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ARCHIVE: DOUGLAS: My First Cigarette, and My Last  

My father, a Russian peasant, came to this country in 1910. Like all of his pals, he smoked. It's hard for me to picture my father without a cigarette in his mouth.

After many years of smoking, my father was told by his doctor that he would die of cancer if he did not stop smoking. So he quit cold turkey. Here's how he did it: he always carried one cigarette in the breast pocket of his shirt. When he felt the urge to smoke, he'd take the cigarette out and look at it fiercely. With a growl, he would say, in his Russian accent, "Who's stronger? You -- me?"

He would glare at the cigarette: "I stronger." And he'd put the cigarette back in his pocket. He did that for a few years, but it was too late. He died of cancer at age 72. . . .

. My first picture was "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers," with Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin, in 1946. I was intimidated, but proud to be playing the role of Miss Stanwyck's husband. I arrived at the set, very excited, to do my first scene with her. But I had spoken only a few lines when the director, Lewis Milestone, stopped the action and said, "Kirk, you should be smoking a cigarette in this scene." . . .

When I became famous, tobacco companies supplied me with cartons of cigarettes every month. One day in 1950 I was in my den, smoking as usual. I exhaled and through the smoke I saw a picture of my father on my desk. I thought of him on his deathbed. I stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. I took one cigarette from the pack and threw the rest in the wastebasket.

I held up the cigarette and studied it. My father's words came to me: "Who's stronger? You -- me?"

"I stronger." I put the cigarette in my shirt pocket and never smoked again. . . .

Hollywood started me smoking, literally putting a cigarette in my hand. Who knows how many moviegoers have started smoking because of what they have seen on the screen? Too many movies glorify young people smoking. It doesn't have to be this way. I have done at least 50 pictures where I avoided smoking. In one film, "The Brotherhood," I played a Mafia character and chewed on a cigar. In a scene from a film I just did, "The Illusion," when offered a cigarette, I say: "I don't smoke. I have cancer."

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