Where is Burt? Where is Laurence Olivier? They’re all gone. I read about Hollywood, and I don’t know the people. “I think he got a thousand dollars for the picture and I got half a million.”ĭouglas turns suddenly somber. “My actor friend Burt Lancaster signed the contract that I wouldn’t sign.” In 1957, the two of them starred in “Gunfight at the OK Corral.” Lancaster was finishing out his contract with Wallis. But Douglas balked, wanting to take control of his own career. He made an impression in his first feature, “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” with Barbara Stanwyck, and then Wallis wanted to put him under contract. She went to Hollywood, she was living with Bogart and she said to Hal Wallis, ‘You must look at Kirk Douglas.’ Hal Wallis came to New York, and he offered me a contract. I always considered myself a stage actor. He continues, “I never wanted to be in movies.
“Yes,” he says, with surprise at the silly question. Mankiewicz, Vincente Minnelli, and William Wyler. Among other suggestions, the shrink recommended that Kubrick read Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novel “Traumnovelle.” Nearly 40 years later, that novel became “Eyes Wide Shut.”ĭouglas says, “It was a lousy picture,” he says with a smile of fake remorse.ĭouglas worked with many of Hollywood’s greatest directors: Billy Wilder, John Frankenheimer, Howard Hawks, John Huston, Elia Kazan, Joseph L. “I have to bear part of the responsibility because I brought Stanley to my psychiatrist.”ĭuring “Spartacus,” the director’s battles with Douglas were so prolonged that Douglas’ wife thought a mutual-therapy session might help. We had a little argument,” he says.ĭouglas mentions Kubrick’s final film, 1999’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” with a shake of his head. “He didn’t like that scene, but I insisted. The star-producer forced Kubrick to direct the most famous moment in the film, the “I am Spartacus!” scene. (And Douglas laughs that two years later, Wasserman was running the studio.) Douglas says his agent Lew Wasserman advised him on how to deal with Universal. Execs at Universal had a lot riding on the film, but Douglas was able to convince them that Trumbo should get credit, though no blacklisted writer had been credited onscreen for more than a dozen years.
The budget on “Spartacus” ballooned from $4 million to $12 million. Kirk Douglas on his difficult relationship with Stanley Kubrick (VIDEO): I always said he was a bastard, but he was a talented, talented guy,” Douglas says. So, we had lots of fights, but I always appreciated his talent. Despite their frequent clashes, Douglas three years later wanted Kubrick to direct the Bryna-Universal film “Spartacus.” The relationship began with a fight after Kubrick made major script rewrites without telling Douglas, who forced him to film the original version. For the company’s second film, “Paths of Glory,” he hired Kubrick as director.
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