EXCLUSIVE: Tony Curtis Illness Cost A Role

Legendary actor Tony Curtis will make a full recovery from his breathing-difficulty episode, but reports by TMZ.Com and others cost the 85-year-old actor his first film part in years, his wife complained.

Jill Curtis told me today that Curtis is now in a rehab center after being hospitalized three weeks ago because of an asthma-like attack at a CostCo. It's a symptom of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the result of decades of smoking, she said. He was in a hospital for two weeks and in the rehab center for a week, and Mrs. Curtis expects him to remain there for two more weeks.

"This happens sometimes and it was serious but he has to deal with it," she said. "He was able to talk a little bit today. He's 85, they just want to keep a close eye on him. gone through this before. He's not been asked to walk yet, they're just taking it slow with him. ... He should make a full recovery. We're know we have a long road ahead. He'll be back to doing the things he does soon."

The illness could not have come at a worse time for the Academy Award-nominated actor and Henderson resident, given that he was expected next month to shoot scenes for the Sigourney Weaver film "Vamps," a satire by "Clueless" director Amy Heckerling. Tony Curtis had even done wardrobe fittings, his wife said. He did a bit part in an independent flick in 2008 but this would've been his first Hollywood picture in many years.

"He was very excited about it but unfortunately, TMZ and National Enquirer got false information and before we could say anything, they dropped him," Curtis said. "There were rumors that he had passed away."

I can't find any reference to Curtis' possible death from any legitimate news source. In fact, this overly optimistic TMZ report says he'll "be released soon" which was not true unless "soon" equals five weeks of care.

Anyhow, could he have really done the role, given his rehab?

"He probably would have been able to," his wife said. "That's why we didn't want to say anything but the damage is done. We just move on."

This is a great moment to trot back out this classic shot of the Curtises with me and my pal Amy at a fundraiser in 2009. Yeah, I can see the vampire-flick potential.

Is Raided Pharmacy Linked To Steroids Indictment?

The answer to that provocative question is: No. At least not from anything I can tell. And I checked.

I was waiting yesterday to see if anyone in the media would attempt to connect Applied Pharmacy Services in Las Vegas, which was raided by the DEA and LAPD in connection with the probe into Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson's personal doctor, with a company known as American Pharmacy Solutions in Mobile, Alabama, that was hit earlier this year with a 198-count indictment in a widespread steroids distribution scandal.

Why would anyone confuse the two? Because if you Google "Applied Pharmacy Services," the first two responses are links to some blog that had posted about the Alabama company which is, in fact, named in an indictment as "Applied Pharmacy Services."


Then, if you dig a little deeper and Google "Applied Pharmacy Services, Mobile, AL," you get this:


BUT...the trail grows cold when you click on that link. Then you find yourself on the website of American Pharmacy Solutions. It's a mail-order pharmaceuticals company. They don't have branches or locations. They're not even called Applied Pharmacy Services.

I suspect many other journalists followed this necessary bunny trail to its conclusion as I did for my New York Times piece on yesterday's raid. I called up the Mobile, Ala., place. Asked if they had offices in Las Vegas, were tied to this pharmacy that had been raided. They said no. They could be lying or they could have changed their name since the indictment, that's true, and nobody from the Vegas pharmacy could be reached by anyone in the press yesterday to check it out. But it appears to be a coincidence.

Unfortunately, my private prediction proved correct; someone in the press did report that these were the same company without, so far as I can tell, being able to confirm it. I'm surprised to say it, but it was the normally spot-on Las Vegas Sun.


This information (in that middle paragraph there) didn't appear in anybody else's reports. Not the Associated Press's, not the Review-Journal's. Not even TMZ. So, did the Las Vegas Sun have some great big scoop that everybody else in the press somehow overlooked even though it was the very first thing that came up on Google? The media wouldn't pounce with two feet on the notion that a pharmacy involved in the Jacko case also has an 198-count steroid indictment against them?

