by Kirk Douglas
I borrowed a Chagall canvas of a man on a horse with a rooster and a Vlaminck painting of flowers. Kirk fell in love with both, so the only thing that went back to the gallery was a check. A few years later, after Kirk played the life of Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life and was such a hit, we met Marc Chagall and his wife in the south of France. The Chagalls asked Kirk if he would like to play Marc in a movie, but my husband swore he would never try to inhabit the soul of another painter. We became friends, however, and we acquired a few additional Chagalls directly from them.
Fran was beyond generous. She included me in the luncheons she hosted, and I became her “plus one” whenever friends invited her. She was a prodigious shopper and seemed to have limitless resources. One day Fran asked if Kirk had given me a clothing allowance. It had never occurred to me to ask for one. “Discuss it with him at once,” Fran urged. “It will make your life much easier.”
I approached my husband carefully: “I don’t like to ask you for money each time I shop. Would you be willing to give me a set amount for clothes and necessities?”
Later at the Stark house, Kirk took Fran aside. “Anne wants an allowance. How much do you spend a year?”
She thought for a minute. “About $10,000.” I knew she was low-balling it; just that afternoon in a Beverly Hills shop called Hanson’s, I watched Fran order $4,500 worth of original designs.
Kirk shook his head. “You spend a lot. I’ll give Anne $5,000.”
KIRK:
Worth every penny, too. My wife was on the International Best-Dressed List for three years before being elevated permanently to the Fashion Hall of Fame. She was clever with her allowance, just as she was with all our financial dealings. Frankly, Anne was the only good investment I ever made!
Our lifelong friendship with the Starks gave us a lifetime of memories. I’ll let Anne tell you about the night we first saw Barbra Streisand perform.
ANNE:
She was about eighteen and singing in one of the small lounges at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Barbra was what we call in French jolie laide—an unconventional beauty. Her clothes were eccentric but her voice, of course, was magic. This young performer with the strong Brooklyn accent radiated confidence and charisma. Afterward, Barbra and her mother, Diana Kind, joined us. Mama proudly told us she designed and made her daughter’s wardrobe.
Fran and I couldn’t resist. We dubbed her “Mamabocher”—a play on Mainbocher, the most famous couturier in New York. Of course, we waited until we were on the way home to critique Mamabocher’s unique designs.
The next time we saw them was at the restaurant “21” in Manhattan. Barbra had become the toast of Broadway in her debut show, I Can Get It for You Wholesale and Ray had just signed her to play his mother-in-law, Fanny Brice, in the musical he was developing. Both Barbra and Funny Girl—first on stage and then on film—were enormous hits. I think Mainbocher would have been happy to dress the celebrated young star, but Barbra was wise to stick with her own unique style—thrift store mixed with Hollywood, and perhaps a touch of Mamabocher.
KIRK:
I was interested to see Beverly Hills through Anne’s fresh eyes. I had acclimated easily to life in this gilded ghetto where so many of us had punched our ticket to wealth and fame in what was called “the industry.” After growing up poor in Yiddish-speaking immigrant families, we had developed a veneer of sophistication with our success. Often, however, we still dropped Yiddish phrases into our conversations because the language is wonderfully pungent.
My pal Walter Matthau, the son of a Russian Jewish peddler, was more comfortable betting on horses than riding them. I cast him as the villain in my first Bryna production, The Indian Fighter. Before every take, Walter would curse at his poor horse in Yiddish. Even Jimmy Cagney, one of my idols, greeted me in Yiddish the first time we met at an industry event. I was startled and confused until he explained that, no, he really was Irish, but he learned Yiddish as a child in a mostly Jewish neighborhood. Included in our circle of relocated landsmen (compatriots) were the lucky Jews who escaped the Holocaust—among them, my friends Billy Wilder, Peter Lorre, and Ladislaus Bush-Fekete, the Hungarian émigré who wrote with Sidney Sheldon another of my Broadway flops of 1946; I remained friends with both Bush-Fekete and Sheldon.
