So this pugilistic movie star walked into the hotel. We'd been waiting for him all day. I talked to him in make-up. I joked about his speech difficulties; he said he couldn't understand a word of my Irish-Scottish accent. We had started sparring. Burt Lancaster once said of him, "Kirk Douglas would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second!". Many have said that in his heyday he was a difficult colleague and a reluctant friend. He once quipped, "I am the most hated man in Hollywood." But his three well-written memoirs relate how he has relaxed in recent years. The bitter energy, the resentment at not being given Oscars for his work, has given way to a dry jokiness and ease, which is revealed as he's dabbed with more make-up.
He's been interviewed thousands of times but has none of the weariness such popular people sometimes exude. Out of his seat, over to the mirror, he pronounces, "I look good, lets go!" And we did. We talked about his life, glamorous in a grander way than Michael's. He worked with most of the great directors - Wilder, Wyler, Kubrick - and had affairs with Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, and Ava Gardner. He once said "My life story is a corny B-movie," and he was right.
His father was a ragman and Douglas went literally from that to riches. Both parents were Russian Jews who fled the Russian pogroms and arrived archetypically in America at Ellis Island. Kirk studied theatre in New York and fell for a striking 16-year-old who would later be called Lauren Bacall. She put a word in for him in LA and, needing the money because Michael had been born, he went west to California to prostitute his talent.
