Michael Douglas Read online

  Although the film opened softly in October 1969 and faded quickly, to those who saw it the surface resemblance between Michael and his famous father was difficult to avoid. They are the same height, and Michael had his father’s Fosdick jaw, only not quite as fearless, as well as that famous trademark dimple. Michael’s eyes, like his father’s, were dark, but cooler and gentler than Kirk’s burning browns. Perhaps the biggest difference between them was what they projected: Michael was at home playing laid-back sixties-type youth, while Kirk was never young nor laid-back on film (or in real life). There had always been a gritty, adult authority to Kirk’s performances, as well as a naturally intense style of talking through clenched teeth and reddened cheeks. He played muscle-bound cowboys on horseback, or quick-fisted characters who had no patience for other men and always a bend-them-back kiss for the women. Kirk’s characters, with one or two notable exceptions (Vincent Van Gogh), resembled his real-life personality—steely, instinctive, sexual, invincible. Michael’s, by comparison, were less heroic, more vulnerable. Seen together, which they rarely were offscreen and never on it until decades later, they were less similar than when each was seen in a film by himself that made audiences recall the other.

  Vincent Canby, reviewing Hail, Hero! for the New York Times, acknowledged some individualistic talent in Michael: “It’s not an especially memorable performance, but it’s an energetic one and without Douglas, Hail, Hero! would not even be tolerable.… It is, I suppose, an anti-Vietnam movie, but it’s the sort of neutral anti-Vietnam movie that one might expect to find at Radio City Music Hall, where it opened yesterday.”

  Cinema Center promoted the film heavily, and almost every time Michael was interviewed he was asked if Kirk had pulled any strings to get him the part. The question visibly annoyed him, and that was reflected in his answers. Talking to the Hollywood Citizen News, Michael tried to point out the folly of that logic. He had gotten the part in Hail, Hero! because of his work in The Experiment, he said, and in some cases coming from a movie family made it more difficult to gain credibility as an actor. “In Hollywood, when you’re a star’s son, they think, ‘Yeah, for him it’s easy.’ ”

  Despite the failure of Hail, Hero! Cinema Center put Michael up for another feature, Robert Scheerer’s 1970 Adam at Six a.m. The character of Adam is a linguistics professor in an unnamed Southern California college who decides to drop out for a summer to be a laborer in Missouri (the film was shot on location in Excelsior Springs, Missouri) to see how “the other half” lives—hence the early wake-up time of the title. There he falls in prole love, and at the end of the picture he remains undecided about in which direction he wants to go with his life.

  Adam at Six a.m. was released on September 22, 1970, received almost no distribution, and did nothing at the box office.3 At this point, the question of whether Michael would be able to continue to make films at all if he wasn’t Kirk Douglas’s son became more relevant. When asked by reporter Shaun Considine about it, Michael replied, “Of course it’s helped being the son of Kirk Douglas. It’s made [making movies] easier, but not in the way people assume. It can get you past the front door but it can’t get the job for you. That’s up to you.” And then he added testily, “My mother, Diana, is a wonderful actress.”

  THE TRUTH WAS, whether or not any doors had been opened for him, Michael’s career was going nowhere. For that matter, neither was Kirk’s. He had aged out of the big-budget action-and-romance movies that had become his trademark. From 1946’s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers to Elia Kazan’s 1969 The Arrangement, Kirk had appeared in forty-nine feature films and some made-for-TV movies, but as the years went on, his box office boffo proved increasingly elusive. He had had high hopes for reviving his career by working with Kazan, but the film was a critical and box office disappointment. In his younger days Kirk had brought an intense sexuality to the screen. In his fifties he came off more sour than sexy.

  Indeed, by 1969, Kirk, at fifty-three, had been pushed aside by a younger generation of leading men: Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, and Clint Eastwood. Kirk was reduced to accepting mediocre work like the starring role in Dick Clement’s nondescript To Catch a Spy, which never made it to American commercial movie screens. All of it left him angry and frustrated, and whenever he could, he liked to demonstrate that he still had some clout left in show business.

