I noticed that 'test_curses' is not started when performing "make test" on an OSX box:

...
[ 42/369] test_curses
test_curses skipped -- sys.__stdout__ is not a tty
...

The host is a machine running OSX 10.8, fully up-to-date with patches and the current version of Xcode. 

The same thing happens when starting the testrunning in the same way as used by the test target in the Makefile:

$ ./python.exe -W default -bb -E -R -m test -r -w -j 0 -u all,-largefile,-audio,-gui test_curses
Using random seed 9471227
[1/1] test_curses
test_curses skipped -- sys.__stdout__ is not a tty
1 test skipped:
    test_curses
Those skips are all expected on darwin.