Michael Douglas: Acting on Instinct by Michael Douglas, John Parker Read Free Book Online

virtually every major publicity
     interview he gave to media writers when he had become famous himself. The phrase, ‘My parents were divorced when I was five—’
     was trotted out repeatedly.
    Diana Dill knew she had to handle her elder son with kid gloves, and often had him around her. She had returned to her old
     love of stage-acting and starred in a couple of off-Broadway productions. She used to take Michael to the theatre forrehearsals, parking him in the lighting booth with the electricians while she was working. She found she had to keep a fairly
     strong grip on the boys, especially after they’d had time with their father.
    They’d come back home having forgotten some of her own disciplines, like hanging up their clothes. ‘Yes, but Dad has a butler
     to do that!’ they would protest. She would seethe quietly to herself and tell them to pick them up anyway. Their mother otherwise
     maintained a friendly relationship with Kirk and always tried to steer her sons’ attention away from the ever-present headlines.
     Even so, the question for Michael and Joel to jostle with was: who would be their stepmother?
    It seemed to have become a choice between the fiery, flighty and stunning Pier Angeli, whom they did not know, or the attractive
     but professional Anne Buydens. Kirk had been saving himself for the former, but he was kidding himself that something would
     come of it. During his nine-month sojourn in Europe, he had failed to notice that Pier was tripping here and there with an
     assortment of male companions, including a young Italian boy of a similar age, then Dean Martin, later James Dean … Finally,
     she went into a rushed and unhappy marriage to singer Vic Damone.
    There were few dissenters in the circle surrounding the two sides of the Douglas family that any permanent relationship between
     Kirk and Pier would have led to discomfort, if not disaster, all round, not least for Kirk’s sons. Certainly, Pier’s own life
     disintegrated into a catalogue of alcohol and drugs, with which she eventually took her own life.
    Anyway, the issue was resolved for the Douglas family by thespring of 1954, when Kirk realised that his crush on Angeli was making a fool of him. By then, Anne Buydens had been divorced
     and had quite obviously fallen in love with the star she had once refused to help. When he finally came to his senses, they
     dashed off to Las Vegas and were married on 29 May 1954. The development was a key, settling factor in the lives of all members
     of the clan Douglas, present and future.
    For one thing, Anne forced on her husband’s life a stability that had been missing for half a decade; she was more forceful
     in a tactfully managerial sort of way than Diana had been. Kirk Douglas was still a fast mover, had a hundred balls in the
     air at any one time, devouring scripts over breakfast, going to work, coming home, playing tennis, swimming, jogging, going
     out for dinner and falling asleep reading another script. Anne managed to slow him down so that he really did find some good
     family time, as well as helping to redirect a career that showed ominous signs of going in the wrong direction.
    Michael took to Anne pretty quickly, and the situation of the Douglas boys was made easier by the fact that their mother also
     liked their new stepmother. The two women became good friends, so there was no question of divided loyalties. That the two
     sides of the family enjoyed a remarkable friendship was apparent when Kirk came to make his next picture. Within a few months
     of his marriage to Anne, Kirk had taken his first major steps towards running his own production company (a move to be followed
     by many other top stars, including Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and later Warren Beatty). His first film as an independent
     actor-producer was
The Indian Fighter
, in which Kirk himself would star, along with Walter Matthau,who had recently arrived in Hollywood from New York to make his screen