An 84-year-old man with a shock of white hair walks into a posh hotel in Beverly Hills. Except he doesn't just walk. Despite a stroke five years ago, a pacemaker, and a recent helicopter crash, this man swaggers into our tangle of cables and cameras. He became one of the most famous men in the world over half a century ago, playing a boxer who punches his way to the top. This movie star walks like he's still in the ring.
In the era when his son Michael has just married a girl from the valleys, Catherine Zeta Jones, it's easy to forget that the pugnacious old pa was one of the most important actor-moguls of his day. A former wrestler in real life, Kirk Douglas got Hollywood in an arm lock and helped bring it to its knees.
It became fashionable in the 50s for actors to set up their own production companies, but few built any with real muscle. Kirk Douglas set up Bryna (named after his illiterate mother) which produced "Paths of Glory", "The Vikings", and "Spartacus" - and is still going strong. And at a time when the industry kow-towed to Senator McCarthy and his appalling red-hunting cronies, Douglas hired a disgraced and imprisoned screenwriter called Dalton Trumbo and broke the blacklist by crediting him for writing the script of "Spartacus". It's hard not to watch that film's famous scene where the slaves stand up to the Romans by saying "I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus" without thinking of Trumbo's socialism. Director Billy Wilder once advised Douglas to make a scene particularly nasty by saying "give it both knees". Kirk Douglas gave Hollywood both knees.
You can see Mark Cousins talking with Kirk Douglas in "Scene by Scene" on BBC2, Thursday 28 December 2000 at 2.00pm.
Don't miss Douglas in "Champion", showing before "Scene by Scene", and "Lonely are the Brave", showing after.
