Hollywood Royalty Kirk Douglas on What He Cares About the Most
Past the glass cabinet displaying his Presidential Medal of Freedom, near the vine-draped patio containing a block of cement on which Elizabeth Taylor, as a dinner guest, signed her name, one of Hollywood's last true royals sits on a sofa, cracking jokes. "This is the $5,000 look," says Kirk Douglas, 99, posing for a photograph. When the Spartacus actor teases (half-teases?) his Oscar-winning son, Michael Douglas, perched next to him on the sofa's arm, that he will be insultingly higher in the resulting image, Michael drily responds, "Maybe you'd like it better if I sat at your feet?"
Everyone laughs. But then the Douglas family matriarch, Anne, gets down to business. They have gathered in her and Kirk's Beverly Hills living room to discuss philanthropy, and she has a few things to say.
"A lot of people, it seems to me, don't quite take care of their own," she says, noting the rapidly growing homelessness problem in Los Angeles. "We are, of course, sympathetic with the need in foreign countries. They too must have our support. But I like to start our charitable donations at home, in this city."
The Douglas Foundation has given away roughly $118 million since its start in 1964.
Kirk, suddenly serious, nods in agreement. When it comes to philanthropic choices (the Douglas Foundation has given away roughly $118 million since its start, in 1964), he says, "my wife has been a big influence on me."
In this particular family, one of Hollywood's most consistently generous, the men tend to get the attention for good deeds-they're the celebrities, after all-even as the women quietly set the pace. Kirk, for instance, credits his immigrant mother with providing an early example. Despite their own poverty, he watched her give food to hobos who came to their door asking for scraps. ("Issur," he recalls her telling him, using his original name, "even a beggar has to give to another beggar who is worse off than he is.")
Anne, in turn, set an example for Michael, who was nine when she married his father. It was Anne who, after reading in 1997 about unsafe playgrounds at Los Angeles schools, started the couple's 11-year effort to renovate more than 400 of them. Kirk became known for testing the slides at the dedication ceremonies. ("The sliding was my wife's idea," he says, with a hint of annoyance. "No, no, no," she says. "You took two kids at the first one and said, 'Let's go,' and then everybody wanted to see you slide.")
The couple's other primary focuses have been homelessness-the Anne Douglas Center for Women at the Los Angeles Mission just celebrated its 25th year-and the Motion Picture & Television Fund, which provides health and residential services for needy Hollywood workers. They have also supported the Kirk Douglas Theatre and Children's Hospital Los Angeles.
"When you watch your family be charitable and involved, it just becomes an inherent part of your structure and your character," Michael says. "I'm still watching how Dad and Anne conduct themselves. As I get older, their focus is something I'm thinking about more intently. You have to focus. Otherwise you don't feel you have any real influence, that you're making some kind of a difference."
Michael, who is 71, described his own philanthropy, which is aimed generally at issues like nuclear disarmament and gun control, as "the sprinkle approach." He has contributed millions of dollars over the years to more than 70 organizations, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the Manhattan hospital where he was successfully treated for cancer in 2011. "Early on I was a little overwhelmed by requests," he says, both of the monetary and lend-us-your-celebrity kind, "and a wide sprinkling admittedly takes a lot of pressure off."
Lately the Wall Street actor has become more involved in Jewish issues. Last year he received the $1 million Genesis Prize, established to strengthen Jewish culture. With the money he helped create a $4 million fund to foster the inclusion of interfaith couples in Jewish life. "As someone who has not always been welcomed in the Jewish community because of my mixed parentage, I am quite passionate about this," he says. (His mother, who died last year, was not Jewish, and Michael himself has an interfaith marriage, with the Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.)
In Hollywood, where philanthropy is often considered less a responsibility than a cynical image-polishing maneuver, the Douglas family stands out for its "sweeping and very generous" charitable campaigns, says Trevor Neilson, a co-founder of the Global Philanthropy Group, which has helped such stars as Angelina Jolie and Bono organize humanitarian efforts. "We need to see more people like them in Los Angeles, which lacks a widespread culture of philanthropy and civic engagement."
In other words, listen to Mama Douglas.
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