Kirk Douglas’ embarrassing mistake in his first movie: “This is how little anyone told me”
Everyone can relate to first-day jitters. Whether it’s that first day at a new school or the first day at a new job, the feeling of being a fish out of water and completely unprepared for what the day will bring is pretty universal. For actors, this can be doubly so, especially when it comes to their first day on any film set, ever. Most of them get to ease their way into the industry by appearing in short films or low-budget movies first, but for Kirk Douglas, it was a trial by fire.
The actor started out on the stage in his hometown of Manhattan. As a teenager, he took acting classes alongside future Hollywood star Lauren Bacall, who left for the West Coast before he did and landed her film debut in a Howard Hawks movie opposite her future husband, Humphrey Bogart. Douglas was happy with his career, but was only just managing to scrape by financially. It was Bacall who came to the rescue, lobbying for producer Hal Wallis to bring him out to Hollywood in 1946 and see what he could do.
Wallis was working on The Strange Love of Martha Ivers at the time, a film noir starring one of the biggest actors of the day, Barbara Stanwyck. Like Bette Davis, Stanwyck was known for playing hard-edged, complicated women, and this film was no different. She plays the titular Martha, the heir to a milling company who is torn between two men that she’s known since childhood, her meek husband Walter and the itinerant Sam. There is murder and blackmail in her past, and when Sam comes back into town, their love triangle is on a collision course.
When Douglas learned that he was going to be cast in the film as Stanwyck’s love interest, he was understandably elated. She was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and he was going to play opposite her. It was the sort of luck that aspiring actors could only dream of. What he didn’t realise was that he wasn’t actually playing the role he thought he was.
“This is how little anyone told me before I left New York,” he recalled. “I thought I’d been cast as the romantic lead in the picture opposite Barbara Stanwyck. When I got off the train in Los Angeles, I was promptly informed by the studio rep that Mr Van Heflin would be playing that part, not me.”
He had, as it turned out, been cast in the much smaller role of Walter. The whole time, he’d been studying for the wrong role. Not only that, but Lizabeth Scott would be taking third billing for her performance as Sam’s new love interest. On the poster, only Stanwyck, Heflin, and Scott are pictured, while Douglas’ name appears in tiny font below the title.
It was an embarrassing mix-up, but he was the one who got the last laugh. Despite the modest size of his role, critics noticed him. Douglas had undeniable star power, and he seemed to be a natural in front of a movie camera even though he’d honed his craft in the theatre. After a few short years of playing more supporting roles in film noir, he landed the lead in the boxing film Champion and earned his first Oscar nomination.
