One Helluva Ride

1   CHILDHOOD

Overview

Growing up with a father who was famous in public and violent at home left deep scars. The real question is whether someone can ever escape that kind of childhood, and what it costs to try.

The Ragman's Son

Kirk Douglas played a heroic sailor in the movies, but at home he was a flawed man with a ferocious temper. He made over ninety films in sixty years. His son spent years torn between admiring him and dreading the next explosion. Later he understood where it came from: the poverty and violence his father endured and kept hidden, which fed both a hunger for success and ugly scenes at home.

Issur Danielovitch

Issur Danielovitch Demsky was born in Amsterdam, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrants. His father Harry scavenged junk heaps as the ragman and beat his wife and seven children. At ten, Kirk flicked hot tea at him, took the beating, and felt the satisfaction of defiance. A scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts was his escape. In summer stock he befriended Mladen Sekulovich, who became Karl Malden, whose wife Mona suggested the name Kirk.

Diana Dill

Diana Dill was born in Devonshire, Bermuda. At seventeen she lied about her age to enter the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where she was wary of Kirk until he scribbled a note during an owl exercise asking how many owl parts there were on Broadway. When a teacher savaged him in Bachelor Born, she cried backstage; over coffee she told him he was talented and needed to put in the work, and he took the advice.

The Navy, a Magazine Cover, a Marriage

After Pearl Harbor he joined the navy. Diana appeared on the cover of Life, and he told his shipmates he would marry her. That November they married in New Orleans before a navy chaplain and a rabbi who required their children be raised Jewish. A depth charge accident in 1944 injured him and ended his service. When Diana went into labor with their son while Kirk was starring in Kiss and Tell, he stopped by between performances and remarked on the day he had had; she nearly threw a pitcher of water at him.

Key Takeaways

• A father can be great in public and violent at home, and both can come from the same place. Knowing that helped his son make peace with the past.
• A new name and a scholarship were not enough on their own. Kirk Douglas also needed the habit of defiance he first learned at ten.
• Diana Dill told Kirk the truth about his need for craft, and that gave him the discipline raw charisma could not. She shaped him in ways that mattered.
• Kirk and Diana married fast during the war and compromised on religion. Right away, it was clear what came first for him, as when his stage performance took precedence over his wife's labor.

PROLOGUE

Overview

Staying together for the children can still leave those children with damage they have to deal with on their own. The same house can ask different things of each child. One child goes quiet. Another acts out. What matters is not whether the marriage lasts, but what the children take with them when it ends.

A rage with a source

Kirk's ambition ran on resentment. In 1949 he poured it into Champion, a Stanley Kramer film noir about a drifter who schemes his way to the top. He worked with Kramer on the script, casting and production. The role earned his first Academy Award nomination and made him a leading man. His rage traced back to an impoverished childhood, an abusive father, and the antisemitism he overheard as a white Russian Jew who could pass as a Wasp.

The divorce that let the air back in

Diana reached her breaking point in 1950, when Michael was five. She was done with the infidelity and the lying. A therapist told her, in the thinking of that era, that the marriage's survival came down to what she could put up with. Kirk admitted he could not be monogamous. At the first visit after the split, he kissed Diana on the cheek, and Michael burst into tears. The tension Kirk had carried for years was gone. The apartment filled with lullabies and musicals instead of arguments.

Fear, and its cost

Kirk's temper could blow up over anything. Michael stayed off his radar. Joel kept trying for affection and took more of the abuse. Anne Buydens, married to Kirk in Las Vegas on May 29, 1954, described life with him as a beautiful garden beside a volcano. He framed his yelling as proof that he cared. Fame brought danger too. At eight, Michael was chased by two men into his building's basement and watched a face press against the elevator's porthole.

Michael was pushed into seventh grade at eleven, a foot shorter than his classmates. He bought movie tickets for older kids to make friends. His first date, Joanna Meyers, two years older, ended when she French kissed him and he fled the Bruin Theatre. His mother moved him to Black-Foxe Military Institute, where he was fifth-chair trumpet and backup flag bearer. Spinning the flagstaff on command, he drove its golden eagle into the ground before the whole school. He resolved to know the task, be prepared, and remember a crowd is always watching.

