Lust for Life

 

"I had been a ragamuffin kid of 15 coping with a neighborhood filled with gangs.... Under her guidance I became a different person.... I am eternally grateful."

Today would be screen legend Kirk Douglas's 105th birthday. As reported in the January 24, 2007, New York Post:

"Kirk Douglas is 90 years old -- but time hasn't dulled his memory when it comes to some of his more colorful sexual experiences."

"In his new memoir, Let's Face It -- 90 Years of Living, Loving and Learning, due in April from Wiley, the cleft-chinned Oscar-winning star of such pictures as Spartacus and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral recalls a fling with a 'big, tall blond' German airline stewardess who liked to be disciplined in bed. During their enthusiastic sex sessions, 'she would scream, I'm a Nazi! -- which was my cue to slap her, which I did,' Douglas writes.

"He also remembers getting deflowered in high school by his English teacher.

"'I had been a ragamuffin kid of 15 coping with a neighborhood filled with gangs.... Under her guidance I became a different person.... I am eternally grateful. By today's standards she would have gone to jail. I had no idea we were doing something wrong. Did she?'

"Douglas didn't stop at his teacher. He also wanted to bed a "beautiful young redhead" who sat in front of him, and wrote her a drippy, Shakespeare-like sonnet that ended:

"'Bewitched by a vision so fair,
I reach out and touch your hair;
Happily you turn and smile at me,
And change my humble state to ecstasy.'

"Despite his stab at 'bad poetry,' it worked, and 'I got the girl,' Douglas writes. Much as he loved sex, Douglas occasionally drew the line. One summer vacation during college when he was working in a steel mill,

"'I met a very attractive girl with rich parents.... She said her father would buy us a nice apartment in New York and take care of all of our expenses while I was in drama school.... She had a beautiful Cadillac and there was the extra dividend of good sex. What else could a poor Jewish boy want? But deep down inside I knew I would end up as a man without character. Bottom line, I just couldn't do it.'

"The Hollywood legend also recalls once being awakened by Ava Gardner, then wed to Frank Sinatra, who showed up at his door at 2 a.m. and sobbed to him:

"'Frank and I had an argument. He had a gun. He threatened to commit suicide. I don't know what to do.'

"Douglas told her, 'Ava, married people have arguments.... Frank loves you. You must go back and try to act like nothing happened.'"

Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. (ABC News, June 29, 2012 --
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/06/kirk-douglas-on-helping-to-break-blacklist)

Most of the above information is taken from Positive Memories by T. Rivas.