{"id":16992,"date":"2014-11-03T14:06:36","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T22:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=16992"},"modified":"2014-11-04T23:12:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T07:12:20","slug":"charlies-hollywood-star-week-paul-douglas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/charlies-hollywood-star-week-paul-douglas\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlie\u2019s Hollywood Star-of-the-Week: Paul Douglas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"charlie-oscar2\"<\/a>A 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 \u201crandom\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I was pleased that Charlie picked Paul Douglas this week on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

\"douglas-life\"<\/a>Paul 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<\/em>. 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<\/em> starring Judy Holliday. He was looking for a \u201cPaul Douglas type\u201d to play the chauvinistic Harry Brock and finally decided to ask Paul himself if he\u2019d 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 \u2014 he was a sensation in the role, winning acting awards and staying with the production for a whopping 1,024 performances.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s weird is that when Charlie first bounded onto Douglas\u2019s star, I immediately thought of Born Yesterday<\/em> and his great performance in the movie version (which won Judy Holliday an Oscar). Only one problem: he wasn\u2019t in the movie version (which I\u2019ve seen many times) \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Adam\u2019s Rib<\/em> was a kind of \u201cscreen test\u201d for Born Yesterday<\/em> 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\u2019s Billie Dawn, he had the chutzpah to turn it down! I\u2019m not sure that was the right choice, but it paid off when his first movie, A Letter to Three Wives<\/em> (1949), was a huge hit.<\/p>\n

\"Paul_Douglas_in_A_Letter_to_Three_Wives_trailer\"<\/a>Written and directed by the great Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who won two Academy Awards for the film), A Letter to Three Wives<\/em> 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\u2019s older, divorced boss whom she eventually marries. The scenes between Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas are amazing to watch \u2014 truly electrifying. For someone who had never made a film, Douglas was a complete natural.<\/p>\n

A former sportscaster, Paul Douglas was also excellent in two beloved baseball movies: It Happens Every Spring<\/em> (1949) and Angels in the Outfield<\/em> (1951). Few actors achieved that level of success in Hollywood that quickly. On March 22, 1950, Paul Douglas hosted the 22nd\u00a0Academy Awards at the Pantages Theater. This was the year that A Letter to Three Wives<\/em> won several of the big awards. The Best Actor Oscar that year went to Broderick Crawford (his Born Yesterday<\/em> replacement) for All the King\u2019s Men.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"pauldouglas-posters\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Douglas was well aware of his physical attributes that were so unusual by Hollywood standards. \u201cI have an Adam\u2019s apple that would kill the sale of collars,\u201d he said in an interview, \u201ca 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.\u201d But he also understood his anti-hero appeal. \u201cThe public\u2019s 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, \u2018If that mug can win a gal, it\u2019s a cinch for me.\u201d Douglas was well liked by folks front of and behind the camera. \u201cThe studio camera man enjoys working with me. You know why? It\u2019s because he doesn\u2019t have to worry about my bad angle \u2014 they\u2019re all<\/em> bad! I\u2019m a cinch for the make-up men, too. They figure nothing can be done, so that\u2019s what they do!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"douglas-lucy\"<\/a>Douglas stayed very busy throughout the 1950s, making movies such as Clash by Night <\/em>(1952) opposite Barbara Stanwyck, Executive Suite<\/em> (1954) with Stanwyck, William Holden, June Allyson, Shelley Winters, and an all-star cast, and reuniting with Judy Holliday in The Solid Gold Cadillac<\/em> (1956). He appeared often on television in dramatic anthologies and on a memorable episode of I Love Lucy<\/em> as Lucy Ricardo\u2019s co-host on a morning TV show, and he reprised his role of Harry Brock in a TV version of Born Yesterday<\/em> with Mary Martin as Billie Dawn.<\/p>\n

As the decade was coming to a close, Douglas\u2019s career and personal life seemed to be flowering. Following four marriages, Douglas was now happily married to actress Jan Sterling. \u201cIf you go to bat often enough, you\u2019re bound to get a hit,\u201d he said about his fifth marriage. In 1959, Paul had just shot a Twilight Zone<\/em> 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<\/em>\u00a0co-starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.\u00a0 But then, on September 1, 1959, two days before shooting was set to begin on The Apartment<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 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 \u201crandom\u201d picks sometimes reveal unexplained connections such as the summer day in 2012 when he sat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":16994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,99],"tags":[207,2476],"yoast_head":"\nCharlie\u2019s Hollywood Star-of-the-Week: Paul Douglas - Cinephiled<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/charlies-hollywood-star-week-paul-douglas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Charlie\u2019s Hollywood Star-of-the-Week: Paul Douglas - Cinephiled\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A 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. 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