Bill Darrid

In December 1956, when Michael was twelve, his mother married William Darrid, an actor, writer and producer. Born William David Blum, he produced Broadway versions of The Disenchanted with Jason Robards and The Andersonville Trial with George C. Scott. Gentle, nonconfrontational and curious, Bill one day listened to Michael with full attention, something no man had done. Kirk was dynamic and taught him how to be a man. Bill showed him how to be a human being.

Front-row film school

As a gofer on Spartacus, Michael watched Stanley Kubrick, who had replaced Anthony Mann after one week. The film became the highest-grossing picture of 1960, with six Oscar nominations and four wins, though Kubrick fought to cut the "I'm Spartacus" scene. On Lonely Are the Brave in 1961 he assisted the director and editor. Kirk taught him that good actors are great listeners, and gave him stamina and tenacity.

Key Takeaways

Kirk's rage came from poverty, abuse, and antisemitism, but that does not excuse what his temper did to his family. When a marriage ends, the children can feel just as relieved as the adults. The quiet that follows shows how much of daily life had been spent avoiding a fight. Anger that comes without warning does more damage than anger with clear triggers, because a child only learns to hide. The son who kept reaching for affection took more of the blows than the son who disappeared from view. A gentle stepparent who listens without an agenda can teach a child what a magnetic, unstable father cannot. Working from the bottom of a film production teaches that talent matters less than attention, preparation, and persistence. A public failure at school can plant the same lesson about staying calm in front of a crowd.

2   COLLEGE

Overview

A young man has to decide what comes after school, even though he has no idea who he is. The options in front of him aren't really his own, and he can't wait until he feels certain.

He had no plan, and his transcript ruled out Yale. Then a catalog in his college adviser's office at Choate caught his eye. The cover showed a tanned surfer and blond girls in bikinis, with the caption "The Campus by the Sea." It was UC Santa Barbara. What pulled him in was sunshine and escape, not a degree.

Flunking Out, and a Gas Station

Santa Barbara gave him exactly what he wanted: Beach Boys on the radio, surfer roommates from Newport Beach, and no discipline. Indian art, pottery, and meditation pushed class aside. After one year, the school suggested he take a year off. At a Mobil station in Westport, he won the first award of his life: Mobil Man of the Month. His father called to ask if pumping gas was the plan.

On Location

His father got him onto The Heroes of Telemark, shot in Norway in winter. He started in wardrobe as a gofer, and his father quietly told director Anthony Mann to work him hard. In Jerusalem for Cast a Giant Shadow, he was promoted to production assistant. When a driver kept missing a mark, his father told him to put on a uniform and drive the jeep. It was his screen debut.

A Trust Fund, a Suitcase, a Verdict

At twenty-one, he was given $10,000 and told he was on his own. He paid for his last two years by flying east twice with forty-four kilos of marijuana in two leather Italian suitcases. He bought it in California at seventy-five dollars a kilo and sold it in New York for five hundred. He chose theater. In Much Ado About Nothing, he vomited into a wastebasket before each entrance. His father, watching from the sixth row, said, "Son, you were terrible."

The Thaw

As his father's life calmed down, the distance between them eased. His father was convinced his son had moved to Santa Barbara to be near him, so he drove ninety minutes to every performance. His advice: go all in, then let the outcome go.

Acid, Meditation, and Kesey

He took LSD more than a hundred times in three years, never more than once a week. Transcendental Meditation gave him the same charge, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's workshops in Ojai, California, drew him in. A literature course introduced him to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. His father had bought the theatrical rights so he could play the lead on Broadway.

Protesting, and the Draft

He staged mock classroom shootings with blood bags to bring the war home. His father toured as a goodwill ambassador for American exceptionalism. They disagreed and respected each other. His lottery number came up, and a physical found spondylitis, missing vertebrae, and a curved spine. The letter said "mild" and "slight," so his father asked for one without the qualifiers. He showed up with a back brace and refused to take it off. That earned him a 1-Y.

The O'Neill, Danny, and Summertree

An unpaid carpentry job at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in Waterford, Connecticut, taught him that everything rests on the material, on act structures and scene breaks. There he met Danny DeVito, and a lifelong friendship began, whether over a beer run or a foghorn and a question about getting high. Summertree was picked up by Lincoln Center. He won the lead, then learned he had been strung along as leverage until David Birney was free. He graduated in 1968.

