No reason to be hungry poor

Kirk Douglas

En esta entrevista Kirk Douglas dice algo muy cierto: “No hay razón para que nadie en el mundo sea pobre” (¡atención políticos!). Para saber: The Ragman's Son y en vocabulario: corny, smothering, mean mood, flipped

Kirk Douglas 1979 Full Interview

Kirk Douglas at an interview – 1979 – he speaks about being shy and acting – his poverty as a child

—… I really enjoy your interview with Dick Emery. He said something that I think every performer, actor would agree when he said “every actor, performer hides behind a character” but it doesn´t have to be an out character, every character that you play in a movie, on a stage, the actor hides behind. And I´ve always had the theory that I think that most actors are really shy people, myself included, and I think that the most difficult thing is what I’m doing now, sort of be yourself. It´s much easier to hide behind a character.

—Looking at your life story it occurs to me that no Hollywood scriptwriter could ever invented it. Have you ever thought of making a film about your life?

—Well, no, not really. As a matter of fact I once did an article “My Life is a B Script” and I think it is. Sometimes I think that if you want to tell the truth you write a novel, if you really want to lie you write a biography. Like most statements it´s a bit of an exaggeration but it´s difficult to tell the exact true. And my own thing that you started to indicate at the beginning, I almost heard the violins playing: the poor boy from the depths of poverty, he rose to become champion. The violins playing. It´s sort of corny. By the way it´s interesting because we both have accents, don´t we? What is your…?

—Mine is Yorshire.

—And I have, of course you wouldn´t guess, but I have American accent. But as you were saying at the beginning my story is so typical of so many people in the United Stated. You know, come from immigrants parents and you sort of work your way through college, you go to dramatic school and you´re fortune enough to go to the kind of work that you´d like to do. It´s sort of what I call a corny American story.

—But nonetheless, I mean, there´s poor and poor and poverty and poverty. I mean how poor were you?

—Well, I´m afraid if Dick Emery were to hear this he would be very humiliated because my wife once said “You know, Kirk, once of these days you´re gonna be shattered because you might meet someone who is poorer than you.” But yes, I came from what you´d call abject poverty. If not having enough to eat. They may not even have food. I guess that´s poor.

—You were hungry poor?

—Yes, and something that´s as a matter of fact is intrigued because I don´t think there´s any reason for anyone really in the world to be hungry poor. And I think that hopefully someday some of our politicians in our countries or other countries would certainly work out a way. There´s no reason really for anyone ever to be hungry poor.

—You were the only boy in a family of six girls.

—Yes.

—I don´t envy you that.

—Make something of that!

—I want you to make something of that.

—Well I think that´s quite difficult. I did not only have six sisters and my mother, that´s seven. My mother and father separated at an early age. And that left me with seven women which I think was a very difficult upbringing and I found going to college was really a form of escape from the environment, really kind of smothering. And I had mixed feelings: “why did I leave my father?” who by the way was quite a character. He was a very powerful man. A peasant. He also drank a lot. I think in a form of escape but I´ve also thought one of the bravest moments of my life was when I was only 10 years old. We were all sitting around the table. My six sisters, my mother and I. My father, one of the rarest moments he was with us and we were drinking tea at that time, out of a glass, Russian style. My father was breaking off a piece of sugar and sipping the tea through and everybody was frightened. He was overpowering. He was in a mean mood and I don´t know why I took a spoon and I took it and filled it with the hot tea and flipped it… (Transcribed 5, 13 minutes.)

Comentario destacado

"Today, we have so many stars in all fields who came from abject poverty and trashed the scene with their abject behaviour. Kirk Douglas came from such abject poverty that he used to work collecting manure barefoot because he could not afford shoes.  Yet he is here behaving with such class, manners and charm like he was born in untold riches!!! What happened to society? It's a global trend of trashiness."

Kirk Douglas in Lust for Life

Para saber

In his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, Douglas notes the hardships that he, along with six sisters and his parents, endured during their early years in Amsterdam:

    “My father, who had been a horse trader in Russia, got himself a horse and a small wagon, and became a ragman, buying old rags, pieces of metal, and junk for pennies, nickels, and dimes.... Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, the ragman was on the lowest rung on the ladder. And I was the ragman's son.”

Vocabulario

corny: sentimental, old-fashioned, melodramatic, stupid, banal.

Is it too corny to think of Bailey capturing love with the click of a shutter?

smothering: overwhelm, suppress, suffocate, asphyxiate.

Certainly they would be better off under a reformist government, rather than the smothering absolutism of the oligarchy.

Bagg already had a stifled sensation––a frantic fear of smothering; a wish to breathe deep.

mean mood: unpleasant mood, frightening and likely to become violent.

flipped: threw.

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Esto es parte del archivo: Kirk, más de un siglo de talento