Curtis looks inside the box for art inspiration

Kimberley McGee

Friday, Dec. 7, 2001 | 8:40 a.m.

Tony Curtis is a pack rat.

The 76-year-old actor has amassed a personal collection of scraps of metal, shoestrings, old letters and other seemingly insignificant items he has picked up since he was a small boy in New York.

As a lifelong hobby he has gathered the items in myriad poses in hundreds of boxes as an art form.

Inside each untitled box collage are static objects such as marbles, glitter or small bits of paper that change the landscape of the box as it is viewed.

"It's never the same twice," Curtis said in a recent interview from his home in Henderson. "It's always changing."

The box collages, along with a choice selection of Curtis' paintings, are presented for the public's perusal as part of the exhibit in "The Prince: A retrospective of work by Tony Curtis" on display Monday through Jan. 26 at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' Marjorie Barrick Museum.

It is the first time Curtis' box collages will be on display for public viewing.

"I've always (made) them for myself for years," Curtis said. "It's a hobby."

And a release from the pressures of his career, he said.

Curtis has starred in more than 100 films in five decades, including such classics as "Houdini," "Some Like it Hot," "The Boston Strangler," "Spartacus," and "The Defiant Ones," which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 1958.

Between takes on film sets he would sketch people, hands and rooms. He also picked up anything on the ground that caught his eye.

"I've always got my head down when I'm walking down a street," Curtis said. "You don't know what you might find just sitting there."

To house his treasures, he collects wood, glass, plastic and cigar boxes. Any box will do, especially those that hide the treasure inside, he said.

He decorates the outside of each box with paint, leaves or varnish to make it interesting. But it's what's on the inside that counts.

"You don't know what this could be and you open it," Curtis said, "and it's a whole different experience."

A paper figure of a woman stands alone in a blue velvet-lined wooden box with a glass front. A thick, grey shoestring clings to the fabric background, falling into different shapes as the box is turned.

The boxes have to be seen and touched to be understood, Curtis said.

"That's never looked that way before," Curtis said as he turned the box. "That's what I like. Each time you look at one of the boxes, they are different."

While acting may have garnered Curtis international acclaim, he is also recognized in the art world for his paintings.

Curtis' paintings are on display at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio; the Toronto Museum; the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor; and at The Mirage.

Curtis' vivid acrylic paintings of women, fruit, landscapes and flowers are also in the art collections of fellow celebrities Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver, Kirk Douglas and the late Frank Sinatra and Walter Matthau.

Curtis said that while he is an actor first in the eyes of the world, he has always considered himself an artist.

"I'm a painter, I paint all the time," Curtis said. "But I also make boxes and collages."

His paintings have been compared to those of 20th century artist Henri Matisse. They are propped in each room of his home, which has a view of the Las Vegas Valley.

"I don't hang my pictures, I put them where I like," Curtis said. "I like clean walls."

The bright canvases lean against windows, the backs of chairs, coffee tables and line the hallway two and three deep.

"There's no rhyme or reason," Curtis said. "My paintings move around the house with me as I wish. If you like paintings like I do, you keep them all over the place."

While painting has always been a passion, Curtis said, the box collages came along when he was a teen and made a serendipitous find among his childhood keepsakes.

As a boy on the streets of the Bronx, he would stuff his pockets with little-boy treasures, such as marbles, bits of metal and rocks.

He would stash his finds in cigar boxes. Years later he stumbled across a forgotten box. Inside was a time capsule of his life as a boy -- the stub of a pencil, an eraser and scraps of paper.

"It was a world in there of trivial, meaningless stuff," Curtis said. "It was beautiful."

Last year Robert Tracy, professor of art history at UNLV and the interim director of UNLV's school of architecture, met Curtis at a lecture the actor was giving about painting for the UNLV's Celebrity Speaker series. Curtis discussed the making of his boxes, which intrigued Tracy.

"This is fine work," Tracy said. "I thought we should get it on display in Las Vegas, not just let it sit around."

People often can't get past the idea of Curtis as a movie star, Tracy said, but that would be a mistake.

"His stardom makes it unique, but it is worthy art," Tracy said. "There's memory in these boxes that people will be able to relate to once they get past the culture of celebrity."

But Curtis isn't giving up his acting career just yet.

The sprightly actor is attending tap dance classes and voice lessons in preparation for a national tour of "Some Like It Hot." Curtis will headline the tour, which reportedly will debut July 27 at the Aladdin (though the hotel and production are still in negotiations).

The musical is based on Billy Wilder's classic 1959 film about two men (played by Curtis and the late Jack Lemmon), who dress in drag and join an all-female band to escape the mob. The film also starred Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown.

But Curtis won't be donning any flower-print dresses for this role. He'll play the dapper character, Osgood Fielding III -- the eccentric multimillionaire who falls in love with a female musician only to discover that she's actually a man -- that Brown portrayed in the film.

"But I'm going to play it elegant," Curtis said.

Curtis said he has no plans to stop painting or playing with the boxes-in-progress at his home studio.

"I'm always excited about what's next," Curtis said.