Occupational Hazards of Hollywood In Cold War
| Arash Norouzi The Mossadegh Project | August 11, 2026 |
Actor Kirk Douglas (1916-2020), who rose to fame in the time of McCarthyism, was one of the most iconic leading men in American cinema.
As the producer and star of Spartacus (1960), Douglas hired and insisted on crediting blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Douglas’ righteous deed, which jeopardized his own career, helped to break the Hollywood blacklist
regime imposed by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
While he was considering having his production company adapt the novel Seven Days in May (1964), he attended a DC luncheon with President John F. Kennedy and LBJ. To his surprise, JFK knew of his interest in the project, and
encouraged him to move forward with it. JFK thought the fictional scenario of a military coup taking place in America was actually plausible.
Decades later, a U.S. President who incited a violent
insurrection (and later pardoned everyone), threatens to remain in the White House after his second term is over. In a throwback to the Joe McCarthy era, this orange monstrosity, mentored by McCarthy’s partner Roy Cohn, has also
revived the antiquated practice of labeling political opposition “communists”.
History repeats. As Douglas wrote in his 2012 book I Am Spartacus!:
“Our world, I am sad to say, still remains divided today over many of the same issues that we lived through during the Red Scare and the making of Spartacus. Fearmongers Gerald L. K. Smith and Hedda Hopper [extreme right-wing Red-baiters] have been replaced by a new generation of demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. The fight for basic human freedom depicted in Spartacus is going on all over the globe from Syria to Iran.”
Kirk Douglas on U.S. Foreign Intervention
Beginning of a chapter in one of Douglas’ memoirs, Let’s Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning (2007):
We make movies to entertain, but sometimes movies also teach, and they can influence an audience that now extends all over the world. That is an enormous responsibility. I’ve produced that kind of movie myself, so I know the
responsibility. In 1962 I was very excited about the possibility of making a film of Seven Days in May, based on a novel by
Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey and
with a screenplay by Rod Serling.
Many governments in the world have been overtaken by military coups. The United States participated in the overthrow of governments in Hawaii in 1893, Cuba in 1898, the Philippines in 1898, Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954,
and present-day Iraq. Could that happen in America? That was the theme of the book and I wanted Bryna to produce the movie. [His company, Bryna Productions]
Kirk Douglas and wife at the Iranian Embassy with Amb. Ardeshir Zahedi. Though Douglas was pals with Zahedi, he probably did not know that the charming diplomat was a participant
in the 1953 coup in Iran.
When Kirk Douglas Met Soraya
Another player in the 1953 coup was the Shah’s Queen (and aspiring actress) Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari, whom Douglas says he met while filming Ulysses (1954) in Italy in 1953. He told the story in his first memoir, The
Ragman’s Son: An Autobiography (1988), excerpted below.
It must be noted, however, that the Shah and Soraya did not divorce until 1958. Soraya did spend 2-3 weeks in Italy that year, however, arriving in April 1953, so she and Douglas could have met. She returned to Rome in August with the Shah after the royal couple fled the attempted coup against Premier Mossadegh. In 1965, she starred in the Italian film The Three Faces (I Tre Volti) with Richard Harris.
Pictures of Soraya, the beautiful wife of the Shah of Iran, were on the covers of magazines all over the world that summer. The Shah was divorcing her because they had not had any children. And now she was living in Italy. I wanted to
meet her, but didn’t know how. Finally, somebody pointed out the obvious: “You’re a movie star. Call her up.”
I invited her to a cocktail party at my villa. She brought her mother, a German woman who drank quite a bit; and a couple of male attendants—bodyguards? Soraya was certainly very attractive. We spent a pleasant enough time together,
but in person she didn’t possess that special quality that I had perceived in all those pictures. Another instance where I would have been better off leaving my dreams alone.
Recommended films starring Kirk Douglas:
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Last Train from Gun Hill (1959)
There Was a Crooked Man... (1970)
Saturn 3 (1980)
Related links:
Actor Ben Affleck on Middle East, Iran, Shah, Mossadegh
‘Thousand-and-One Nights’ Drama In Modern Dress | Richmond Times-Dispatch, Aug. 1953
“Douglas of the World” in Tehran — the lost 1953 radio program (AUDIO)
MOSSADEGH t-shirts — “If I sit silently, I have sinned”
