HENDERSON, Nev.: On an easel in Tony Curtis' art studio overlooking
the Las Vegas skyline stands a blown-up profile shot of the
actor as a young man. It's a handsome photo, that famous thick
head of curly black hair slicked just right as the budding movie
star looks into the distance at a future of bright possibilities.
Now 83, Curtis spends a lot of time with his painter's brush
touching up copies of that photo. He has done so many times,
as evidenced by several portraits around his home.
"I embellish them. I keep making more of them," says Curtis,
his famous, gravelly New Yorker's voice still forceful. "I want
to find another quality about me that's in there somewhere."
That answer also may explain why he decided to write American
Prince (Harmony, $25.95), his new memoir of a legendary film
career. It's filled with fond recollections of his friendships
with the famous and powerful but punctuated, too, by harsh words
for Hollywood legends he says did him wrong.
"What you have is what my life was like," Curtis says. "What
was I going to do? Clean it up? Make everybody happy?"
Instead, he describes his poverty-stricken upbringing in the
home of a physically abusive mother and an impassive father,
the misdeeds that resulted in the destruction of five marriages
and estrangements from his children, the untimely deaths of
his younger brother and his youngest son, the traumatic decline
of his movie career, and his descent into cocaine addiction
and recovery in the 1980s.
He has been married to his sixth wife, Jill, since 1998. With
only bit roles in films and TV shows offered to him these days,
he spends much of his time helping her with her wild-horse refuge
and painting in his studio. The veteran of more than 120 films
is an accomplished painter and has his work in the permanent
collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
For American Prince, though, Curtis focused largely on the
power he derived from his striking good looks, his periwinkle
eyes and the long, curly hairdo that Elvis Presley would emulate.
Curtis spares few intimate details about his years as a Hollywood
lothario, including his teenage affair with a redheaded, ponytailed
Marilyn Monroe and his sexual dalliances with Yvonne DeCarlo,
Natalie Wood and more than a few P layboy Bunnies. Curtis says
he may have been addicted to sex.
"I realized if I could (have sex with) a girl …a woman has
accepted me," Curtis says. "The main force in me was to be accepted
by others. Not education, not money in my pocket, nothing except
to be accepted by a girl."
Curtis, who left behind his given name, Bernard Schwartz,
partly in response to Hollywood anti-Semitism, enjoyed fast
success in the 1950s and '60s as a matinee idol in Some Like
It Hot, The Outsider, Sweet Smell of Success and Spartacus.
He earned his only Oscar nomination for 1958's The Defiant
Ones, in which he and Sidney Poitier portray prisoners who break
out and spend most of the movie chained together.
Curtis insisted his co-star receive double billing with him,
a racial breakthrough at the time.
"I just thought it was unfair for him to be a featured player
when it was a picture of a black and a white," Curtis says.
"I was offended by that. I said, 'I won't do the movie unless
you give him top billing with me. Second position, of course.'
"
American Prince has fond words for Poitier and others, but
it also skewers many in Hollywood. In an interview, he calls
Jerry Lewis "cruel," Shelley Winters "very obnoxious" and Danny
Kaye "a vicious man."
"It's not like I wanted to get even," he says. "I just wanted
to be treated like anybody else. There was a lot of opposition
to me during the early years of movies. It had an effect on
me."
To this day he believes he was denied meaty roles that went
to Marlon Brando and Paul Newman. And unlike those actors, he
was unable to move into mature roles as he aged.
"I don't feel like I got the movies I should've gotten," Curtis
says. "I felt I deserved more than that the industry had given
me. I felt I should have been considered more, with a little
more respect from the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy. I
don't feel like I contributed what I wanted to contribute in
the movies."
Curtis is frank about his regrets, about his deficiencies
as a husband and father. He remains largely estranged from his
five surviving children. One of those is Jamie Lee Curtis, whose
mother was actress Janet Leigh. Curtis says he and Jamie Lee
speak occasionally but aren't close.
"We talk about the movies. She's become a very intelligent,
thoughtful actress," he says.
Curtis still says there's time to do better. He hopes to write
a screenplay, publish a book of poetry and maybe do more acting.
"I'm just wondering how many more years I have. I don't have
20. I don't have 15. How many years do I have? I don't know,
but I plan to reinvent myself as an 84-year-old, as an 85-year-old
man who can do anything and everything."
