by Kirk Douglas
What luck with paintings and African pieces?
Tell me what your plans are: When will you leave Paris? When will you leave N.Y.?
Je t’attendrai ma chérie parce que tu es à moi. [I’m waiting for you my darling because you are mine.]
Much, much, you know what!—K.
Kirk and new bride pose at home with Pre-Columbian statue
Anne finalized her departure. She sent me this letter which, unlike most of ours, was headed with the complete date of 14.4.54 (April 14, 1954):
Vous, Mon Impossible Amour,
This is a title of a song—but also you!—J’étais si heureuse avec tes deux lettres et j’adore quand tu parles trop! I am happy, incommensuablement (this is a $3.50 word) heureuse!!! [Translation: I was so happy with your two letters and I adore it when you talk so much! I am happy, incommensurably (this is a $3.50 word) happy!!!]
I am so tired from Cannes. So I’ve decided to take the boat to New York, the Liberté. I leave April 16 and arrive in New York April 22. It will allow me to rest for six days so that you will see me at my best. I will come Saturday or Sunday, the 24th or the 25th to L.A. I will telephone you and you will tell me which you prefer. I am staying at the Sherry-Netherland in New York.
Darling, I can’t think or write anymore. I don’t know what to say to you. Open your arms and be nice; I need you so desperately!
Chéri, I hope your father is well again. Please remember whatever happens I am near you under any circumstances!!!
I have been running around for your paintings. I must admit Albert helped me, but frankly, it is a terrible responsibility to choose something of that value. Prices are very high, and I am afraid something more expensive than in America. I also talked to Tola about it. I sincerely feel, Darling, that you have to choose them yourself. It has to be your taste and also one has to know the house even to advise!
Tola gave me permission to see some of his paintings. If there is something you like to have, he will be pleased to let you have them. I think, honestly, that I would rather select them with you on your next trip to Europe in order to avoid a wrong choice.
I have asked for a Duplicate for the bill of sale for your car and will mail same to Sam tomorrow.
Darling, I can’t tell you, I look so much forward to talk to you, to see you, to be with you, to love you!!! The idea of waiting for you in the evening when you come home from work—I like!!! And Darling, I won’t be STOLZIG anymore. Should I be once or twice please kick me in my little—!
Je suis tellement à toi! [I am all yours!]
Anne
CHAPTER FOUR
Together at Last
KIRK:
I went to the airport on April 24, 1954, to meet Anne. Her travel outfit was elegant—a suit that showed her figure to perfection and a chic little hat with a full veil covering her face. I lifted it to kiss her. There were four dark spots of raw skin beginning to crust over.
“My God! What happened?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
I didn’t press her. I took her directly to the house, and we had a beautiful reunion. It was going to be a romantic idyll—nothing permanent, at least not in my mind. Anne had already accepted work on a new film in Paris starring my friend, Marlene Dietrich.
ANNE:
I loved Kirk. I loved the house. I believed when he saw how comfortably I fit into his life in America, he would propose. A month later, I was still waiting for some word about our future.
Kirk had written to me in Cannes about returning to analysis. Now he wanted me to see his analyst, Dr. Kupper, as well. After several sessions, the good doctor advised me to leave Kirk. I was shocked when he also said he had strong feelings for me. I told Kirk; he suggested that maybe Dr. Kupper was the one who should go back into therapy.
All of Kirk’s friends—they were now mine as well—expected us to marry. But it looked like I would be going back to my life in Paris, after all.
I wrote Kirk to tell him my plans. It was May 24, exactly a month since my arrival:
My Darling,
In order to put yourself at ease, I write you this note which will avoid any further conversation concerning our relationship.
I decided to leave on the 30th and you have helped me recently to make this decision definite. The reason why I have set this date is familiar to you. Your children are coming out here the 31st and I would not like to lose face in front of them.
