charlie-oscar2A weekly feature in which my five-year-old son is let loose on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles, and chooses a star from among the more than 2,500 honorees. His “random” picks sometimes reveal unexplained connections such as the summer day in 2012 when he sat down on the star of actress Celeste Holm and refused to budge. We later learned that the Oscar-winning actress had died only hours earlier. There are five categories on the Walk of Fame: motion pictures, television, radio, music and theater but Charlie tends to favor the movies. 

I was pleased that Charlie picked Paul Douglas this week on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’ve always considered Douglas a damn good actor and I admired him because he defied all of the Hollywood conventions of his (or any other) era in terms of his gruff, burly appearance. In my opinion, he was one of the most natural, interesting actors to ever make it big. What a shame that his career was cut short.

douglas-lifePaul Douglas Fleischer was born on April 11, 1907, in Philadelphia. With his booming voice, his first career in show business was as a radio announcer and host. He had his own swing music show in the 1930s and broke into acting by playing a radio announcer in the Broadway show Double Dummy. The play flopped but Douglas had caught the acting bug. Ten years later, his friend Garson Kanin was looking for the male lead for his play Born Yesterday starring Judy Holliday. He was looking for a “Paul Douglas type” to play the chauvinistic Harry Brock and finally decided to ask Paul himself if he’d consider doing it. Douglas agreed, taking a pay cut from the $2,500 a week he was making on the radio to a paltry $250 a week. But his gamble paid off — he was a sensation in the role, winning acting awards and staying with the production for a whopping 1,024 performances.

What’s weird is that when Charlie first bounded onto Douglas’s star, I immediately thought of Born Yesterday and his great performance in the movie version (which won Judy Holliday an Oscar). Only one problem: he wasn’t in the movie version (which I’ve seen many times) — the part of Harry Brock was played by Broderick Crawford. How is it that I can see Douglas so clearly in my head sparring with Judy Holliday? Because many of the brutish parts he played in other films (including one he made years later with Holliday herself) were reminiscent of Brock?

Realizing that Paul Douglas was not in the movie version, I assumed he had been passed over, something that happens quite often when successful Broadway plays are transferred to the screen and studio executives think they need a tried-and-true “name” for the box office. I knew that Garson Kanin had fought the studio to get Judy Holliday in the film (indeed, her small but effective part in the Tracy/Hepburn movie Adam’s Rib was a kind of “screen test” for Born Yesterday to prove that she had the goods) but the truth about Paul Douglas is much more interesting. He WAS offered the part but when he saw how the role of Harry Brock was being altered to put more of the focus on Holliday’s Billie Dawn, he had the chutzpah to turn it down! I’m not sure that was the right choice, but it paid off when his first movie, A Letter to Three Wives (1949), was a huge hit.

Paul_Douglas_in_A_Letter_to_Three_Wives_trailerWritten and directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who won two Academy Awards for the film), A Letter to Three Wives was a clever, brilliantly realized movie centered around a letter sent to three women by an unseen character who has left town with one of their husbands. The film starred Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, and Paul Douglas in his film debut as Darnell’s older, divorced boss whom she eventually marries. The scenes between Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas are amazing to watch — truly electrifying. For someone who had never made a film, Douglas was a complete natural.

A former sportscaster, Paul Douglas was also excellent in two beloved baseball movies: It Happens Every Spring (1949) and Angels in the Outfield (1951). Few actors achieved that level of success in Hollywood that quickly. On March 22, 1950, Paul Douglas hosted the 22nd Academy Awards at the Pantages Theater. This was the year that A Letter to Three Wives won several of the big awards. The Best Actor Oscar that year went to Broderick Crawford (his Born Yesterday replacement) for All the King’s Men.

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Paul Douglas was well aware of his physical attributes that were so unusual by Hollywood standards. “I have an Adam’s apple that would kill the sale of collars,” he said in an interview, “a nose that looks as if it has been left over from a bargain sale, and the build of one of those post offices that were constructed during the 1930s.” But he also understood his anti-hero appeal. “The public’s so relieved to see somebody besides a junor Adonis in the boy-meets-girl set-up that they give me a cheer. Guys look at me and say, ‘If that mug can win a gal, it’s a cinch for me.” Douglas was well liked by folks front of and behind the camera. “The studio camera man enjoys working with me. You know why? It’s because he doesn’t have to worry about my bad angle — they’re all bad! I’m a cinch for the make-up men, too. They figure nothing can be done, so that’s what they do!”

douglas-lucyDouglas stayed very busy throughout the 1950s, making movies such as Clash by Night (1952) opposite Barbara Stanwyck, Executive Suite (1954) with Stanwyck, William Holden, June Allyson, Shelley Winters, and an all-star cast, and reuniting with Judy Holliday in The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956). He appeared often on television in dramatic anthologies and on a memorable episode of I Love Lucy as Lucy Ricardo’s co-host on a morning TV show, and he reprised his role of Harry Brock in a TV version of Born Yesterday with Mary Martin as Billie Dawn.

As the decade was coming to a close, Douglas’s career and personal life seemed to be flowering. Following four marriages, Douglas was now happily married to actress Jan Sterling. “If you go to bat often enough, you’re bound to get a hit,” he said about his fifth marriage. In 1959, Paul had just shot a Twilight Zone episode written especially for him by Rod Serling and had just been cast by Billy Wilder in the important role of Jeff Sheldrake in The Apartment co-starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.  But then, on September 1, 1959, two days before shooting was set to begin on The Apartment, Paul Douglas suffered a massive heart attack and died at his home in Hollywood. His colleagues and fans were shocked. He was only 52 years old.