Michael Douglas: Acting on Instinct by Michael Douglas, John Parker
Authors: Michael Douglas, John Parker
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Theater, just off Broadway.
There were advantages in such an engagement: the play would provide him with some much-needed theatre experience, especially
since it was part-musical and called for him to singseveral numbers. It would not tie him down to a long run, and would not confront him with either rows of empty seats or the
threat of closure after a mauling by hostile critics. In the event, his performance was widely praised. The American Place
was an intimate theatre run on a subscription system, ensuring full houses and a guaranteed and specified run for any play.
There was a spin-off with the publicity he attracted for the coming release of
Summertree
, and it was a topical story:
Pinkville
is the tale of a young American who is turned into a wartime killer.
Michael had a speech at the end which was ironically and accidentally in tune with the times. He had to say: ‘So what if a
few gooks get killed. They’ve killed 50,000 of our guys. We ought to wipe them all out.’
Similar statements were being made in real life as another piece of American self-analysis began to unfold with the opening
of the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, who was accused of murdering 109 Vietnamese in the infamous Mylai massacre.
‘I shall be proud,’ said Calley, ‘if this trial shows the world what war is really like …’
While Michael’s appearance in
Pinkville
brought in some timely publicity interviews in the run-up to the release of
Summertree
, the Calley trial overshadowed all fictional stories about the war. The case had inspired a severe bout of apoplexy among
Americans, torn as they were between the doves and the hawks. The court martial reached a guilty verdict and imposed a death
sentence on Calley in March 1971, just as
Summertree
went on general release. The true story outweighed mere fiction to the extent of virtual obliteration.
America’s crescendo of discomfort with the war that President Nixon had pledged to end barely left a place for plays and films
about young American sons caught up in it. The nightly scenes of horror on television were enough to make futile any cinematic
attempts to discuss the rights and wrongs, the whys and wherefores of the conflict. And so the great expectations of the Douglas
clan for a movie that would hit a nerve at exactly the right moment in American history were overtaken and quashed by history
itself.
Almost fourteen years had passed since Kirk had made his own anti-war statement with
Paths of Glory
, one of the earliest productions of his Bryna company. The film was still remembered, but, once again, there could be no
real comparison between him and Michael Douglas in
Summertree
.
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick from the novel by Humphrey Cobb,
Paths of Glory
was a strong and bitter tale, filled with nerve-racking intensity and some of the most vivid trench scenes ever filmed. The
movie was populated by characters writ large. It was superbly performed and photographed and became, overall, a powerful piece
of cinema history.
When comparisons were made,
Summertree
fared badly, and so did Michael. Critical reaction was mediocre, especially to the faltering direction of Anthony Newley,
and generally fell under the description ‘tedious’. The only weight was provided by Jack Warden and Barbara Bel Geddes, but
overall the play itself could not sustain a full-length feature-film treatment.
Michael’s performance was competent but lacked compassion. It could have been performed better by any one of a thousand young
actors around at the time. That essential ingredient forstar status which Michael and his father had hoped for when they set out on the project was missing. If his father had hoped
that his son would become a ‘big star’, he had seriously overrated the potential of his movie and the audience appeal of his
son.
Michael realised it too. After filming on
Summertree
was complete, he and Brenda Vaccaro spent
There were advantages in such an engagement: the play would provide him with some much-needed theatre experience, especially
since it was part-musical and called for him to singseveral numbers. It would not tie him down to a long run, and would not confront him with either rows of empty seats or the
threat of closure after a mauling by hostile critics. In the event, his performance was widely praised. The American Place
was an intimate theatre run on a subscription system, ensuring full houses and a guaranteed and specified run for any play.
There was a spin-off with the publicity he attracted for the coming release of
Summertree
, and it was a topical story:
Pinkville
is the tale of a young American who is turned into a wartime killer.
Michael had a speech at the end which was ironically and accidentally in tune with the times. He had to say: ‘So what if a
few gooks get killed. They’ve killed 50,000 of our guys. We ought to wipe them all out.’
Similar statements were being made in real life as another piece of American self-analysis began to unfold with the opening
of the court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, who was accused of murdering 109 Vietnamese in the infamous Mylai massacre.
‘I shall be proud,’ said Calley, ‘if this trial shows the world what war is really like …’
While Michael’s appearance in
Pinkville
brought in some timely publicity interviews in the run-up to the release of
Summertree
, the Calley trial overshadowed all fictional stories about the war. The case had inspired a severe bout of apoplexy among
Americans, torn as they were between the doves and the hawks. The court martial reached a guilty verdict and imposed a death
sentence on Calley in March 1971, just as
Summertree
went on general release. The true story outweighed mere fiction to the extent of virtual obliteration.
America’s crescendo of discomfort with the war that President Nixon had pledged to end barely left a place for plays and films
about young American sons caught up in it. The nightly scenes of horror on television were enough to make futile any cinematic
attempts to discuss the rights and wrongs, the whys and wherefores of the conflict. And so the great expectations of the Douglas
clan for a movie that would hit a nerve at exactly the right moment in American history were overtaken and quashed by history
itself.
Almost fourteen years had passed since Kirk had made his own anti-war statement with
Paths of Glory
, one of the earliest productions of his Bryna company. The film was still remembered, but, once again, there could be no
real comparison between him and Michael Douglas in
Summertree
.
Written and directed by Stanley Kubrick from the novel by Humphrey Cobb,
Paths of Glory
was a strong and bitter tale, filled with nerve-racking intensity and some of the most vivid trench scenes ever filmed. The
movie was populated by characters writ large. It was superbly performed and photographed and became, overall, a powerful piece
of cinema history.
When comparisons were made,
Summertree
fared badly, and so did Michael. Critical reaction was mediocre, especially to the faltering direction of Anthony Newley,
and generally fell under the description ‘tedious’. The only weight was provided by Jack Warden and Barbara Bel Geddes, but
overall the play itself could not sustain a full-length feature-film treatment.
Michael’s performance was competent but lacked compassion. It could have been performed better by any one of a thousand young
actors around at the time. That essential ingredient forstar status which Michael and his father had hoped for when they set out on the project was missing. If his father had hoped
that his son would become a ‘big star’, he had seriously overrated the potential of his movie and the audience appeal of his
son.
Michael realised it too. After filming on
Summertree
was complete, he and Brenda Vaccaro spent
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