Sometimes it was easy in Hollywood to forget that anti-Semitism, polite or overt, was still mainstream. Jews ran the major studios. With Anglicized names and beautiful blonde shiksas replacing their starter wives, they lived like the wealthy WASPS of their movies: entertaining lavishly at their grand estates; presiding over screenings in projection rooms hung with museum-quality art; voting Republican. I was on their guest lists, but I never felt at my best in these pretentious surroundings. When I married Anne, who was raised in a home like these, she elevated my standing with the leading hostesses. Sam Goldwyn’s wife, Frances, and Jack Warner’s wife, Ann, were two who told me how much more likeable I was after she came into my life.
ANNE:
I had grown so used to the universal worship of the movie crowd and their lifestyle that it never dawned on me they would not be accepted by the Old Guard of Los Angeles. Their prestige membership clubs—the Jonathan and the California Club downtown, and the Wilshire and Los Angeles Country Clubs—would not admit Jews or actors. In 1920, the Jews inaugurated Hillcrest Country Club in Beverly Hills, a few blocks from Twentieth Century-Fox studios. By the 1950s, drilling for the rich oil deposits on the property was allowed, and members collected tax-sheltered dividends on their initiation fees. Memberships became so valuable they were willed to heirs. I learned all this and more from my mentor, Anita May, the acknowledged grande dame of Beverly Hills society. There are third and fourth generation Mays at Hillcrest to this day.
Anita Keiler May was raised in Kentucky and inherited a fortune built on bourbon. Her husband Tom’s family owned a chain of department stores in Saint Louis. The young couple came west in 1922, when Anita asked her father-in-law to let them open the first California branch of the May Company Department Stores in Los Angeles. They moved to the west side of the city, where the movie people and well-to-do Jews were establishing themselves.
It took Dorothy (Buff) Chandler, whose husband Norman was publisher of the Los Angeles Times, to bring Jews from Beverly Hills and Brentwood together with gentiles from Pasadena, San Marino, and Hancock Park in a common goal: to raise the enormous sums needed to build the performing arts complex called the Music Center. Buff came from the old Pasadena family that founded Buffum’s department store, another successful retail chain.
Mrs. Chandler was a formidable presence. I was honored to become one of her top lieutenants in the army of volunteers that helped her reach a fund-raising goal in excess of $20 million. I saw firsthand how she could strong-arm the biggest men in the city to donate an amount she decided was appropriate to their wealth. She tore up Kirk’s check for $10,000 and told him he could do better. He more than doubled his contribution without a murmur.
Buff wielded enormous power at the LA Times. She initiated the annual selection of a Times Woman of the Year, an honor I received in 1969. I was her friend until she passed in her Hancock Park mansion in 1997, with me holding her hand.
I met Mrs. Chandler, of course, through Anita May. There were five of us in Anita’s favored circle of young wives: Edie Wasserman, Nancy Reagan, Harriet Deutsch, Sara Briskin, and me. We became her protégées. She advised us on clothes, china, and decor—even how to handle our husbands. She was so generous we could never admire something without having the butler hand it to us nicely wrapped when we left. Anita had the best jewelry. I remember a dazzling twenty-carat blue-white diamond. She gave the most beautiful parties with an extraordinary mix of interesting people. There were always pots of white orchids in the rooms.
Anita and Tom moved from their estate on Canon Drive into the enormous penthouse atop the newly opened Beverly Hilton Hotel in 1955. They were the first people in Los Angeles to choose such a lifestyle.
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p; Our little quintet of acolytes listened and learned and formed lasting friendships. I think Anita foresaw Ronald Reagan’s political future long before he imagined it for himself. She guided Nancy in that direction.
Kirk had known Ronnie as president of the Screen Actors Guild. In those days he was considered so left-wing that some wondered if he was a communist sympathizer. As soon as he married Nancy Davis, whose Chicago-based family were all Republican, he joined the party. Anita approved.
Nancy and I had only one bump in our long friendship. Our sons, Eric and Ron Jr., were friends and schoolmates at the Thomas Dye School. Nancy and I shared carpool duties. We also manned the hot dog booth together at the annual school fairs. Our booth always made the most money because our movie star husbands took the orders. All was fine between the Douglases and Reagans until the afternoon Eric booed the Goldwater bumper sticker on the back of Nancy’s car. She immediately banned the boys from playing with each other and demanded I drive over at once and pick up my son. It took quite a while for Nancy to forgive us for raising a juvenile Democrat. She was a true Republican!
