Douglas often recounts something a rabbi told him when he first began to study Judaism: that he loved being Jewish because it was so dramatic.įacing his mortality, Douglas told me about sitting with his mother at the end of her life some 75 years ago. David, he told me, was his kind of complicated character, noble, strong and sinful. When my book on King David was optioned by Warner Bros., he lamented being too old to play him in the movie. He reads the Bible for its stories of struggle, and feels an affinity for the more troubled characters. His orneriness was part of what enabled him to insist that blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo get sole screen credit for “Spartacus” in 1960.ĭouglas has survived a heart attack, a stroke and a helicopter crash. “As if germs had some nerve inconveniencing Kirk Douglas.” He could also be openhanded and brave on behalf of the underdog. “He once punched a hole in my wall because he had a cold,” he told me.
A doctor who treated many Hollywood stars confided to me that Douglas was among his toughest patients. I still see glimpses of that smoldering ire as he reads certain sections of the Bible or discusses political events when we meet it was not entirely acting. “Rabbi, I was 4 years old when women got the vote.” When on a hot day I said how much I appreciated air conditioning and guessed that as a kid he’d probably relied on a block of ice and a fan, he fixed me with a half-comic glare and said, “Who had a fan?”ĭouglas was a notoriously pugnacious star who projected a burning, internal anger on the screen. “Do I remember him? Do I remember him?” he scoffed. I asked him once if he remembered Jackie Robinson. Once you’ve partied with Frank Sinatra and John F. “Oh, Anwar Sadat gave that to me,” he said, offhandedly. I admired an ornate hand mirror on my first visit.
His relatively modest Beverly Hills house is filled with gifts from other world-famous people. It is difficult to imagine what it means to live a century, world-famous for most of it. It is the best book of stories in the world, he replied. Several years ago I asked why he was studying the Bible at this stage of his life.