name.)

Tony Curtis was a movie star. Of all the films he performed in over his long career the one that interests readers of TGForum the most is the memorable Some Like It Hot, in which Curtis dressed as a woman, along with co-star Jack Lemmon, so the two of them could escape being killed by gangsters.

How do David de Alba and Tony Curtis come together in this story? Did David style Tony’s wigs for Some Like It Hot? Was Tony a fan who caught David’s performances at Finocchio’s? No. What brought the two performers together was a television film. (Reported to be titled Spies but we can find no record of such a film. The title may have been changed or the project abandoned.)

It was 1986. Heri The Hairstylist’s salon was picked as a location for shooting one scene in the film. Tony, his film crew, David and David’s mother Tilia posed for the photos here that David has kindly shared with us.

Click on the first photo to view a larger size. Use the << >> buttons to navigate through the photos. Click the last photo to return to this page.

But that’s not the end of this story. As the fates would have it David left San Francisco at the end of 1989 and moved first to New Mexico, and then to Las Vegas. Who, years after the visit to Heri’s, should be living in Henderson, NV, very near Las Vegas? Tony Curtis. Of course. And David was able to visit with him so the two of them could pose again for photos (below) before Tony passed away in 2010.

David de Alba will be appearing on stage in his Judy Garland tribute show on Sunday, June 21st at The Onyx Theatre in Las Vegas, NV. 953 E. Sahara, Las Vegas, phone 702-732-7225 for box office information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Corrections from David: 
Here are some corrections to be fixed, if you please, because I always like to keep history as correct as I can..also because if there may people still alive who know what I am relating to you..I would hate to hear from them trying to correct me.
I was not the only Cuban hired at Finocchio’s (there were other two Cubans but they were excellent dancers and they were Bobby de Castro and Juan Jose)…but I was the only Cuban bi-lingual singing highlight of that revue ever hired by Joe and Eve Finocchio during that period of 1970s/1980s.
From New Mexico (I also lived for a few years in Arizona with my long-time partner Paul and my parents Tila and Heri, Sr.), then we came to Las Vegas as our final destination
The movie ‘Spies’ was for a TV movie and the one who got the part at the end was George Hamilton and it was rumored he got it because he was younger than Tony….anyway, I did get to see it once on TV and I would have preferred for Tony to have gotten the part…(and by the way, Tony did the pilot for that TV movie.)

Tags: David de Alba, featured, History, Tony Curtis

Category: Transgender History