American Prince: A Memoir » (Reprint)

Tony Curtis is one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. Today, he lives with his wife, Jill, outside of Las Vegas, where he continues to create paintings that have made him newly famous as a visual artist the world over.

"Curtis spares few intimate details about his years as a Hollywood lothario, including his teenage affair with a redheaded, ponytailed Marilyn Monroe."–USA Today

He was the Golden Boy of the Golden Age. Dashing and debonair, Tony Curtis arrived on the scene in a blaze of bright lights and celluloid. His good looks, smooth charm, and natural talent earned him fame, women, and adulation–Elvis copied his look, and the Beatles put him on their Sgt. Pepper album cover. But the Hollywood life of his dreams brought both invincible highs and debilitating lows. Now, in his captivating, no-holds-barred autobiography, Tony Curtis shares the agony and ecstasy of a private life in the public eye.

Curtis revisits his immense body of work–including the classics Houdini, Spartacus, and Some Like It Hot–and regales readers with stories of his associations with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Olivier, and director Billy Wilder, as well as paramours Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe, among others. Written with humor and grace, American Prince is a testament to the power of living the life of one’s dreams.

The Barnes & Noble Review

It makes a curious kind of sense that Tony Curtis arrived in Hollywood during the waning glory days of legendary studio moguls like Louis B. Mayer, because just like Mayer and other self-made titans from the East, Curtis too was fueled by a desperate desire to outrun his past. Curtis did in fact achieve the worldwide success he so desired, but in his intermittently absorbing autobiography American Prince, it's not the glitter of Tony Curtis's Hollywood that fascinates but rather the tales of his hard-knock childhood as Bernie Schwartz of the Bronx.