When Kirk and I moved into our own large house on Canon, I used William Haines, the former silent movie star who was Anita’s favorite decorator, to make it the showplace it became. So did the other girls in our clique. We all adored Billy, who was openly gay and had a wicked wit. He and his partner of fifty years were welcome guests whenever we entertained.
My first large party in the new house was on March 1, 1957. I wrote my mother-in-law about it on March 6:
Dear Ma,
I haven’t written you in a long time, but preparing for a 6-month trip with the baby is quite a chore.
First of all, I would like to know how you enjoyed the Person-to-Person show? [Kirk had sent her the kinescope of our appearance on the show where Edward R. Murrow visited famous people in their homes.]
Last Friday we had a very big farewell party for “The Viking” at our new house. I had 172 guests, all sit down, for dinner in a beautiful tent. We had an orchestra and Viking decorations, and the last guest left at four o’clock in the morning. I’m still pretty tired from it, but now I have to prepare Kirk for his trip.
He leaves Saturday and Peter and I will follow him on the 31st of March. We will not stop longer than just overnight in New York, but on our way home, Ma, I am sure we will stop to see you all—including Peter.
In the meanwhile, take good care of yourself, and we will write to you frequently from wherever we are, so we’ll keep in touch. Say hello to the family.
All our love,
Anne
KIRK:
Merle Oberon was another of the women who adored Anne. She became Peter’s godmother. (Quique Jourdan was Eric’s godmother. She and Louis were two of our best friends.)
Kirk and Merle Oberon at her home in Acapulco
Merle spent a lot of time with us when she was in residence in Los Angeles. We, in turn, had wonderful holidays with her and her husband, Bruno Pagliani, in the palace he built for her in Acapulco. After he died, we continued to socialize with her and her much-younger husband, Rob Wolders, who helped her raise her two adopted children.
Like so many of us, Merle, too, had reinvented herself before she became a movie star in England and married Sir Alexander Korda, a Hungarian Jew and the leading force in British cinema. She claimed she was born in Tasmania, but a fire had destroyed all her records. Only a year before she died in Malibu did Merle own up to being from Bombay—an Anglo Indian girl whose family called her Queenie.
In 1985, Michael Korda wrote a roman à clef about his famous aunt’s early life; it was an instant bestseller. Not only was I glad to learn from Michael’s book about Merle’s colorful past, I also got a meaty role in the film adaption of Queenie, which ran on ABC-TV in 1987.
ANNE:
Edward G. Robinson was another of my mentors. We bonded over my admiration for his superb taste in art. Soon after the war ended, I got a job at the upscale Galerie Rue du Faubourg. I remember the first big sale I made. The gallery owner and I were going to lunch with Anthony Drexel Duke, scion of the fabled Dukes of North Carolina. Suddenly a bicyclist veered in front of Tony’s car. He hit him and the police came. I said to Tony: “Give me a hundred dollars. I’ll handle this and meet you both at the restaurant.”
At the station, the injured cyclist accepted the money and the incident was closed. A grateful Tony asked what he could do to thank me.
“Buy a painting,” I suggested, thinking of my commission. He bought our costliest oil—a beautiful Renoir. I used part of my windfall to purchase my own work of art—a painting which currently hangs in our foyer in the bijou house on Rexford we bought after the children were grown.
Between our Beverly Hills and Palm Springs properties, we had some lovely gardens and interiors crying out for works of art. Eddie told me he put half his salary aside, even when he was quite poor, for a down payment on a work for his collection. He lived modestly and his paintings were as dear to him as children. Before I acquired anything, I would first show it to Eddie and get his opinion on its quality and price.
KIRK:
I remember one party at Eddie’s when Barbara Stanwyck joined Anne and me on the terrace. It was a cool and slightly windy autumn evening. Barbara hadn’t been very nice to me when I played her husband in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, but she was a close friend of Frank Sinatra’s first wife Nancy, so we saw her at their house every now and then.
She had the kind of bearing that commanded respect. “Buy this girl a fur wrap,” she ordered. “Can’t you see she’s shivering.” I came home with it the very next day. Miss Stanwyck was a formidable presence.
