C: Is for Curtis...Tony Curtis!

There was a time we lived across the street from Jamie Leigh Curtis. My sister Kim was a dead ringer for her and the two of them became close. When you grow up in Hollywood you know the dirt. So as the confessions spew out and are unearthed in the tell all books you simple shrug your shoulders as if to say, oh here goes another one. They are glimpses into an era gone by and for those who love trashy novels they are a quick read. The stuff to talk about at the water cooler and make you feel just a little bit better about your life. American Prince (Harmony, $25.95), is the newest to come out. Tony Curtis's memoir is of the Golden Boy in a Golden Age. A prince of the silver screen whose dashing looks and smooth charm earned him fame and women. Elvis was so enamored he copied his look and the Beatles honored him on their Sgt. Pepper album cover. American Prince chronicles Hollywood during its heyday. Curtis revisits his unforgettable classics such as Houdini, Spartacus, and Some Like It Hot—and regales us with stories of his associations with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, director Billy Wilder, and film industry heavyweight Lew Wasserman. Curtis offers intimate glimpses into his succession of failed marriages, his destructive drug addiction, and his passion as a painter. Curtis now 83 spends a lot of time with his painter's brush touching up copies of a photo. Like the picture of Dorian Gray he has done so many times. "I embellish them. I keep making more of them," "I want to find another quality about me that's in there somewhere." Maybe that is why he revisits his poverty-stricken upbringing in the home of a physically abusive mother who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, a mental illness which also affected his brother Robert and led to his being institutionalized. When Curtis was eight, he and his younger brother Julius were placed in an orphanage for a month because their parents could not afford to feed them. Four years later, his brother Julius was struck and killed by a truck. 12 year old Curtis had to identify the body. His addiction to sex resulted in the destruction of five marriages and estrangements from his children, with the untimely death of his youngest son at 23. His first (and most famous) wife was the actress Janet Leigh. Curtis, admits to cheating on her throughout their marriage and left Leigh in 1962 for a 17-year-old German co-star of his latest film, Taras Bulba. He has been married to his sixth wife, Jill, since 1998. With only bit roles in films and TV shows offered, he spends much of his time painting in his studio. The veteran of more than 120 films, Tony Curtis is an accomplished painter and has his work in the permanent collection of the MoMA. 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 Playboy Bunnies. Curtis says he may have been addicted to sex.

Out next Marcia, Marica, Marcia ....you did what? Glimpses into other peoples lives make us value their own and that is a F.A.C.T.