Riches From a Ragpicker’s Son

Kirk Douglas, the actor, the author, the high school, is demonstrating his further versatility, entertaining a visitor to his Beverly Hills home by breaking into song. It is left up to the listener’s discretion whether the 83-year- old Douglas has an ear for music or must have lopped off the good one when he played Vincent Van Gogh.

“I’m Red Hot Henry Brown, the hottest man in town,” he belts out, or at least as close to belting as Douglas is able to come since a stroke in January 1996 slurred his speech. It is the same vaudeville ditty he sang while auditioning many years ago for “On the Town” on a Broadway stage, the same tune he regaled John and Jackie Kennedy with one night when everybody at a White House party took a turn doing a number.

Arguably in good voice, Douglas is unquestionably in good spirits. It’s been only a few days since West Granada High School changed its name to his, much the way a self-described ragman’s son born as Issur Danielovitch had his own name altered to Izzy Demsky by his school days and to Kirk Douglas by the time he hit Hollywood.

“I told the kids, ‘Just be glad you don’t have to tell anybody you go to Issur Danielovitch High,’ ” he says with a laugh, then repeats the extemporaneous cheer he came up with for the school’s next big pep rally:

K.D. High! K.D. High!

Watch ‘em fly! Watch ‘em fly!

“So what would teams from Kirk Douglas High call themselves?” he is asked.

“Ragpickers, I guess,” he says.

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In a more serious vein, Douglas also told the students last Wednesday that his own generation had pretty much made a mess of the 20th century, one rife with war and racism and murder, so: “It’s up to you now. This one will be your century-- go make something better out of it.”

The kids would cheer for Schwarzenegger High if they needed to, had somebody named their school after that movie star. It was Douglas, though, with his wife, Anne--two tireless philanthropists--who came through for the Granada Hills campus with a fitness track a year ago, part of a remarkable effort on the couple’s part that has created or improved playground facilities for more than 90 of the L.A. area’s schools.

When the principal suggested that West Granada be named after the actor, it took some doing. A standing rule that no LAUSD school be named after a living individual would have to be waived.

“Are you trying to tell old Kirk Douglas to hurry up and die?” old Kirk Douglas himself joked.

West Granada High is a special school, only 57 students in all. It was tailored to aid kids who have had difficulties in school--poor grades, truancy, trouble with authority figures, whatever. Douglas’ own school days in Amsterdam, N.Y., were no day at the beach. He could empathize.

There was a girl who reneged as his prom date because of her father’s bias against a Jew and the son of a ragpicker (or junk collector). Later, there was a badly needed janitor’s job that Kirk lost after graduating from Wilbur H. Lynch High School. He got fired for no apparent reason--by Wilbur H. Lynch personally.

But one high school teacher took an extremely personal interest in him, and that made a difference. Douglas put himself through college, at St. Lawrence, and would years later give it a $1-million donation.

“Education is so neglected,” he says. “It’s like the joke about the weather, where everybody complains but nobody does anything about it.”

The Douglases do plenty.

Most of the best movies Kirk made--”Paths of Glory,” “Spartacus,” “Lust for Life”-- were before the West Granada students’ time. But the other day, while waiting for Douglas to arrive, many of the kids viewed a video of “Tough Guys,” his final screen pairing with Burt Lancaster. Douglas didn’t know they’d seen it--until someone told him.

“They did?” the actor asked, as pleased as when the students presented him and Anne with monogrammed school jackets.

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He’s 83, wears a pacemaker and has survived a helicopter crash, but Kirk Douglas continues to have a lust for life. He works as an actor and writes books. He helps his son Michael raise funds for the motion picture retirement home and hospital, where Kirk recently was reunited with Jan Sterling, his co-star from one of his favorite films, Billy Wilder’s “Ace in the Hole.”

And he vows to keep an eye on “K.D. High.” Self-improvement in young people is enjoyable to him. (He still relishes telling the story that Michael’s greatest achievement was not winning an Oscar, but working at a gas station in his youth and being named “Employee of the Month.”)

The Douglases recently sold their Palm Springs second home of nearly 40 years to spend more time in the Santa Barbara area with their children and grandchildren.

Who knows? Perhaps he can take the younger ones to high school someday, maybe even to see the Kirk Douglas High Ragpickers in person.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com