Kirk and Anne (Turner Classic Movies)

by Kirk Douglas

  Because of that background, I have difficulty in being what they call a close friend. I am a good friend to others but I find it difficult to confide in people. The war years compounded the problem I already had with trust. You had to be careful about where you were and what you were saying.

  But life goes on, even in wartime. People fell in love, had lover’s quarrels, married and had children; we went to nightclubs and theater and carried on as well as circumstances allowed. Each night at 10:00, a curfew shut down the city. Being on the streets after that was a very serious offense. We had the famous “last Metro”—the final train of the day at around 9:20 p.m. Everybody raced for it, and we’d all gather at the station. Some people had been to parties and were dressed to the nines, with jewelry and evening clothes. Others looked like bums. We were all thrown together, and in a way it was rather festive and fun.

  Wedding day for Albert and Anne (née Hannelore Marx) Buydens

  Celebrating the end of the war, Albert and Anne (second and third from right) at a Paris night club

  I owed Albert a lot for what he and his family had done to keep me safe. But I still wanted a divorce. Albert was happy with the way things were, but would not object as long as I paid. Since I earned barely enough to cover our expenses, I stayed legally tied to him until 1953, when I met Kirk. And then Albert and I remained what we had always been—the best of friends.

  I was still with Sonor Pictures when the war ended. One day I was asked by my boss to go to London for two days to meet with his counterpart, a Mr. Fraser, to sell French movies. My God! The city looked awful—buildings falling down and holes where others had been. It was probably 70 percent destroyed in the Blitz. Nonetheless, the mood was upbeat, and I had a wonderful time. Mr. Fraser took me to dinner one night and there was a delightful show on the club’s stage. A lovely girl was singing and dancing in it. I was really struck by her look. I said to Mr. Fraser: “You know, Colette is looking for her Gigi. That girl could do it.” He invited her to our table, and I asked her for some photos and background to take back to France. With excitement, I presented the material to my boss. She would be a perfect Gigi, I told him, and we would be credited for discovering her. He heard me out but never followed up. About five months later, someone else saw what I did in the charming seventeen-year-old Audrey Hepburn. He went directly to Colette.

  Years later, when Kirk was in Rome during the filming of Two Weeks in Another Town and Audrey was living there with her second husband and her boys, I reminded her of the role I almost played in her career. But back then, we were both just finding our way in this brave new postwar world—two multilingual survivors who had, even at our young ages, more than paid our dues.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Our Complicated Courtship

  ANNE

  Paris was my adopted home. Because of my ease with languages, all kinds of doors were opening to me. But I had gotten a taste of the film business and I liked it. I would stay late at the office and overhear the bosses’ strategy sessions. I absorbed as much information as I could, just as I had done in conversations with my father when I was a child.

  In America—with the men back from war and French couture once again setting style trends for the world—NBC approached our company to create a television program called Paris Cavalcade of Fashion. I was chosen to produce it. I first had to convince important couturiers to let me film their new designs. My crew and I were at Christian Dior’s first fashion show after the war, where he introduced the “New Look.” I almost missed the opportunity because my director Robert Capa (who lived in Paris when he wasn’t off covering wars for his photo agency, Magnum), was not there.

  Quel désastre! Luckily, I knew where to find him—in bed with Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law Pamela, in her hotel room. I drove to their hideaway, flew up the stairs, and banged on the door. “Bobby, it’s Anne. Get up now and grab your clothes. You can finish dressing in the car!” (Pamela was far more discreet when she became America’s ambassador to France, Pamela Harriman.)

  For nearly a year, the segments ran on NBC network stations. They even aired the one we filmed on the sleeper train from Paris to Nice, in which I modeled sleepwear. I went to New York several times and fell in love with America. I was taken to fantastic parties by international tycoons, and I had a wardrobe of designer clothes to wear to them. Then the fashion houses withdrew their cooperation. They believed that American manufacturers were using our programs to make unauthorized copies of the clothes.

  I don’t recall how John Huston, the director of Moulin Rouge, came to contact me to scout locations, secure permits, and be his personal assistant. Maybe I was recommended by someone I had worked with briefly on The Young Lions. I had a wonderful time taking Mr. Huston to dusty little antique shops and out-of-the-way places that tourists would never find. He, in turn, introduced me to Pre-Columbian art. A jockey he had known in Mexico was importing ancient pieces from there; John was an avid collector. Almost every night we had dinner together, along with Tony Veiller, who wrote the script for the film. Inevitably, I got sucked into John’s colorful private life. Here’s how I kept him out of jail.

  Modeling Dior’s New Look for Paris Cavalcade of Fashion

  John was living in a beautiful old house in the French countryside. When the shoot was nearing its end, his wife, Ricki, arrived from St. Clerans, their estate in Ireland. They had me organize a luncheon in the garden the next Sunday. During it, John disappeared with Colette Marchand, the French actress who played a prostitute in the movie. A while later, I saw Ricki go upstairs. I know exactly what happened next, because a tearful Ricki told me. She had walked in on her husband with Colette. He jumped out of the bed and put his hands on her shoulders. “Do you believe in me,” he asked, “or do you believe in what you just saw?”

