The Douglases, Lists, and Book Banning

 

We watched Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s FINDING YOUR ROOTS do Kirk and Michael Douglas’s Family Tree.  Kirk is dead, but mostly what Michael’s was included Kirk, well 50% of it anyway. 

Kirk’s father had another name, not Douglas and he was born in Russian. 

On Michael’s mother’s side one of his ancestors was George Washington’s right hand man during the Revolutionary War.  Michel appeared very proud to hear that, like it could be his claim to fame, as if he needed it.

Thinking of Kirk Douglas I remembered a movie a movie he was in that he was about the only human in it.  It was about just Kirk and his horse facing modern times with highways and buildings and he feeling much out of place.  Why I was attracted to this movie it was written by Dalton Trumbo.

Dalton Trumbo was on Hollywood’s Blacklist.  

I read a book about Dalton  Trumbo once:  JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN.  It was about an American wounded soldier laying in a French Hospital.   He was wounded because he was near a war explosion.  He was blind, mute, and limbs blown off.  But he could hear fine.  This would have been in WWI. 

He could hear what the doctors and nurses said around him but he could not respond.  I do not remember he details but I think maybe they did not even know what country he was a soldier of.

In time, a caring nurse tried communicating with him.  I think she started off by telling him to nod a certain number of times to say “yes” and “no”.  Then as time went on they worked out sort of a Morse Code.  Then, carried away, he mentally wrote a speech against war.  And he begged to have someone to listen to his anti-war speech,

And I think that and writings like that put Dalton Trumbo on the Black List.   About he  banning of books today.  Same mindset.

I googled Kirk Douglas to see what movies he had starred in and there are many.  I forgot he was the harpooner in Walt Disney’s Jules Verne’s 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.