  So when a furious Michael told his father that he had been fired from the long-awaited Broadway stage production of his O’Neill Playhouse buddy Ron Cowen’s antiwar play Summertree (which Michael had appeared in at Waterford in 1967) in favor of up-and-coming actor David Birney, Kirk, who was in New York filming The Brotherhood, angrily had Bryna buy the film rights from Cowen and then gave the starring role in the film version to Michael. It was an unusually generous move for Kirk, and on the surface it had all the markings of a father coming to the rescue of his son. But on a deeper level, there may have been some sense of personal vengeance at work, fury at the director rather than salvation for the son. Kirk remembers, “The director was Jules Irving, and he fired my son. So what did I do? I bought the screen rights and developed it into a movie for Michael … who didn’t want to do it!”

  Indeed, Michael was reluctant to make the film precisely because he didn’t want to lend credence to the ongoing talk throughout the industry and in the press of nepotism. He didn’t want anyone (including himself) to believe he couldn’t make it on his own. However, after thinking it over, he realized it was a role he had originated and deserved to play on film, and he agreed to be in the movie.

  “A lot of people think that Summertree was what Love Story should have been,” Michael told an interviewer shortly after the film’s disappointing June 6, 1971, opening, suggesting that the characters of Jerry, a reluctant soldier who suffers an untimely death in Vietnam, and his girlfriend, played by Michael’s real-life girlfriend, actress Brenda Vaccaro, did not resonate with audiences the same way Oliver and Jenny did in Love Story, Arthur Hiller’s weepy Ivy League remake of Camille. Love Story had made stars out of its romantic leads, Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw (who were involved with each other during the making of the film). Ironically, Michael had turned down a chance to try out for Love Story to make Summertree.

  Besides a curious lack of on-screen chemistry between Michael and Brenda, there were other reasons the film didn’t work, beginning with Kirk’s choice of director, British music-hall singer-songwriter-actor Anthony Newley. Despite having created a couple of offbeat Broadway musical hits (Stop the World—I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd) and having starred in dozens of mostly British movies, Newley had little film-directing experience.

  Roger Greenspun, reviewing for the New York Times, said, “ ‘Summertree’ is a bad movie, but its badness proceeds not from its intentions, which seem honorable, or from its stylistic analogies to past modes, which in different hands could have been interesting …”

  Another reason for the film’s failure might have been the casting of Vaccaro as Michael’s love interest. Although their lack of heat onscreen was evident, there was plenty of it offscreen, especially since the two decided to share a trailer during the making of the film. “It was a gradual process over two or three months of working with her on the film” was the way Michael described their falling in love. When asked by one reporter on the set about the obvious romance blooming between the two, Michael said, “She is a fantastic actress, a beautiful girl and … ah … well, you know how it is.” When he was asked what he would do if the film didn’t make it, he turned humorously philosophical. “I’ll keep on trying for a while at least. I want to do more plays. You learn more about acting on the stage. There’s talk of a movie to be made in Spain. I may do that. But eventually if I find myself beating my head against the wall continuously, I’ll take my father’s advice. He only ever told me one thing: ‘If all else fails … fuck it.’ ”

  As soon as Michael and Vaccaro finished their scenes, they took off t
ogether for ten days in Vermont.

  KIRK, MEANWHILE, was continuing to search for a way to revitalize his film career. He had been offered TV series fare but had little interest in working on the tube, fearing everyone would believe his film career was over for good. Instead, what he really wanted to do was make one last attempt to film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “I loved the role of Randle P. McMurphy, and I was determined to see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on the screen.… But I didn’t know it would take more than ten years.”

  In 1969, independent film producer Joseph Levine’s Avco Embassy, riding a wave of success after Mike Nichols’s 1967 box office bonanza The Graduate—it grossed over $100 million in its initial domestic release—was looking for new projects. Levine, a smallish, heavyset man who prided himself on bringing in films others thought impossible to make, briefly considered Cuckoo’s Nest before deciding that even he wasn’t enough of a cinematic alchemist to turn this leaden project into box office gold.

