To his millions of fans he was the last of the great matinee idols, the most handsome of all Hollywood stars and a man whose incredible sexual career encompassed a fling with Marilyn Monroe and a period of taking showgirls ‘two a day’ like vitamin pills.
But to his family, life with Tony Curtis — who had six children and six wives — was a more fraught affair. His actress daughter Jamie Lee Curtis has declared numerous times that he ‘wasn’t a father’ to her, and he admitted candidly that he had been a lousy dad.
Now, six months after his death, this assessment comes into sharp focus as it emerges that Curtis, star of film classics such as Some Like It Hot and Spartacus, has not left any of his children a solitary cent of his fortune — estimated by some to be worth as much as $60 million (around £37 million).
In fact, the fallout over his will has been such that I can reveal that his eldest child, Kelly, has taken legal action to challenge it — although this has so far failed.
I am also told that a second daughter, Alexandra, is contemplating further legal action. She has hired a lawyer to look into questioning the last will and testament, which was written just five months before his death last September.
It looks likely that the two half-sisters will now join forces and appeal. What seems to be stirring up the family is that Tony Curtis always said that there would be money for his children and grandchildren — and indeed they believe there were several prior wills drawn up in their favour.
However, his latest document explicitly — and extraordinarily — cuts them out completely. It reads: ‘I acknowledge the existence of my children . . . and have intentionally and with full knowledge chosen not to provide for them in this last will and testament.’
Legal action: Curtis poses with his daughters Alexandria and Allegra during 2009. Alexandria is seeking advice over the distribution of the will while Allegra has claimed she is a victim of her father's fame
Instead his sixth wife, a blowsy, 6ft former lingerie model named Jill Vandenberg gets the lot.
As you might expect, this is not popular with the children.
His will decrees that the fortune is left to a trust, which is to be administered by Jill as his ‘personal representative’. She has ‘absolute discretion’ over the money, specifically including all of his property portfolio — including homes in Hollywood, Nevada and Hawaii — which she can sell should she want to.
‘Everything the children should have, Jill has,’ says Christine Kaufmann, the German starlet who was Curtis’s second wife and mother of daughters Alexandra and Allegra.
‘I do believe that deep down inside he was a nice Jewish father, and you know that nice Jewish fathers do not disinherit their children,’ Christine told me last week. ‘Tony was on strong painkillers at the end, and they make you really stoned.’
She claims that Curtis loved his children deeply, as they did him, despite his failings as a father. She also says there had been no falling out that explains their omission from the will. Kaufman suspects that any money Vandenberg inherited is being spent on the horse sanctuary which she runs in Sandy Valley, Nevada.
Happier times: Tony Curtis and first wife Janet Leigh pose with their daughters Kelly and Jamie Lee
‘Jill has lots of three- legged horses that she has to take care of which are very expensive,’ she says.
Feelings among the family have now reached an all-time low. One of Curtis’s sons, Ben, 37, is said to feel so bitter that he even refused to attend his father’s funeral last October. B
en’s mother Leslie, Curtis’s third wife, says that he ‘loved his father very much’ but found it a ‘poignant and difficult time’ because of the death of his brother, Nicholas, who succumbed to a heroin overdose in 1994.
Meanwhile Allegra, the black sheep among the children, who posed for Playboy in her youth, has recently written a book describing her father as a drug-addicted ‘demon’, and bemoaning the fact that he never gave her a chance to be his daughter.
Curtis picks up his son Nicholas, who succumbed to a heroin overdose during 1994
‘My father was a victim of his fame, and I am the victim of my father, the global star. I got to learn about the dark side of the spotlight,’ she said. ‘My life with him was always unstable.’
So far the tome has only been published in Germany. But Allegra, Curtis’ fourth daughter, contacted me last week from Majorca where she lives to say that, despite the problems, she always continued to love her father.
Her feelings towards Jill Vandenberg, however, are ‘not the kindest’. Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who gave a moving address when her father was laid to rest, has also recently spoken of Tony’s failings as a father — claiming there was ‘no bond’ at all between them.
But Jamie Lee, Curtis’s second daughter, by Janet Leigh, has reportedly decided that it would be futile to sue because she thinks her stepmother may have already frittered away the fortune.
Jamie Lee’s publicist Heidi Schaeffer simply said sternly last month: ‘No one should be speculating on Jamie’s reasons for not being involved in the lawsuit. There is no further comment.’
Wife number one: Janet Leigh, who Curtis married in 1951
Wife number two: Christine Kaufmann was mother of Alexandra and Allegra
And at the centre of the storm is Miss Vandenberg, who has just issued a brief statement saying: ‘Tony’s last will and testament and his passing wishes are family matters.’
It’s a complicated scenario because, whatever his family’s feelings towards Vandenberg and the inheritance they claim she has cheated them out of, Tony was certainly happy in his twilight years with his sixth wife.
The pair met in 1993 in a restaurant, and were married five years later when he was 73 — and she just 30.
Although he said in interviews that he never ‘got over’ the death of his son Nicholas, and could never speak of the pain, Jill undoubtedly helped him through that dark period of his life.
And in 2008, just two years before he died after a heart attack, Tony spoke of how deeply content he was with her. ‘I don’t want anyone in my life except my wife Jill,’ he said. ‘And for the first time in my life it isn’t just lust.’
Coming from a man who once admitted that he struggled with his ‘addiction to women’, that was quite an accolade.
Alcoholism and drug addiction were behind him by this point of his life. And after many years at the epicentre of the Hollywood social scene alongside characters including Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Kirk Douglas, he had retired from acting and devoted himself full time to painting.
Wife number three: Leslie Allen bore Curtis two sons, one of whom died
Wife number four: Actress Andrea Savio was Curtis' next wife
Wife number five: Lawyer Lisa Deutsch, who he married in 1993
Wife number six: Jill Vandenberg was married to Curtis until his death
It was left to Jill to nurse him through various illnesses. He came close to death after a bout of pneumonia in 2006, which left him in a wheelchair.
He also suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and had increasing trouble breathing. In July 2010, he was taken ill with an asthma attack at a book signing event.
Christine Kaufman, however, remains steadfast in her suspicion of Jill. She calls her a ‘fridge made of marzipan’ — a curious phrase intended to indicate that she is sweet on the outside, but cool on the inside.
‘I’m not picking on Jill because I admire her for staying with Tony,’ Christine admits.
‘He was a complicated man but she was very happy with him, and he with her.
‘But Tony promised to take care of the children, and we all want to know what happened to that promise.’