ANNE:
Eddie Robinson, of course, had problems during the blacklist. He was never a communist, but he had lots of friends who were fellow travelers. Until he convinced Hedda Hopper, John Wayne, and Ronald Reagan of his “loyalty” he could no longer get work. In order to pay his bills, he even had to part with one of his precious paintings. His real tragedy came later on, when he finally divorced the terrible woman he had married. She won half the art in the settlement. He tried to buy it back from her at an exorbitant price, but she refused. She sold it off to others to spite him, because she knew that every piece was a part of his heart.
KIRK:
I was never a big gambler, except on my own career. But part of our social life in Los Angeles and Palm Springs revolved around our regular poker games. In Los Angeles we would gather at Janet Leigh’s house. After her divorce from Tony Curtis (I was his best man when he married his next wife, Christine Kaufmann), she married Robert Brandt, a successful stockbroker who helped raise the two Curtis daughters. They were very happy and were married until Janet’s death in 2004.
Anne and I remained friends with Janet and Tony, and their subsequent mates, till the end of their lives.
ANNE:
I was never sure if Janet married Tony because they were very much in love or because Lew Wasserman pushed them toward it. He was very taken with Janet, but, of course, he was married to Edie. He promoted Tony’s career at Universal and then arranged for them to date.
The other regulars in our poker game were Ray and Fran Stark, Lew and Edie Wasserman, and Claire Trevor and her husband, Milton Bren, a former agent and producer of the Topper movies, who developed the Sunset Strip. Claire raised his two sons along with her own, and sometimes she would bring her stepson Donald, Chairman of the Irvine Company, to the games, as well as his brother, Peter, if he and his wife happened to be visiting from New York.
All of our friends had one thing in common: they could laugh at themselves and one another. Ray Stark, in particular, was known for his practical jokes. Here’s one he played on Irving Lazar, the agent who later became known for his Oscar parties at Wolfgang Puck’s original Spago restaurant on Sunset:
With all of us listening, Ray telephoned Irving and pretended to be Gary Cooper. “Would you like to be my exclusive representative?” he asked.
/> “Of course,” Irving replied, salivating almost audibly on the other end of the phone.
“By the way, are you Jewish?” Ray asked.
Irving paused and said: “Not necessarily.”
Kirk presents Lifetime Achievement Oscar to Ray Stark in 1980
KIRK:
Our gin rummy pals in Palm Springs were mostly our neighbors on Via Lola in Las Palmas, the small enclave nestled against the San Gabriel Mountains known as the “movie colony.” There were Jack and Mary Benny, Gregory and Veronique Peck, Sidney and Alexandra Sheldon, Jules and Doris Stein. For years, we would gather at one of our houses on New Year’s Eve for a marathon evening of gin rummy.
During and after the Reagan presidency, however, Anne and I gave up our gin rummy tradition to attend the Annenbergs’ grand New Year’s Eve parties at their Sunnylands estate. I think Anne and I were the only registered Democrats on the guest list. Anne was invariably seated next to President Reagan, who was very fond of her. Besides, he could rely on her to discreetly whisper to him anything he missed because of his impaired hearing.
Like our friend Dean Martin, I was famous for leaving parties early—even when I was the host. I never went as far as Dean, who once ended a gathering at his place by calling in a noise complaint to the police from his bedroom.
So many of us belied the personas we had with our fans. Dean was far from a heavy drinker; Frank Sinatra didn’t hang out with the members of his so-called “Rat Pack” when they weren’t working together; Burt Lancaster and I rarely socialized except when it was called for. My friends included Henry Kissinger, Jack Valenti, and various members of the Kennedy clan. Anne was close to the fashion designer Mollie Parnis, who dressed Lady Bird Johnson and other presidential wives and attracted the same level of prominent guests in New York as Anita May did in Los Angeles. Anne would often stay with Mollie at her elegant Park Avenue flat while I was away on location. There, too, Anne joined in gin rummy marathons with Mollie’s pals, among them Billy Rose’s wife, Bern, and Dr. Mathilde Krim, who became so prominent in the fight against AIDS, partnered with Elizabeth Taylor.
