6 minute read
O fathers, where art thou?
By Paul Kandarian
Kirk Douglas, star of Spartacus, his most iconic film, died in January at the age of 103, the last lion of old Hollywood, a vestige of the so-called golden era of moviemaking. Douglas was a warrior, a myth, a movie star, a legend, truly a great actor, a man’s man, as my father would put it – one of a kind. My dad, who died six years ago, worshipped him. So Douglas’s death was one last connection with the living that somehow kept my father alive, at least in my mind. Told you it was weird.
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He worshipped them all actually, guys like Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, Alan Ladd, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Cagney, Clark Gable and his number one: John Wayne. Dad loved the Duke, knew his movies by heart. Honestly, my father would practically get misty eyed watching John Wayne on the screen, silver or cathode ray.
We’d be watching a John Wayne western on TV, and my dad would say, “Oh, you know what’s gonna happen now? Duke’s gonna punch that guy right in the mouth!” or something and sure enough it would happen, and I’d declare my dad a genius for having this uncanny knack of predicting movie plots.
Didn’t dawn on me until years later that he’d seen the movie 100 times and naturally knew what was going to happen. He’d do the same thing driving with the family when it was raining, and say “I’m gonna stop the rain… right now!” and sure enough, the rain would stop, and I’d be crying, begging him to tell me how he did it. He wouldn’t, and I’d whine even more – with my mom and brother rolling their eyes at my not being able to figure out the temporary lack of rain was caused by going under bridges.
My dad was bigger than life to me, and those actors of old were giants to him. He’d watch someone like Kirk or Burt take off their shirt and he’d marvel at the shape they were in, saying “Look at the build on that guy!” and then stand up and puff out his chest and strut around, making me laugh and love him all the more for his kooky coolness until I got older and couldn’t see that kooky coolness anymore, and in fact would be embarrassed by it. I’ve long regretted feeling that way.
I absolutely loved watching movies with my dad. As kids, we’d go to the drivein and see things like The Longest Day, a quintessential old-school World War II movie with a legendary ensemble of actors he loved – The Duke, Fonda, Bob Mitchum, Richard Burton, Rod Steiger, Jeffrey Hunter, and so many more.
When I got older, we’d go to the movies, just the two of us, seeing films like The Green Berets, A Man Called Horse, and The Unforgiven. The latter was the last we saw together. It is no coincidence it is one of my favorite films.
I have said this before, but there is no doubt I’m an actor now Spartacus is gone. In a weird way, so is my dad, all over again. Let me explain. There is no doubt I’m an actor now because of my dad, and not just from the love of movies he instilled in me, but because he passed on a natural ability to me.
because of my dad, and not just from the love of movies he instilled in me, but because he passed on a natural ability to me. My old man was an inveterate ham, owning the room when he’d walk into a party, playing it up if there were a video camera nearby. He likely could have been an actor, one of his long-standing dreams, but instead deferred it by doing the family man thing instead, his soul made more restless as he aged, fidgety and unfulfilled, taking solace in what might have been by watching the stars he loved on that flickering screen.
And there were few he loved more than Kirk Douglas, in particular one movie I cherish because we watched it so often together: Lonely Are the Brave, a black-and-white film from 1962 with a powerful cast of Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau, George Kennedy, and Carol O’Connor. It was an adaptation of an Edward Abbey novel, The Brave Cowboy, with screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, a brilliant writer blacklisted in the Hollywood Communism debacle – that ended when Douglas hired him to write “Spartacus” in 1960. My Dad would watch Lonely Are the Brave (which Douglas said was his favorite movie) over and over, captivated by the story of an aging cowboy at odds with the modernization of the world, how man was encroaching on nature and pushing aside the only way of life he knew. My Dad would identify with that, finding it hard to come to grips with changes, I guess, in society at the time we’d watch this in the 60s and 70s, and changes perhaps in himself as he got older.
In the end, Douglas’s character John W. Burns, and his horse, are hit by a truck in a blinding rainstorm, symbolizing that encroachment of man into the fading cowboy world. Douglas’s character lies by the side of the road, pelted by rain, beaten by modern times, as Matthau’s sheriff character orders the injured horse to be shot.
“That poor bastard,” my father would say, shaking his head as if he’d not seen the movie a thousand times. “Helluva way to go.”
And now with Spartacus gone, there goes one of Dad’s heroes. And with Dad gone, there goes mine.
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