FATHER AND SONS: A MOVIE DYNASTY
LEAD: KIRK DOUGLAS isn't at all sure he likes the idea of a tribute. 'Tributes make it sound like the end of the line, and you know how I feel about the end of the line,' he complained, shifting restlessly in his chair as if it were a straitjacket he wanted to burst out of and looking more like the undefeated wrestling champion he used to be than the septuagenarian he is now.
KIRK DOUGLAS isn't at all sure he likes the idea of a tribute. 'Tributes make it sound like the end of the line, and you know how I feel about the end of the line,' he complained, shifting restlessly in his chair as if it were a straitjacket he wanted to burst out of and looking more like the undefeated wrestling champion he used to be than the septuagenarian he is now.
Nor is he exactly wholehearted in his enthusiasm for the brand-new Kirk Douglas Scholarship Fund. 'Why am I participating in a scholarship for young people going into this profession?' he said. 'I'm always discouraging anybody from going into this profession.'
Nevertheless, on Monday Mr. Douglas will be guest of honor at a tribute by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which he attended nearly 50 years ago and which is now establishing a scholarship in his name. The program, at the Majestic Theater, will be hosted by Burt Lancaster, with whom Mr. Douglas has co-starred in movies that span 40 years - from 'I Walk Alone' in 1947 to their most recent collaboration, last year's 'Tough Guys.'
Not only will this tribute feature such other longtime colleagues as Anthony Quinn and Lauren Bacall (whom Mr. Douglas met at the academy when she was still Betty Perske and he was Izzy Demsky), it will also include Mr. Douglas's four sons, all of whom have followed in their father's redoubtable footsteps. As for Mr. Douglas - who works out with weights every day, still boasts a physique that enabled him to take off his shirt in 'Tough Guys' as he has in dozens of other movies over the years, and doesn't consider himself anywhere near the end of the line -he is just hoping that none of his sons choose that particular occasion to do their wickedly accurate Kirk Douglas imitations.
Many movie stars receive tributes. A few, like Mr. Douglas, have become as much institutions as actors, cultural icons who conjure up an entire era's worth of images. That famous cleft chin, those razor-sharp cheekbones and jutting jaw have personified Vikings and cowboys, lovers and fighters and characters who range from Vincent van Gogh to Spartacus. However, virtually no other star of Mr. Douglas's longevity and fame can claim to have spawned not only a filmography of more than 70 movies, excerpts from which will be shown at the tribute, but also a dynasty that includes at least one son who threatens to surpass even his father's success. Discouraged a Show-Business Life
Michael Douglas, the oldest, is not only a movie star but also the producer of such hits as 'Romancing the Stone' and 'Jewel of the Nile.' Joel, also a producer, is currently living in Nice, France, and working at a movie studio there. Both Michael and Joel are the products of Mr. Douglas's first marriage, to Diana Dill, an actress. By his second wife, Anne, there are two more sons, Peter - a screenwriter and producer and the director of 'A Tiger's Tail,' an upcoming movie starring Ann-Margret - and Eric, an actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Not that Mr. Douglas intended for any of them to emulate him. 'I discouraged all of my sons from ever going into any phase of the entertainment business,' he said in a recent interview at the Mayfair Regent Hotel. 'My theory is that if you can discourage someone from going into this business, they shouldn't be in it anyway. It's too painful, too full of rejection. And the rejection is personal: it's 'I don't like you.' So I discouraged all my kids.' He flashed a dazzling grin. 'You see how they listen to me. They've all ended up in it, and they're doing well. They're functioning.'
It is one of Kirk Douglas's favorite themes, one he drilled into his children over and over. 'Functioning: that's my key word,' he said, savoring the sound of it like some delicious morsel. 'My sons always tease me about it. Function! Be a carpenter, be a farmer - do something. They didn't have my advantages; I had the advantage of being born in abject poverty, which meant that I had nowhere to go but up. I've said to them that if my father had been Kirk Douglas, I don't know what I would have been. Maybe a gangster. But I didn't have anybody to compete with. If I'd ended up as the manager of a department store I would have thought I was doing pretty well.' 'I Never Lied to Them'
Mr. Douglas is the first to admit that he was hard on his boys, writing them stern letters and telling them exactly what he thought, no matter how harsh - like the first time Michael, then a college sophomore, invited his dad to see him perform in a school play. 'You were terrible,' his father announced afterward.
