Entertain e t

At The Movies

'Diamonds'

Kirk Douglas returns to acting in "Diamonds."

COREY LEVITAN
Copley News Service

.

2/18
2000

84

Kirk Douglas
in
"Diamonds":
"All that I say
about a man
with a stroke
comes from
real life."

irk Douglas has this joke he
uses to put people at ease.
Whenever you miss a
word and ask the screen
legend to repeat himself, he glowers
and demands, "What's the matter?
Don't you speak English?"
Since suffering a stroke in 1996,
Douglas speaks with a thick tongue.
Yet his eyes let you know that
everything else still functions fine.
Those two marble oceans seethe
with every watt of electricity that
made 1949's The Champion rage
and that once commanded trysts
Kirk Douglas, Corbin
with Marlene Dietrich, Rita
Allred and Dan Aykroyd on
Hayworth and Ava Gardner.
a comic road trip with
"I feel pretty good," says
poignant overtones.
Douglas, 83, settling into a leather
sofa in the Beverly Hills home he
shares with Anne, his wife of 45
years. "I just played 18 holes of golf
man's battle against
yesterday. And each week, I work
Alzheimer's
disease.
with a speech therapist."
Douglas
had
the script
Humor is a major part of Douglas'
rewritten
to
fit
his own
recovery, which is why he says he took
reality.
the lead role in Diamonds, his first since
"It was very interest-
the stroke. Opening today, its release fol-
ing,"
Douglas says,
lows Douglas' second bar mitzvah,
"because
so much of it is my life. All the
which he celebrated as a return to his
[facial]
exercises
and all that I say about
Jewish roots in December, surrounded
a
man
with
a
stroke
comes from real
by family and friends.
life."
Draped around his shoulders was
One particularly poignant moment
the same tallit he wore 70 years ear-
—
the film employs scenes from The
lier, when he marked his coming of
Champion
— sees Douglas' character, a
age at the Sons of Israel synagogue
former
prizefighter,
explain how
in New York.
detestable
it
is
to
have
his thoughts race
In the John Asher-directed Diamonds,
while
his
words
"are
running
behind."
Harry Agensky (Douglas), his son (Dan
"Even
now,
occasionally,
waves
of
Aykroyd) and grandson (newcomer
depression
set
in,
and
you
have
to
Corbin Allred) hit the road to Reno in
fight against it," Douglas says. "When
search of a set of long-lost diamonds
I get insecure about doing an inter-
and, along the way, a little brothel action
view and I don't think I can talk, my
for grandpa (Lauren Bacall plays the
wife says, 'Listen, Kirk, you have
establishment's madam).
talked enough in life.'" Douglas
"For me, this movie started a new
laughs, flashing the dimples he passed
life," Douglas says. "It proved to me
onto his superstar actor son, Michael.
that you can overcome obstacles. As I
Kirk Douglas was at home having a
say in Diamonds to Dan Aykroyd,
manicure
in January 1996 when he felt
who plays my son, 'If you can't talk, if
a
strange
trickle
run down the side of his
you can't walk, remember one thing:
face
and
across
his
entire future.
Never give up.'"
"It
was
not
painful,"
he says. "But
Diamonds was originally tided
when
I
tried
to
explain
what
hap-
Sundowning and documented an older

Douglas says of all the accolades
earned by Michael — including his
two Oscars — he's proudest of his
son's award for gas-station attendant
of the month.
"I was going to Hawaii one summer
to make a picture with John Wayne,
and I was going to take Michael and
Eric," Douglas says. "But Michael did
something that made me mad — I don't
know if he smoked marijuana, whatever
it was — and I said, 'You're not going to
Hawaii. You're going to stay here and
get a job.' So, when I came back, he got
a job as a gasoline-station attendant, and
he won $40 for being the best one."
Michael apparently got his work
ethic from the same genetic pool as his
dimples, and says his father, all his
sons, though not raised Jewish nor
considered to be Jewish according to
Halacha, increasingly "feel" Jewish.
Michael Douglas, for example, easi-
ly inserted Yiddish and Hebrew
expressions into the graceful speech he
gave at his father's bar mitzvah. That
led to press reports (later denied) that
Michael's fiancee, Catherine Zeta-
Jones, was enamored with her hus-
band-to-be's "Jewish faith" and was
considering converting.
Kirk Douglas credits his lust for work
for saving his life after the stroke.
pened, I couldn't talk. So my wife,
"I'm a man that must work," he says,
who was playing bridge with Barbara
noting that, after Diamonds, he has two
Sinatra, came home and quickly took
other projects on tap.
me to the hospital."
"I'm not going to tell you what the
Douglas and the former Anne
titles are," he says. "I've told you
Buydens have been married since 1954.
enough already."
(It is Douglas' second marriage, the first
Then he plans to film his first
was to Diana Dill, mother of Michael.)
movie with Michael. Called Song for
Despite this and the other recent
David, it was originally put on the
tragedy in his life — a 1991 helicopter
back burner by Kirk's stroke.
crash that killed two people, nearly broke
"I'm still the great actor I always
Douglas' back and spawned his return to
was," says a winking Douglas, who
his Jewish roots — the actor says he's
has yet to receive more than an hon-
happy with the deck he's been dealt.
orary Oscar.
He has come a long way since being
"If anybody says, 'I didn't think he
known as Issur Danielowitch, the son of
was convincing as a man with a stroke,'
poor Russian-Jewish immigrants in
what can I do?" ❑
upstate New York. His father, an alco-
holic, collected rags and sold them on
Tom Tugend of JTA contributed to
the street to support his family.
this story.
"I have said to my kids that they
have not had my advantages," Douglas
Diamonds, rated R, opens today
says, "because I had the advantage of
in area theaters.
being born in abject poverty. I had
nowhere to go but up."

