Taking the night off to watch Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole

8 Comments

1. Edward
   Posted April 6, 2012 at 6:08 am | Permalink

   Best Kirk Douglas story.

   He’s also deliciously indiscreet about the famous females he has pursued. Gene Tierney, he says, made him climb in her bedroom window and take her by surprise. Patricia Neal used to cry when they “grew affectionate” because she felt unfaithful to Gary Cooper. Rita Hayworth, whom he found beautiful but very simple, told him, “Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.” He says he adored them all—except Joan Crawford. He went out with Joan just once. All through dinner she played the innocent flirt, and the instant her front door closed behind them she flung off her dress and grappled Douglas to the foyer floor. Exciting? Not exactly. The lady had bad breath and, phobic about dirt, interrupted what they were doing to compliment her partner on his cleanliness. Afterward, Mommie Dearest took him upstairs and “proudly showed me how the two children were strapped tightly into their beds.” Douglas adds, “I got out fast.”

   About himself Douglas is even more stunningly frank. “I’m a sonofabitch, plain and simple,” he once told a biographer. “I’m probably the most disliked actor in Hollywood. And I feel pretty good about it. Because that’s me…. I was born aggressive, and I guess I’ll die aggressive.” In his book he admits he went berserk hunting big game in Africa. “I looked at something and BANG! I had total control. I enjoyed [killing]; the Masai gave me a shield and a spear and called me Killer Douglas.”

   Co-workers have noted the trait. “He’s a vicious bastard,” says a former associate, “who thinks he’s God and treats everybody else like excrement.” Burt Lancaster, who has made half a dozen pictures with Douglas, once remarked: “Kirk would be the first to tell you that he is a very difficult man. And I would be the second.”

   Son Peter calls his father “a driven man, an obsessive man.” He is obsessed with sex, with fitness, with punctuality. When he is involved in something, he is involved totally: He is a passionate collector of pre-Columbian art, and he has learned to speak five languages fluently. By the same token his resentments are fierce and unremitting. He still seethes when he describes how, while an unknown actor, he escorted a pretty actress to a Hollywood party, only to have the lady lured away in a limo by two famous guys named Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda—never mind that the event transpired almost half a century ago.

   Anti-Semitism enrages him; he never lets a prejudiced remark go unpunished. “Being a Jew myself,” he informs the speaker coldly, “I feel somewhat differently.” A red face is usually all the revenge he requires, but for one woman he devised a cruel and unusual punishment. He took her to bed, and at the climactic moment announced: “I am a Jew! You are being f—— by a Jew!”

   http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20100082,00.html

2. Steve Swan
   Posted April 6, 2012 at 8:43 am | Permalink

   For those of you who haven’t seen my adult videos, that’s my catch phrase. I end every scene by climaxing and saying, “I am a Jew! You are being fucked by a Jew!”

3. K2
   Posted April 6, 2012 at 9:41 am | Permalink

   The whole thing is also on YouTube, at least for the time being. I’d really recommend that everyone check it out. It’s one of the most devastating movies I’ve ever seen. The portrait it paints of humanity is absolutely horrific.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNsun1NO5f4

4. Fred Tomas
   Posted April 6, 2012 at 11:10 am | Permalink

   Billy Wilder was one of the best directors of all time: Some Like it Hot, Double Indemnity, Stalag 17. The man was a genius. I’ve also heard that he had one of the world’s most impressive modern art collections. After I hit “post comment”, I intend to search around the internet for it. Also, I recall hearing once that he’d intended to direct a movie about the Marx brothers running the United Nations. From what I recall, the project fell apart after Chico Marx died n ’61.

5. Fred Tomas
   Posted April 6, 2012 at 11:15 am | Permalink

   On his art collection:

   http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/30/arts/billy-wilder-decides-to-sell-some-of-his-art-collection.html

   http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-14/news/mn-1941_1_billy-wilder-s-art

6. cmadler
   Posted April 7, 2012 at 9:46 am | Permalink

   “It’s one of the most devastating movies I’ve ever seen. The portrait it paints of humanity is absolutely horrific.”

   This one, and Welles’s “Touch of Evil”.

7. EDT
   Posted April 11, 2012 at 10:05 am | Permalink

   I can’t watch that movie without thinking of Geraldo Rivera.

8. Alice Krum
   Posted April 13, 2012 at 2:47 pm | Permalink

   Did Kirk Douglas have a hand in the disappearance of Jean Spangler? The case has never been solved.

   http://www.cracked.com/article_19765_the-5-creepiest-disappearances-that-nobody-can-explain.html