Michael Douglas: Acting on Instinct by Michael Douglas, John Parker Page A

some time at the small holiday ranch he owned in Vermont and then took off to Europe
     for an unmarried honeymoon. Michael knew by then that he had moved too quickly in his attempt to get into the mainstream of
     movie-acting. He had showcased his talents as leading man in two pictures with a third upcoming, but he had failed to attract
     the interest of anyone.
    Even before
Summertree
was premièred, there was some indication that Michael was extending his options when he made a move towards producing films
     by forming his own production company, Bigstick Productions, which would remain in operation for some years hence. He toyed
     around with a couple of shorts on his return from holiday and talked vaguely about making a movie out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, which had been recently and briefly revived off Broadway.
    His acting career was already going in the wrong direction, which became abundantly clear with his output in 1971–2. He made
     two more forgettable forays into film work, first in a made-for-television movie aptly titled
When Michael Calls
, in which he played a supporting role to Ben Gazzara and Elizabeth Ashley, and then in the lead of a Walt Disney production,
Napoleon and Samantha
. The prestige of a Disney film, albeit for children, failed to translate to a box office success, and the movie was notable
     only for Buddy Baker’s music, which won an Academynomination, and for the introduction of a ten-year-old child actress named Jodie Foster.
    After that – nothing. He was forced to consider television work which, in 1972, still carried something of a stigma for Hollywood
     actors. For years the mainstream film studios had banned their contract actors from appearing on television; but with the
     employment prospects of so many now looking bleak, some major names of the silver screen were being won over to the small
     screen.
    ‘It had to happen,’ said Charlton Heston, who cut his teeth in early television drama before going to Hollywood. ‘The old
     studio system, which was finally laid to rest in the 1960s, was criticised by all and sundry for enslaving actors and forcing
     them into movies they never wanted to make. But the advantages were also very evident – it provided countless young actors
     and upcoming writers and directors with experience, especially in the B-movie output. Everybody had a turn to bat. By 1970,
     that was all gone and to a degree television was offering a replacement.’
    At the time the producer Quinn Martin was one of the leaders in the field of quickfire television series. That bold sign-off
     voice that marked the end of every show – ‘This has been a Quinn Martin Production’ – became as familiar as cornflakes at
     breakfast in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Michael thought long and hard when the opportunity came to work for Martin. ‘In
     all honesty, I was reluctant,’ he recalled. ‘I somewhat arrogantly thought I had this image to live up to. But then I said
     to myself, “Hey, wake up. They’re not exactly knocking your door down with movie offers.” In fact, there were none.’
    First Michael took a role in a series called
Medical Center
and then appeared in the top-rated Martin show
FBI
, which he was called for as a last-minute replacement for a supporting actor who had dropped out. One thing led to another.
     It was his good fortune to be around at the very time Martin was planning a new police series, entitled
The Streets of San Francisco
, and his agent pushed his name forward. ‘Michael had stuck in my mind after that
FBI
episode,’ Martin told the author. ‘He had a kind of presence that we were looking for in the role of sidekick to the star,
     Karl Malden. He was tall and good looking. He had to be good but – let’s be honest about this – not overpoweringly so. Karl
     was number one, after all. So I called him in. I told him frankly that he was one of a number of actors under consideration,
     and probably not even the front