10/08/11

An extensive fine art collection and other memorabilia that once belonged to late Hollywood actor Tony Curtis are to be sold at auction next month in Beverly Hills.


The actor immortalized in “Some Like It Hot,” and who died last year, was also an accomplished flautist and a painter whose work resides in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Fine Art in New York.

Among the works to go under the hammer are a “Some Like It Hot” themed painting by Andy Warhol, three drawings by Balthus, and ceramics and prints by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Marc Chagall.

The collection is being sold by Julien’s Auctions of Beverly Hills.

Some of Curtis’s own works – “paintings, drawings, prints, ceramic vases and a tapestry” – will also be up for sale.

Souvenirs and memorabilia from the actor’s long career are part of the sale, including a yachtsman’s jacket he wore in the famed shipboard kissing scene with Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like it Hot,” valued at $10,000 to $15,000.

The fine art sale will take place on September 17 in Beverly Hills and items will be on display September 6-16.

Curtis – who was known almost as well for his off-camera dalliances, with Monroe and many others, as for his acting skills – died of a heart attack in September 2010 at his home outside Las Vegas. He was 85. Born Bernard Schwartz in Manhattan in 1925, he grew up poor in the Bronx during the Great Depression before climbing his way to the top of Hollywood to become one of it's biggest and most beloved stars.

Chris Sabian is a portrait artist with www.kutefineart.com/ and owner of www.paragonprints.co.uk/