RE: Fine with me. There is a huge pile of accounts about how Hollywood producers, directors, actors and Kirk Douglass in particular treated young actresses back in the day. This kind of appalling behavior is recorded in scores of biographies and even many autobiographies.
As in every biographies, we have to treat each and everyone of them on a case by case basis. Just because someone alleges that Actor X did some horrible Y thing does not necessarily mean it is true. I want EVIDENCE, not hearsay. Better still, I want CONFIRMATION.
I will grant that this sort of behavior is very common in Hollywood, but I am talking about ONE SPECIFIC person — Kirk Douglass.
I want to know what evidence, other than because someone says so, there is that he raped Natalie Wood.
Wood died in 1981. The alleged rape occurred when she was 16 they say, which was 1954.
She became famous ONE YEAR LATER, nominated for Best Supporting Actress for “Rebel Without a Cause”. She went on to be nominated for Several More Best Actress awards.
She had 27 years to reveal what happened to her but never said a word about it.
Then suddenly, almost 30 years after she died, we get a Gawker article that tell us that Douglas raped Natalie “for hours”.
So, here’s where we are today -— BOTH ACTORS ARE DEAD.
Can I categorically say that Kirk Douglas did not rape Natalie Wood? Of course not. I have no way of knowing that.
But rape is something I take very seriously. It’s one of the worst things anyone can do to a person, if not the worst thing. It’s also a horrible thing to falsely accuse someone of without any evidence.
It feels like people have gotten into this mindset where that doesn’t matter anymore, and that it’s not actually a big deal to ruin someone’s reputation in that way if it’s not true. It is a big deal.
If we say it’s not a big deal to ruin someone’s reputation by saying they did a thing we have no evidence for, we are also saying that thing isn’t that big of a deal anyway. That worries me.
I’d rather lay this matter to rest than speculate.
I know that you have gone to a lot of effort to put words in my mouth and set up meaningless straw man arguments, but try to follow me on this... The biography that I watched was made in 2003, ten years before the “Gawker” piece that I have no knowledge of. Her close friends and family were interviewed. You can choose to believe that they were all lying, but what would have been their motivation? For “legal reasons” they didn't even name Kirk Douglass, but they gave unmistakable clues to his identity.
There are other accounts of Kirk's behavior as well, but what is the point of finding the links for you? You have made up your mind, he is a hero to you and you can believe what you want. To me he is just another miserable, degusting predecessor to Harvey Weinstein.
You really do have no clue do you? Natalie Wood was a child star! She was acting when she was 4. She was famous when she was a kid. Did you ever watch Miracle n 34th Street?