Wife's sixth sense saved Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas from plane crash
FILM legend Kirk Douglas has told for the first time how his wife’s “sixth sense” saved him from dying in a plane crash nearly 60 years ago.
Kirk Douglas and his wife Anne
The Oscar-winning icon, who turned 100 last year, was due to fly to New York on a private jet owned by producer Mike Todd, the third husband of Elizabeth Taylor and a close friend, to meet former President Harry Truman.
The night before his pregnant wife Anne told him she had a “strange feeling” about the trip and pleaded with him not to go, leading to a fierce argument described in their joint memoir, due out next month.
Heartwarming video of Kirk Douglas and his grandson Dylan
The Hollywood icon as Spartacus
The following morning, March 22, 1958, they turned on their radio to learn that Todd’s jet had crashed in New Mexico, with no survivors.
“You saved my life,” he recalls telling Anne, who is still at his side after 62 years of marriage, adding: “I promised her right there, right then, I would never doubt her intuition again.”
The memoir also tells of friendship with the brilliant but “painfully shy” British actor Laurence Olivier and his sex-obsessed actress wife Vivien Leigh.