LAST MAN STANDING

Sunday Herald, The, Jul 10, 2005 by Michael Park

A lone survivor of the famous old-school movie-star set, Tony Curtis has led a rollercoaster life which saw him peak early as a film star, survive an epic battle with drink and drugs, endure six divorces and suffer the early death of several close family members, including his son. Now as he turns 80, Curtis reveals in an exclusive interview how he has found salvation in family and painting

TONY CURTIS is standing on stage at his 80th birthday party surrounded by the things he claims saved his live - and he can't believe his luck. Dressed in a black suit with an open-necked white shirt, he is taking the sincere applause of a host of friends, family, his wife, and all of his children, in the chandeliered ballroom of the MGM Grand casino in Las Vegas. The walls are draped with Caramac coloured curtains and more than 100 of Curtis's large paintings have been hung or placed on easels all around the rectangular room.

After more than a decade at the top of his profession when he starred in such classic films as Spartacus and Some Like It Hot, he "lost interest" in the movie business and started smoking cocaine and drinking his life and career away. Had it not been for his children and his art, he insists, he would now be dead.

Instead he is thriving and, appropriately for a man who now paints every day, he is currently enjoying a renaissance in the twilight years of his extraordinary life. In the past 48 hours he has sold nearly every one ofthe paintings on display here to art collectors from more than 20 countries for a sum that must be close to a million dollars.

"I never thought life would be this good at 80, " Curtis said to me eight hours earlier when we are chatting surrounded by his paintings. "Ain't it neat?"

I have to agree, it's neat.

Here is a man, nay, an icon, whose star rose and shone so quickly and so brightly before being consumed and nearly destroyed by the black hole of drugs, alcohol and messy divorces. A man whose rollercoaster life has seen him experience the death of two brothers and a son, get married six times, including to starlet Janet Leigh, enjoy a brief relationship with Marilyn Monroe, star in more than 100 films, and now make a living as a painter, whose works each sell for up to $30,000 (18,000).

For the past three days he has been staying in a suite at the MGM Grand with his blonde Amazonian wife Jill Vanden Berg, 45 years his junior. Together they have been coming back and forth to this ballroom which has been transformed into a temporary art gallery.

Curtis has agreed to sell all of the paintings here to raise money for his wife's horse sanctuary, Shiloh. At the same time, two evening functions have been planned:

the first a reception for interested and committed art buyers, collectors and gallery owners who are being offered the chance to buy the pieces before the general public; the second a much more intimate evening with all of Curtis's family present to wish him a happy 80th birthday.

He has agreed to be interviewed and photographed between the two - extending an invitation to me to attend both events.

While most people, understandably, think of Curtis as a famous actor, art has always played a big part in his life. "As children we grew up watching him paint.

We didn't grow up with a movie star, we grew up with a painter. That's what he was to us, " his daughter, actress Jamie Lee Curtis, tells me at the birthday party.

Watching him as he presses the flesh at the first reception he talks enthusiastically about his art, which he describes as a mix of "expressionism and impressionism".

Heis all smiles and funny faces for Joe and Josephine Public with their digital cameras and proffered pens seeking their own immortalised moments with one of the last surviving old-school stars of the silver screen. Like the true gentleman he turns out to be, he agrees to every request.

Every one just calls him Tony. He is from that era filled with actors all so famous and legendary that their first name would do:

Marlon, Marilyn, Frank, Dean, Rock, Orson. He may not have been the greatest, but he is the only one still standing.

I get to the ballroom shortly before Curtis is due to meet me. Looking at all of his art collected together you can see it is obviously the work of one man. He has been heavily influenced by Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse, and the colour in the collection of still lifes and portraits leaps out at you.

I'm looking at a picture of a goldfish in a bowl (a metaphor, perhaps) when I hear an unmistakable voice; it is striking how much life it has in it. I turn round to see a small man dressed in a thin blue jumper and white, knee-length linen shorts talking to some of the staff near the room's entrance.

He is kissing some women he is introduced to on the back of their hands and they are blushing. Tony Curtis has arrived.

He is instantly recognisable: his lively hair, now grey, has receded a little but far less than you might expect (it's definitely not a wig); his eyebrows have shrunk and he has liver spots on his hands and right cheek; his skin is tanned but weathered and wrinkled and he has put on a lot of weight around his middle; his radiant blue eyes appear to have dulled somewhat but, without the heavy make- up he wears for TV appearances, he looks real and genuine and warm.