Carroll dishing on Poitier

[Reza]

NY Post 9/14/08

OSCAR-winner Sidney Poitier played his most dramatic role off-screen - that of a real-life, married cad who promised his mistress the moon, then cruelly double-crossed her.

In her new memoir, "The Legs Are the Last to Go," Diahann Carroll - the Bronx-born beauty who made history as TV's first black sitcom star in "Julia" - portrays Poitier as a heel who convinced her and first hubby Monte Kay to divorce after confronting Kay, saying he loved Carroll and was splitting from his wife to be with her. But Poitier then broke his promise, prompting her to date another man in frustration, Carroll charges.

She writes: "Sidney called me at my hotel . . . 'You bitch, whore, tramp,' he yelled. 'I know he just left your bed. I won't have you running around with other men. You belong to me!' "

Things got worse when, she says, Poitier told her he'd finally called it quits with his wife, Juanita Hardy , bought her a ring, and had her decorate a 10-room Riverside Drive apartment he'd bought. "I was only home a few days when he called to say his wife was having second thoughts. Our wedding plans would have to be postponed," Carroll writes. "When the apartment was ready and I was about to move my daughter in with me, Sidney told me he didn't want her there . . . He changed the locks so I couldn't get in. Then he made me write him a check to offset his purchase and decorating costs. I did as I was told, submissive and desperate."

Poitier, who had no comment on the book, would go on to wed actress Joanna Shimkus , while Carroll married three more times, her last husband being singer Vic Damone . "Sidney and I are now friends. That's a lovely thing that comes as you age - forgiveness and perhaps a relaxing of standards," Carroll writes. She notes that at the age of 73, "I'm told I look pretty good for my age, with, I am ashamed to admit, a little help from my plastic surgeon." The book, from Amistad, hits stores next week.