  Anne filming Paris Cavalcade of Fashion with Robert Capa in Deauville

  A few days later, John got into a fight with Colette’s beau, the film’s production manager, at a well-known nightclub in Paris. His longtime bodyguard and good buddy pulled out a knife and stabbed the boyfriend. Naturally, the police were called. My phone rang in the middle of the night:

  “Anne, they are trying to arrest John Huston and it’s not good.”

  I got up and thought about what I could do. I had a connection with someone at British Airlines, so I contacted him. “I have to get Mr. Huston out of the country before they confiscate his passport and press charges,” I pleaded.

  “D’accord, Anne. Bring him directly to the airport and we’ll shove him on to one plane or another. Don’t stop anywhere.”

  That’s exactly what I did—little me—saving the famous director from the gendarmes. When it came time for the American premiere in December of 1952, Huston asked me to accompany Colette to Hollywood. I was so excited. Seeing Hollywood was such a dream of mine. I stayed at the Hotel Bel-Air and felt like a star myself. The hotel’s owner, Joe Drown, took a fancy to me. He took me to a New Year’s Eve party in La Quinta.

  In California I accompanied Colette to all her press appearances and events. We met with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which awarded her the Golden Globe as Newcomer of the Year, and she received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  When I got back to Paris a few weeks later, my friend Anatole (Tola) Litvak, the director of Act of Love, convinced me to meet with Kirk, who was anxious to hire a bilingual assistant who could also handle his personal publicity. I drove over to the studio where Chim Seymour, the still photographer, greeted me with these words: “Let me take you into the lion’s den.”

  Kirk had already gotten quite a reputation in his first few weeks in town. The press had dubbed him Le Brute Chéri, the darling brute, and he was photographed with a succession of stunning women. I was sure this would be a courtesy interview. I had signed a three-year contract to handle protocol for the Cannes International Film Festival starting in April 1953; I hoped to go back to the State
s for a visit before it began.

  KIRK:

  I was fascinated by the lovely young Parisienne who sat in my dressing room, her slim ankles crossed under her à la mode blue suit with white collar. Within minutes, I offered her the job. She took only seconds to turn me down in her impeccable English. I was not used to rebuffs. I walked Anne back to her car and urged her to change her mind. I appealed to her vanity: “I really need your help.”

  She replied, “It’s not for me, but I can recommend a wonderful young man.”

  A few hours later, in my most seductive tones, I called Anne to invite her to dinner at the romantic La Tour d’Argent, one of the city’s most celebrated temples of cuisine.

  “Thank you, but I’m tired. I will just make some scrambled eggs and stay in tonight,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

  I was shocked and annoyed. I was determined to change her mind—at least about the job. I sent emissaries: Tola Litvak, Irwin Shaw—Act of Love’s screenwriter who remembered her from The Young Lions—and Anne’s friend Robert Capa, who often partnered with Chim Seymour on their Magnum assignments in war zones. She finally agreed to work with me on a trial basis, making it clear our relationship would be strictly business.

  We spent a lot of time together. Anne was efficient and had a wicked sense of humor. Everyone liked her—much more than they liked me! We often spoke in French, which I was studying from a method called Assimil with Madame LaFeuille two hours a day, six days a week. Tola Litvak was shooting two versions of Act of Love, first in English and then in French. Although I was only contracted for the one in English, I relished the challenge of doing both. After all, an American G.I. would speak French with an accent and I had a good ear for languages. At night, after my lessons, I did my “homework” in total immersion with various mademoiselles.

  With no romance in the picture, I stopped trying to impress Anne. Instead, I stopped talking about myself and began to listen to her. She had told me very little about her background; I didn’t even know that she spent her early years in Hitler’s Germany. I thought she was Belgian. That all changed one overcast day in February.

  ANNE:

  Kirk was invited to the annual charity gala at the Cirque d’Hiver, the famous Winter Circus, where French celebrities participated in the show. He loved circuses and, of course, had done a trapeze act with Pier Angeli in The Story of Three Loves. He wanted me to accompany him.

  We had been working through the afternoon at his lovely apartment near the Bois de Boulogne when he started asking me questions about my life. I was always reluctant to talk about myself, particularly as so much of my past was painful.

  Kirk was an attentive listener, and I found myself being very honest. I even opened up about my rift with my father and why I had lost trust in him. Kirk was extraordinary. He said I should try harder to understand my father and forgive him. He had spent a lot of hours on the analyst’s couch to learn the importance of what he was telling me. We talked for hours, and I had a strange feeling in my heart that I could fall in love with this man.

  I didn’t want to, because I had seen too many young women enter into intense affairs with visiting movie stars—Dean Martin, Marlon Brando, Cary Grant among them. Then the film wrapped and the men returned to their wives and families. Hadn’t I seen it firsthand with John Huston?