  In 1970, director Richard Rush, who had made two films with little-known Jack Nicholson prior to the actor’s explosive arrival in Dennis Hopper’s 1969 Easy Rider, also wanted to make the movie, but he, too, could find no studio or investors willing to take a chance on it.4

  By early 1972, nearly ten years had passed since the show had closed on Broadway, and Kirk could still find no interest in Hollywood to turn it into a movie. The response from all the major studios was the same: the material was too downbeat to be turned into a mainstream commercial hit movie. To try to push the deal, Kirk offered the rights to any studio that wanted it for a low-ball package of $150,000, less than his acting fee alone would have been, but found no takers.

  And then new problems arose. Dale Wasserman, Kirk’s long-ago partner in the project, sued Kirk over the film rights to Cuckoo’s Nest. The lawsuit didn’t get very far, as it was without merit—no provisions for Wasserman to participate in any ancillary rights had been included in his original deal—but it proved an expensive legal battle for Kirk.

  As Michael said later, Kirk “was getting discouraged and the book was showing up on college reading lists and the play was being revived on both coasts with great success.” Michael had read the book several times and loved it. “I said to my father, ‘Why don’t you let me take it over, and I promise that I’ll at least make your original investment back for you.’ ”

  Kirk, with no other options on the table, finally and reluctantly agreed to let Michael take his best shot.

  As Michael remembers, that was when “My long saga had begun.”

  1 For television, Michael was allowed to use M. K. Douglas. Later on, in film, the Screen Actors Guild let him use his real name, as the other Michael Douglas was not a member of that union. Hence, on TV and in live performances, he was M. K. Douglas, and in film he was Michael Douglas. When Mike Douglas left TV, he gave his permission for Michael to use his full name on TV. “I hated being billed as M. K. Douglas,” Michael said later. “It sounds so pretentious, like some old character actor” (Edwin Miller, “Chip Off the Old Block,” undated).

  2 Kirk later claimed he had no hand in helping to get Michael the part. John L. Scott wrote in the Los Angeles Times shortly after Michael got the part that “Kirk knew nothing about [Miller’s choosing Michael for the role] and was recuperating from a minor throat operation when he heard the news. Not allowed to use his voice, and not believing his son could actually get the movie on his own, and for Miller, Kirk jokingly scribbled his reaction on a pad—‘I’m speechless!’ ” John L. Scott, “Kirk Douglas’ Son Ready to Start Career in Films,” Los Angeles Times.

  3 CBS was unimpressed with the finished product and prior to its release sold off the film’s distribution rights to National General, which was looking for cheap product to play overseas and to warehouse for future videotape inventory. Although several years away from commercial video reaching the market, the video concept was already percolating through Hollywood.

  4 The two films are Hell’s Angels on Wheels (1967) and Psych-Out (1968). Rush later directed The Stunt Man in 1980, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. In 1981, François Truffaut called Rush his favorite American director.

  The 1976 Academy Awards night, just after 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sweep. Not since 1934’s It Happened One Night had a single film won all four major awards, including Best Picture of the Year. L to R: Saul Zaentz, co-producer; Jack Nicholson, Best Actor; Louise Fletcher, Best Actress; Michael Douglas, co-producer. It also won for Best Adapted Screenplay. AP PHOTO

  CHAPTER 6

  My producing career evolved out of my inability to get parts as an actor.

  —MICHAEL DOUGLAS

  KIRK’S DECISION TO WAIT SO LONG BEFORE GIVING Cuckoo’s Nest to Michael was ill-timed; in the interim between settling the Wasserman lawsuit and handing over the project, Michael’s acting career had progressed. He filmed two more movies after Summertree; neither was a hit. When Michael Calls, made for Fox TV, was first broadcast in February 1972. His co-star was Elizabeth Ashley, with whom he was romantically linked at the time (it may have been nothing more than part of the publicity push for the film, which aired during the winter sweeps, but the rumors persisted even after the film aired). When Michael Calls was a straight whodunit on the order of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, but not nearly as clever or entertaining. The other was a feature for Disney, Napoleon and Samantha, directed by Bernard McEveety and originally intended for TV but released instead as a feature in theaters. It opened in July 1972 and quickly disappeared, then did turn up eventually on the small screen.

