'I, in my old age, take solace in the fact that I remember.'
Hollywood has a unique and shocking history: sometimes the shimmering success of the film business shaped the world for good, but its dark chapters influenced American history just as strongly. Kirk Douglas, leading man and Hollywood legend, is the perfect person to recall the different evolutions and eras of Hollywood; and in his latest memoir, Douglas chronicles a particularly disturbing time in Hollywood history.
With the whole country terrified of communism, the HUAC hearings focused on the film industry as a supposed hotbed of Communist activity. The studio heads met at the Waldorf-Astoria and agreed to blacklist anyone named as a sympathizer, and anyone who had testified they had once been affiliated with a named “Communist front” group. The careers of many both up-and-coming as well as established actors, screenwriters and directors were ruined—as, often, were their lives.
KIRK DOUGLAS: I hitchhiked to New York with a few dollars in my pocket. My first job was on Broadway. Then I went into the Navy. When I came out of the Navy, I went back to Broadway and a friend of mine, Lauren Bacall, was in Hollywood filming with Humphrey Bogart. She told one of her producers I was great in my play and he saw it and cast me in. I took a train out to Hollywood and the whole time I studied the part I thought I was supposed to play.
YOUNG: Why was it so important to you and your mother to name your production company Bryna, after her Russian name? DOUGLAS: Well, you know, my mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn’t even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them. And she said something to me that I never forgot. She said, “A beggar must always give to another beggar that’s worse off than he is.” That has always stuck with me.
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