But I think I also have to explain to you that the moment I take off from here, I will take you out of my life. I know this won’t be easy for me, but I know I will find strength for this somewhere.
In the near future a decision concerning us had to be made one way or the other anyhow. Because, I hate to remind you this, I am a woman—not a little girl—a woman who was capable of deep and sincere love and who knew the real you. I have been completely honest with you and we have known each other well for over one year. I allowed you during this time to push me around emotionally, and if I don’t want to get hurt for good, I have to stop you from starting it again.
To face situations once more, of which I had the last example when you left Paris for the Bahamas, and I didn’t know whether I would ever see you or hear from you again, no, Kirk, never will I let this happen to me again! I was so miserable and so depressed that I felt no life in me anymore. Remember your answer to this: “Well, I called you, didn’t I?” Yes, Darling, you did and I was very happy you invited me out here for a visit.
I know you would not want me to feel that way anymore.
This shows how you can be sometimes wrong in mathematics.
One and one does not always make two. It can also make nothing.—
Let me thank you for the wonderful time you gave me here and for everything else.
Anne
KIRK:
I don’t remember responding to Anne. I was working long hours at the studio. A few days later I walked into her room and saw her packing her bags. That’s when it hit me. I would be lost without her. Her willpower was much stronger than mine. If she got on that plane, she would never give me another chance.
Suddenly blessed with clarity, I asked Anne to marry me. I would finish filming midday on Saturday, May 29. We could fly to Las Vegas for a license and find a justice of the peace to tie the knot. We’d stay overnight and return to L.A. on Sunday afternoon, so I could get back to work early Monday—the day Michael and Joel would meet Anne again, this time as my wife.
Sam Norton, my publicist Warren Cowan, and their respective wives made up our wedding party. Just as we arrived at the license bureau, it closed for its afternoon break. I started gambling with the boys. Poor Anne stood by fretting at the delay. “I came here to get married,” she reminded us.
By early evening, we had the proper papers and Honest John Lytell, J.P. arrived to perform the ceremony. He was a tall Texan, wearing the kind of ten-gallon hat and boots I wore in my westerns.
Before we took our vows, Sam huddled with Anne for a few moments. I paid no attention. It wasn’t a romantic wedding, but it was legal. Lytell had a thick drawl which might have challenged even someone born in the U.S. When he intoned, “Do you, Anne, take thee Kirk for your lawful wedded husband?” Anne repeated, “I take thee, Kirk, for my awful wedded husband.” Everyone laughed and it became our family joke. I thought he meant “full of awe,” my bride explained.
ANNE:
I was now Mrs. Kirk Douglas, but even movie stars can’t overcome the bureaucracy of two nations—the United States and France. My visa was going to run out in twelve days. I had to return to Paris to apply for new papers as the wife of an American citizen. Neither of us ever dreamed the process would take two frustrating months of separation.
Arriving in Las Vegas to get married
Before I left, Kirk asked again about the facial wounds he saw when I arrived. I took a deep breath and told him: I had crossed the Atlantic by ship only because my former lover insisted I needed the ocean voyage to rest. We had
stayed friends and I was touched at his concern. He even paid the difference between my air fare and the ship passage.
I was feeling pretty good by the time we docked. When I got to the hotel, I was shocked to find my benefactor sitting in the lobby, agitated and clearly intoxicated. He had flown in the night before to surprise me. He was making a scene, so I got him into the elevator and up to his permanent suite. Chain-smoking and belting down more liquor, he begged me not to go to California.
“But I’ve been in love with Kirk for more than a year,” I told him. Hoping to calm him, I said: “If things don’t work out, of course I’ll come back to you.”
In no mood to be reasonable, he ran to an open window and starting climbing through it, swearing he would jump unless I changed my mind. I pulled him away and tried to leave.
