Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood

This collection from married couple Kirk, the Oscar-winning Hollywood star, and Anne, president of Kirk’s production company, demonstrates that unique insights can be gleaned from letters. Each chapter emphasizes a time period (“1957: On Location in Arizona, Germany, and Norway”) or subject (“Friends and Family”). The Douglases focus on the intimate letters of their courtship and marriage, but they also share their correspondence with others who touched their lives over the years, including actors, directors, and politicians. As a result, their tender musings are intermingled with letters from every U.S. president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama and from such Hollywood legends as Tony Curtis and Frank Sinatra. The letters are accompanied by commentary from the couple that reveals their feelings about love, family, friendship, and life in general. Movie aficionados will enjoy the gossip about such stars as Robert Mitchum, Vivien Leigh, and Elizabeth Taylor, and be touched by messages Kirk received while recovering from a stroke in 1996. Now 100 and 97 years old respectively, Kirk and Anne have been married over 60 years—a lifetime of experiences that offers captivating material for this little gem of a book. (May)