As I said, the two could still be related. But I don't know anyone at this stage who has confirmed it. And the lack of being able to confirm something as simple as shared corporate parentage leads me to the conclusion that the Sun jumped the gun this time.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, on TMZ re: Jackson!!!

This is so great! Click on the image here and zoom ahead to about 1:46ish. The rest is nonsense.

This Week's LVW col: A real magic trick

Poof! Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column.

A real magic trick
David Copperfield and the amazing disappearing allegations
By STEVE FRIESS

There is a moment during David Copperfield’s performance at the MGM Grand when the magician picks a pretty young woman out of the audience and asks for her help. He borrows her ring, does a few other misdirecting things and then makes the ring reappear tied to something in his back pocket.

To set up the trick, though, the pretty young female audience member must verify early on in the sequence that Copperfield’s back pocket is empty. That means she has to slide her hand into it, cupping his butt ever so briefly.

It is telling that as I gasped, the rest of the adults in the crowd merely tittered at the obvious sexual innuendo and went along for the ride.

Telling, that is, because about a year on from some potentially career-ending allegations of sexual misconduct with pretty young female audience members, Copperfield remains a shockingly popular draw and not by any means a sleazy presence that parents with children or even pretty young female audience members try to avoid.

And there’s a reason for that: He puts on a good show. A very, very good show. A show that, after having slogged though the dregs of Steve Wyrick, Hans Klok and now Criss Angel in recent years, restored my faith in the existence of good magic shows. But more on that later.

First, we need to re-examine the curious case that brought Copperfield so low that he canceled shows last year and has reformed himself from a media yapper into a media recluse.

Copperfield was accused in October 2007 of raping a 21-year-old Seattle woman whom he allegedly picked out of his audience and lured to his Bahamian getaway for a sexual liaison. The Seattle FBI was as leaky as a Circus Circus faucet about the case at the time, tipping off journalists to a raid on the magician’s warehouse near the Strip to seize a computer hard drive, a digital camera system and nearly $2 million in cash. A grand jury was investigating.

That was all so deliberately incriminating; our minds boggle at what could have been on a suspicious computer! The Seattle Times worked its sources at the local FBI office to produce a litany of TMZ.com-worthy tidbits. The accuser was an aspiring model who saw Copperfield’s show in the Seattle area and who then began to engage in an e-mail friendship of sorts with the illusionist 30 years her senior. He made good on his promise to whisk her off to his private retreat in Musha Cay, Bahamas, in July 2007, where she claims he struck her, raped her and threatened her to keep quiet.

After the story broke, various other women and former Copperfield stagehands emerged to allege that this was the magician’s modus operandi, that he scouts his audience for hotties to score with.

The thing that happened next is the most important, but completely unnoticed by The Seattle Times or anybody else: nothing.

Read the rest HERE

TMZ's PHONY O.J. Exclusive

TMZ is trumpeting as an "exclusive" something that not only isn't exclusive but is unbelievably old. They got ahold of a statement from Fred Goldman's attorney David Cook that Mr. Cook sent around en masse to reporters BEFORE the verdict yesterday. He sent us statements for either outcome, guilty or acquitted. But TMZ posted this as "exclusive" a full 13 hours after the verdict. Wow, that's impressive. Shows you what they're capable when they're not buying the news.

And while we're at it, guess who was atop the Google News homepage today. Here's the glory screenshot:


Oh, and this doesn't look so bad either:


I know many of you never cared much about this case. But I go back to what I said from the start. The potential for exactly this outcome - the most famous murder defendant of our time going to prison for effectively the rest of his life - required media attention. The first line of his obituary was just torn up and rewritten and I was there. Not a bad gig.

Welcome TMZ Readers!

The power celeb-gossip site TMZ picked up the bit about Chuck Woolery's feud with Merv Griffin here, which we put out as a press release this weekend, and linked to "The Strip." So I suspect that we're seeing an influx of folks checking us out. So welcome one and all and subscribe to the podcast via iTunes by clicking here.