  At the circus, the producers spotted Kirk coming in. “You must participate,” they told him in French, which I no longer had to translate for him. I took my seat, wondering what he would do with no preparation. After the elephants left the arena, there was the tuxedoed Kirk—the popular brute chéri—pushing a giant pooper-scooper of a broom across the ring to great hilarity. How could I resist a man who could laugh at himself? We went back to his place for a nightcap, which turned into something more. Once again, my life was changing.

  KIRK:

  After hearing Anne’s story, I understood her resistance to my advances. She was not interested in a frivolous affair. This self-possessed beauty was very different from the women I had been involved with in Hollywood since Diana left me. She wasn’t neurotic like Gene Tierney, who always insisted I arrive for our nocturnal “dates” by climbing the tree outside her bedroom window. She wasn’t reckless like my much-married oil heiress, Irene Wrightsman, whom I found in our bed with Sydney Chaplin when I came home early from the studio. Anne was a sophisticated woman, unlike my virginal Pier Angeli, who took her mother on all our dates. I was fascinated by Anne and more than a little in love with her.

  ANNE:

  If this had been a Hollywood movie of the 1950s, it would have ended happily after this revelatory evening. But I knew from hard experience that real life rarely played out that way.

  The next day our working relationship had a new warmth. And I started spending more time with him socially. I would stay with him some nights, but I still kept my apartment and my independence. Kirk gave me a key so I could come and go as I liked. He also kept his independence, and I wasn’t always meek about it.

  This is the note he wrote me after I walked away angry one afternoon. I found it on the table the next morning. I was glad he understood he had hurt me. It was always easier for Kirk to write about his feelings than to talk about them.

  Darling,

  I have a feeling that you’re not coming back tonight. I hope I’m wrong!

  —It’s been a bad day for me and probably a worse one for you. Because my bad day means all of my problems added to yours. Forgive me.

  But I hope that you are here to read this and that I find you when I get back.

  —Suddenly it seems stupid that I am going to dinner without you—

  Because believe it or not I love you!

  Kirk

  KIRK:

  Another thing I learned about Anne the day of the Cirque d’Hiver was that she was still legally married to Albert Buydens. She also told me she was involved with a wealthy French industrialist, many years her senior. He didn’t help her financially, and, in fact, had never given her anything more lavish than grapes out of season.

  Honest and correct in all her dealings, she told him about her feelings for me and broke it off. He treated the news like a business competition. I bought her a small piece of jewelry. He countered with a small car called a Reno. He was positive their relationship would resume after I returned to the States. I understood staying friendly with an ex. Diana and I still enjoyed each other’s company.

  It had been too long since I had seen my boys. I invited Diana to bring them to Paris and stay in my spacious apartment for a few weeks. The kids had just recovered from chicken pox. A few days after arriving, Diana developed the telltale rash. In her role as my efficient assistant, Anne administered medication and brought her chicken soup. The two women liked each other. Michael and Joel got along with her, too.

  As things became more serious with Anne, I warned her not to expect a commitment. I was secretly engaged to Pier Angeli, I told her. I could have saved us both a lot of anguish if I had used my new fluency in French to read the movie magazines. Anne knew, but never breathed a word, that Pier was constantly in the news, always with another man at her side. Meanwhile, whenever I tried to call Pier, I was always told she was traveling with her mother.

  My next picture would be filmed in Italy, so I was sure that would all change. The two producers of Ulysses, Dino de Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti, were going to the Cannes Film Festival in April and I would meet with them there. They had already hired Anne Buydens to do the unit publicity for the picture. One way or the other, my connection with Anne would continue.

  ANNE:

  I was in Cannes preparing for the sixth International Film Festival, which would run from April 15–29, 1953. There was no festival during the war years, and it didn’t revive until 1947—every other year at first. By 1953 it was once again a glamorous, thriving showcase for international cinema. My job as head of protocol was to work with all the foreign representatives. I organized and scheduled their galas and
made sure they were filled with celebrities and media. I shared an office with George Cravenne, a good friend who handled the festival’s publicity.

  Kirk got a kick out of hearing me switch effortlessly between languages. He studied his script for Ulysses on the beach and took publicity shots with the starlets. One of the photos, with him and a bikini-clad Brigitte Bardot, became a tourist postcard. Brigitte had had a small role in Act of Love. Kirk had never imagined there were such extraordinary assets hidden under the bulky coat she wore in her scenes. They have stayed friends and just a few years ago Brigitte sent him another of their beach photos, writing, “My dear Kirk: Were we not so nice and young and beautiful?”

  Brigitte Bardot and Kirk at Cannes, 1953

  I was glad Kirk was in Cannes, although I didn’t have much time for him. In the midst of everything, Joe Drown arrived from California and insisted on taking me to dinner in Monaco. It was a disaster. Joe got drunk and gambled heavily. I left him and went back to my suite at the Miramar Hotel. I called Kirk, who was next door at the Carlton. He had been asleep.

  “How was your evening?” he asked.

  I burst into tears. “Just awful… and it’s my birthday.”

  “I’ll get dressed and take you out,” he said.

  We went to a small café near the beach, and he turned my tears into laughter. It was a wonderful birthday, after all.