Nicola Graydon of the Guardian checks in with Tony Curtis on the occasion of his new autobiography American Prince, "a rollercoaster of a book in which he’s brutally frank about his childhood, his affairs, stardom, drug addiction, depression, women and sex. Lots and lots of sex. It’s a romp through Hollywood’s golden age, when Curtis, with his thick, black hair and cerulean eyes, practically invented celebrity as we know it." Today, Tony is 83 and hangs out at his home in a Las Vegas suburb with his wife of ten years, sitting in a wheelchair and concentrating on his painting. It was sixty years ago this year that he signed his first studio contract, his first step in becoming box office catnip. And as one of the enduringly moviestruck of major Hollywood movie stars, he can get misty-eyed about his status as one of the last living links to the final years of the old studio system. “Poor darlings, they’re all dead. Sinatra, Brando, Cary Grant. They’ve all gone.”
In Curtis's studio, reporter finds herself "surrounded by canvases of Marilyn Monroe, sitting in the same pose, head turned away, laughing, in slightly different colours, all with slightly prominent nipples." Curtis, who says that he has "an affinity for women," elaborates on his romantic past: "I was falling in love every day. I am completely in love with women. Every woman. I loved their company and there was always a chance you could kiss them." Some readers of his book will surprised to discover that Marilyn Monroe was one of them--one of the women he kissed, and apparently even one of the women he loved. He kissed her on-screen, of course, in Some Like It Hot, the Billy Wilder comedy that is generally regarded as his best movie by those who don't know that his best movie was Sweet Smell of Success. But for years, Curtis, who once addressed a British TV interviewer's request for a detailed analytical analysis of Marilyn's personality with the curt diagnosis that she was a "fruitcake," has eaten out for years on his line that having to kiss her for a movie was "like kissing Hitler." But that was about the later superstar and basket case, who screwed up takes and muffed her lines to the point that time stood still. When she and Curtis had their affair, when both were starting out, “She was 19 and didn’t look anything like what she became. She had reddish-brown hair and her figure was not distinguished yet. Her bosoms weren’t what they were later and her legs were a little scrawny, but she was putting it all together. Don’t you see? Once she accepted she was a woman, then, look out, world. There was no guy that was safe." (It would have been nice if Graydon had thought to ask Curtis about the title of his book: is it a slap at Norman Marilyn, who in his book Marilyn wrote of Joe DiMaggio, who was to become her first husband, that he was "an American prince--her first; the others have only been Hollywood princes.") Curtis remains endearing, even when he's cheerfully admitting that he married Janet Leigh form the publicity or brusquely dismissing these new kids they got starring in movies today ("“And that Pitt fellow – whatshisname? He hasn’t got it either. Now, Robert Downey Jr – I think he might have something.”), the star-struck kid who wants to be accepted still comes through. "He shows me a huge portrait of Cary Grant in a gilt frame. There’s a handwritten message on it by his hero, telling him he will be in for a “long, happy and enduring career”. He says: “'Isn’t that amazing? Cary Grant. The movie star of all time.'”