Key Takeaways

• He picked a college for a glossy brochure image and the surf, with no academic plan behind it. The result was a year of drift and a forced leave, not an education.
• His first film jobs came through his father's arrangements, so his entry into the industry was inherited rather than won.
• His father's approval showed up in miles driven to performances, not in praise. The thaw between them depended as much on his father's calmer life as on the son's work.
• He used LSD and meditation as interchangeable paths to the same altered state. The destination mattered more than the vehicle.
• At the O'Neill, he learned that a play stands or falls on its structural bones. At Lincoln Center, he learned that a lead role can be a placeholder in someone else's schedule.

3   MY PLACE IN THE WORLD

Overview

A young actor arrives in a city with a famous name, a foothold, and no way to tell which of his wins are his own. Rejection comes without explanation, and the friends who might steady him are as unproven as he is.

A family of actors, and a father's reservations

Raised among actors, he met resistance from within: his mother and stepfather Bill stayed neutral on his ambitions, while Kirk Douglas openly wanted a lawyer for a son. He understood the apprehension. For every Kirk Douglas, thousands never make it, and he had watched his mother and Bill fight to sustain their own careers.

A one-room apartment and a friend who leaned in

After graduating from UCSB he moved to New York with Danny DeVito as his roommate, splitting a one-room apartment on West Eighty-Ninth Street at $150 a month, good times or bad. DeVito never waited for approval and treated obstacles as strengths. Their friend John "Cha Cha" Ciarcia, unofficial mayor of Little Italy, ran a Mulberry Street coffee shop and stood as the implied fixer for any trouble. Bill shaped him with two pieces of counsel:

• A man who can count his friends on one hand is lucky.
• Shyness is a weakness, not something to cultivate as a charming quality.

Training, borrowed names, and the whole film

Wynn Handman, a Sandy Meisner protégé, tailored his teaching to each actor's confidence rather than delivering brutal critique. His first agent, Stark Hesseltine, declined unsuitable offers with "NQOCD," meaning not quite our class, dear. Because a talk show host already held the name Mike Douglas, he performed as M.K. Douglas, and years later he learned on a plane that Michael Keaton had likewise surrendered the name Michael Douglas. His 1969 CBS Playhouse debut drew kind notices, but the film Hail, Hero! disappeared. The conclusion: the film is the real star, so a project's every element matters, not just the role. Losses taught him more than wins, and struggling first meant he could receive later success with more humility.

Steve McQueen and the Porsche

Steve McQueen produced Adam at 6 A.M. through Solar Productions, his first feature without himself as star. He was the biggest movie star in the world, and picking Douglas as lead was huge. Douglas earned about $3,500 and would have worked for free. After the shoot, McQueen handed Douglas the keys to the orange Porsche 911 his character had driven. McQueen died of cancer in 1980 at fifty.

Five failures

Then the films bombed:

• Hail, Hero! (1969)
• Adam at 6 A.M. (1970)
• Summertree (1971)
• When Michael Calls (1972)
• Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

Five films, five failures. Six years passed before another feature offer. A film is always a gamble; young actors must go through adversity.

Summertree, revenge, and Brenda Vaccaro

Summertree was Kirk Douglas's revenge after Jules Irving pulled the rug out from under his son in college. "The Douglases love revenge!" he said. It was a blessing and a curse, embodying his conflict between distinguishing himself from his father and wanting closeness. On set, Douglas met Brenda Vaccaro. Their relationship was built on respect and looking out for each other. After Kirk told her Michael lacked the voice for Broadway but would be a movie star in LA, she encouraged the move.

The break into The Streets of San Francisco

On The FBI, Quinn Martin remembered him. Martin cast him as Karl Malden's sidekick in The Streets of San Francisco. Malden asked, "Are you a Douglas?" His father was always in the room.

Key Takeaways

• The success of a film rests on the aggregate of its parts, so no single performance or a legend's endorsement can rescue a project whose other elements fail.
• Treating shyness as an endearing trait is a mistake; it is a weakness to eliminate, while a few relationships built on mutual respect and encouragement are worth more than a wide circle of contacts.
• A parent's fame never fully recedes, and even their interventions can be both a blessing and a curse, shaping how others receive you and how you must define yourself.
• A string of early failures is more instructive than a quick triumph, and the long wait for the next offer tests whether the work is truly yours.