'Well, he was,' Mr. Douglas said. 'I never lied to them. The next time I saw him in a play, he was very good and I told him so. But having four sons from two families, I think very often I was harder on Michael and Joel, because I was spending split time with them. One of the ways a father can show he cares is by bawling the hell out of them. I thought, well, one day they'll remember I wasn't indifferent to them. I mean, I wasn't there with a whip, but I think I have a much warmer relationship with my kids now than I did then. I envy fathers who have that; I was never the kind of father who's leaning back with a pipe, smiling. I was always coming forward at them.' Tense as a panther, poised on the edge of his chair, he is hardly the picture of the genial, relaxed paterfamilias. 'I think there's a certain tension in me they must have felt,' he acknowledged. 'But with it all, they must have felt I cared.'
Making three or four pictures a year, Mr. Douglas was often away on location. 'Whenever we saw him, he had this tremendous need to father, so you'd get an intense dose of fatherhood - which didn't make for the most comfortable times,' said Michael Douglas in a telephone interview. 'He was tough, but it toughened us up, and maybe helped us survive.'
Years later, Kirk Douglas realized that the fierce energy he directed toward his boys represented an attempt to compensate for the fathering he himself missed. 'I was never close to my own father,' he said. 'I always wanted to be closer, and in many ways I would try to replay that with my own children - not very successfully, because the thrust was always my interpretation of a father-son relationship rather than what their needs were. I can see that now, in retrospect. And we're much closer now than we used to be; I think they understand me and my peccadilloes more, and I understand them more.' A Driven Man
At 70, Mr. Douglas likes to think he has mellowed, 'but not very much.' He readily describes himself as driven and, indeed, the ferocity he has always applied to his career seems hardly to have abated. 'I just got back from a week in Hawaii, and I was working on two projects while I was on vacation,' said Peter Douglas in a telephone interview. 'If he'd gone to Hawaii, he'd have been working on four projects. It is really important to lay back, and he's really bad at that. His work is his most fun time, but there's also an obsessive quality to it that's been passed on.'
The source of that drive is deeply rooted in the past. He has been Kirk Douglas for half a century, ever since a brief fling with the interim name of Izzy Demsky, but inside he is still Issur Danielovitch, the name his parents gave him.
'That's what it's all about,' Mr. Douglas said. 'That's the core, that early part of you. Issur is the only thing you have to offer. Kirk Douglas is a name, but Issur is the synthesis of everything that happened to me in my early life, that formed what I am as a human being and as an actor. Look at the difference between my background and my children's background - in one generation!' 'Continuity of Generations'
Recently Mr. Douglas, watching his firstborn son being interviewed on a television show, was moved when Michael began to talk about 'the continuity of generations.' Michael's enormous success notwithstanding, his father says he does not feel supplanted.
'On the contrary - I feel immortal,' he declared. 'That's what immortality is all about. I think sons fight their fathers, and are sometimes intimidated by their fathers, but the love of a father is the only kind of love in which one wants the son to surpass him. It's not that I'm such a nice guy. It's narcissistic. But narcissism is a nice word. Self-love is important. Maturity means falling in love with yourself, in the sense of understanding yourself and saying, 'hey - I'm not such a bad guy.' You change, and you have to come to grips with yourself - and make peace with yourself. I think the most elegant form of narcissism is your children. To me, the greatest triumph of this tribute is that all my sons are going to be there.'
His sons were, at that moment, scattered from California to St. Martin to the South of France. Mr. Douglas rolled his eyes and sighed in mock exasperation. 'Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get all my four sons together?' he said proudly.
The tribute begins at 8:30 P.M. at the Majestic Theater, Broadway and 44th Street. Tickets range from $25 to $500; a pre-tribute cocktail party is included with a $125 ticket, and there is a pre-tribute dinner for those with tickets for $300 or $500. Information: 614-0400 or 239-6200.