The morning after—May 30, 1954
The wedding party “on the town”—Ronnie Cowan, Kirk and Anne, Sam and Bea Norton
This elegant man, whom I had known so well, lunged at me with a lit cigarette. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t want you,” he snarled as he ground it into my face. I was so stunned I didn’t feel immediate pain. I telephoned the manager of his New York office to bring a doctor who sedated him and treated my bloody wounds.
Until I could travel, I took refuge with some trusted friends. I wanted to put the whole experience behind me, and I did just that until Kirk brought it up again.
My husband listened to me with compassion. Then he cuddled me in his arms. “I promise, Anne, ‘as long as we both shall live,’ I will keep you safe.” It’s been sixty-two years as I write this, and Kirk has always kept his word.
KIRK:
Anne wrote me from Paris about the vigorous—and sometimes humiliating—vetting she received at the American Embassy. Along with endless forms and proof that she and Albert were legally divorced, she had to endure a complete physical. I was horrified when she described stripping nearly naked and standing in a long line with all the other female applicants. She wanted to do whatever it took to join me, but she drew the line at having a strange gynecologist probe her behind an almost transparent curtain. She insisted on seeing her own doctor.
Anne used the waiting period to settle her affairs. She spent time with her friends and arranged a trip to Hannover to see her sisters. She even went to an art auction in Brussels with her ex-husband, Albert, and bought a small Utrillo for me as a wedding present. She insisted on paying for it with her own money.
I called Anne more often than I wrote. She, of course, resumed her habit of writing me long letters filled with romantic longings and descriptions of her activities. Here is one she wrote on June 21, 1954:
My darling Isidor!
Already complaining, hein [huh]? I know that you married me for my money but I refuse to spend it on carrier-pigeons so my husband can get my letters in three days!
I finally talked to the Consul General today and have sent some more papers to Sam for you to sign. Please have him hurry them back to me, if you still want me—c’est-à-dire [that is, to say]! I get nervous and impatient too, Darling, without you. Let’s face it. I am not a nice person.
I found somebody for the rue Lord Byron and a buyer for my car from an ad in the paper. Can we make the gifts to the Nortons and Cowans tax-deductible? If yes, what do you need? A bill, I presume, but for how much?
If you were here (and I wish you were) you would really scream. What you have to go through if you have the craaaazy idea to remarry and if you want to be the only person in this country who would like to do things the way they are prescribed by law, c’est à dire change your papers, passport, etc. to your new identity. When I come to these 135 different bureaux, they all look at me as if to say, Why the hurry?
Mon chéri, are we really married? I can’t realize it. How did I do this? When I look back, I remember I gave myself maybe a 50-50 chance. What happened? Do you think that God felt that I really deserved you and that He wanted to give me the greatest gift you can give a woman—the man she loves with all her heart? Because, my Darling, I really, sincerely have the most wonderful feelings for you and I want so much to make you happy! I have so many more words to tell you this again and again that I hope it will take our lifetime before you get tired of it!
Please take good care. If that visa is not ready when I come back from Germany (I don’t know yet the exact date when I am going), I will come back as a tourist and become your mistress!! O.K.? You know that I wake up every morning around 5 a.m. And I can’t sleep when I am in bed.
How long can a person live that kind of a no good for nothing life???
I am so pleased that you have been asked to make a recording of “my song” “Whale of a Tale” and even sing it in the picture! Can’t you make a little speech before you start to sing, like “This wonderful and thrilling song I dedicate to my awful wedded wife.” I should have been in public relations.
I went nightclubbing with George [Cravenne] and Chabert. After dinner we went to Jimmy’s, followed by a visit to Elephant Blanc [both popular with the international movie crowd]. Friday I will have dinner with Charles Vanel. He is coming to L.A. for the Hitchcock picture. I gave him your phone no. in case he will be there before I am back.
How is our household? I know you are busy—but write to me as often as you can—I am so happy to get your letters. When Aline brings in my breakfast in the morning, I open one eye to look if there is a letter from you—if not I sleep a bit longer. How I miss you.