  Brenda Vaccaro accompanied Michael to the London opening of Napoleon and stayed with him for the Paris premiere, where the film again quickly faded.

  UPON HIS RETURN to the States, Michael, with Kirk’s deal still warm in his fist, was offered one of the leads in the TV series The Streets of San Francisco, which he agreed to do. The exposure was great and he believed he could appear in one, possibly two seasons and still actively develop Cuckoo’s Nest. He formed a company called Bigstick Productions, whose only goal was to get a film made of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. At first Michael was quite enthusiastic about the project and thought he could easily succeed where his father had failed. “It was,” he remembers, “a classic story, the story of an individual man fighting the system. Particularly in the sixties, people identified with this individual trying to overpower the establishment and at the same time breathe life into a group of men who had been buried by the system. There were larger-than-life images in it, combined with the sort of hallucinogenic style, which a lot of us related to and had never seen [on screen] before. It was just a great, great story.”

  However, the job of turning it into a film proved just as difficult for Michael as it had for Kirk. Frustrated but determined, he spent days working on the TV series and nights going over the detailed files his father had kept on the project, looking for anything or anybody who Kirk had overlooked and might possibly want to invest in the film. “I remember trying to raise the money for this. I was talking to people who had never read the book and trying to describe how funny it was and when I finished they’d ask me, ‘So how come you want to make another Snake Pit?’ ”1

  The Streets of San Francisco was a weekly policier that followed a basic and familiar formula. When the enormously successful TV Western genre of the 1950s and early 1960s began to fade in popularity, the networks simply updated it, turning cowboys into police officers and horses into motorcycles and patrol cars, and continued to crank out the same well-worn good-guy-bad-guy shoot-it-out, shoot-’em-up stories.

  The Streets of San Francisco, originally based on the detective novel Poor, Poor Ophelia by Carolyn Weston, was conceived by veteran TV producer Quinn Martin, of QM Productions (The Fugitive, Twelve O’Clock High, The FBI), and followed the classic action-cop TV format. Each week two detectives investigate a murder. One is a veteran and (as always on TV in that era) a widower, the other a
tough, young no-nonsense type who happens to be single. The veteran solves the crime; the youngster catches the criminal.

  To play the detective Lieutenant Mike Stone, Quinn chose aging pro Karl Malden, who had made his name playing Mitch more than two decades earlier in the 1947 stage version of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and in the 1951 film version, winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for it. He was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for 1954’s On the Waterfront. Both Streetcar and On the Waterfront were directed by Elia Kazan and starred Marlon Brando. Because of his training and close association with Brando and Kazan, Malden became one of the leading proponents of the American style of Method acting. His entry into episodic television marked the inevitable downturn of his distinguished stage and screen career.

  Michael’s films had not succeeded to the point where being in The Streets of San Francisco could be taken as a decline for him, but it was not considered a positive career move by any of the film studios.2 Nor was this the only TV he had done. He had appeared in a 1971 episode of Medical Center called “The Albatross.” Michael recalls, “The best work that I actually did [to date] was a Medical Center in which I got to play a retarded boy. It was my first opportunity to play someone other than a ‘sensitive young man.’ I was real pleased with it. I did my homework, spent some time in hospitals and homes in L.A. getting the voice, the movement, everything like that.” It would also help later on, with Michael’s research for Cuckoo’s Nest.

  He also appeared in an episode of Quinn Martin’s The FBI (“The Hitchhiker”), which is how Michael first came to the attention of the producer. “Michael had stuck in my mind after that FBI episode,” Martin later recalled. “He had a kind of presence that we were looking for in the role of sidekick to the star, Karl Malden. He was [relatively] tall and good-looking. He had to be good but—let’s be honest about this—not overpoweringly so.”