Stolz
KIRK:
I was wrapped up in my work. Acting allowed me to lie in bed at night thinking about make-believe people—always so much easier to deal with than real ones.
My father had died shortly before Anne arrived, and I hadn’t gone back for his funeral. I still had mixed feelings about him. I received many condolence letters, none more touching to me than the one from my high school teacher, Louise Livingston. I never forgot her important role in shaping my future. She was basically my only remaining tie to Amsterdam and the young dreamer I had been. We stayed in touch for the rest of her life, and I took pleasure in helping her live more comfortably as she aged.
My dear Kirk—
I’ve been so haunted by your sad happening that I couldn’t seem to write at once. Naturally, I’ve wondered about you and I hope you are passing through the strain of personal affairs and your hard work without a breakdown.
The Times-Union [Albany newspaper] ran a very fine picture of you with your father and mother. Your devotion will always bring you consolation. Such acts as yours prove a very deep worth. Few people attain greatness. You are well on your way to it.
Please believe me, Kirk, when I say that I see you HIGHER than all the others. This place you could not achieve without CHARACTER. You possess that, heart and soul. May you be blessed.
It was most wonderful to hear your voice Saturday night. Such a fine talk should bring forth another poem! Of course, I am eager to see you again here, just natural and not in the limelight.
I like this quotation: “Do the Impossible.”
I’ve found that the above comes true. It simply means, Give all you have, work with all your might and hold to Faith.
Do take care of yourself. Keep well and be happy.
As always,
Louise
While Anne was fighting bureaucracy, I was on the backlot at Twentieth Century-Fox making The Racers. The main purpose of the film, I soon discovered, was another attempt to make Darryl Zanuck’s current mistress a star.
Bayla Wegier was rechristened Bella Darvi by Zanuck and his wife, Virginia Fox, when they discovered her in Monaco. She was a beauty who drank too much and ran up gambling debts she couldn’t pay. Her new surname was created from the first syllables of their respective first names: Dar for Darryl and Vi for Virginia. They cleared her debts and brought her to Hollywood.
This film was going to be her third chance at stardom, but she hadn’t improved over her first two outings. She eventually went back to Fr
ance, got fat, gambled compulsively, and committed suicide at age forty-two.
Next I went to Universal to do Man Without a Star, a commercial western of no particular artistic merit. I was the producer as well as the star—a new concept in film financing, the fifty-fifty picture. The star got no salary but when the studio recouped its expenses it shared the profits equally. It sounded great to me. But the studio controlled the bookkeeping and the distribution. They made a lot; I made very little, thanks to the creative accounting system that still exists today.
This hardened my resolve to start my own production company. I could ensure my family’s financial security and make movies in which I believed. In 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith had banded together to found United Artists for just those reasons.
By 1951, UA had morphed into a financing and distribution company, under the stewardship of Arthur Krim. He helped me a lot when I started Bryna.
Anne and I had been married a month when I got this letter from her.
Sunday, 11:30 p.m.
In bed once more alone!!!
My Darling,
This can’t go on—I miss you so much. I am nervous, sad, and impatient. I don’t know what to do with myself. I am longing for my awful wedded husband!!!
I am waiting for the papers which I hope Sam has returned. I believe they have been delayed since you were out of town for a couple of days. But I hope to have them here by tomorrow or Tuesday morning at the latest! Then and only then all my papers are filed. If I have the papers by Tuesday, I leave Tuesday afternoon for Bruxelles. There is an auction sale of modern paintings Wednesday. Wednesday night I leave for Hannover, Germany, until Saturday. On Sunday I come back to Paris. So far I have booked a seat on the Parisian Air France for Thursday July 15 provided I have my visa then! I pray to God! The apartment on rue Lord Byron is rented to a very nice man from California. His lawyer takes care of everything (including rent in advance) which will permit me to buy the paintings. My little car is sold too. From tomorrow on I will be without, but when I come back from Germany I will rent one.