Kirk Douglas Almost Starred In One Of Sylvester Stallone's Most Iconic Action Movies

Aside from Rocky Balboa, John J. Rambo is Sylvester Stallone's best-known role, and like 1976's "Rocky," the inaugural "Rambo" film had to overcome so many hurdles, it's a wonder it was ever made in the first place. The script for 1982's "First Blood" seems to have been one of the most problematic screenplays in Hollywood history (alongside the script for the John Travolta sci-fi flop that haunted its writer for years). Not only did Sly completely rewrite the screenplay after coming on-board to star, it seems Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas dropped out of the project due to creative differences with that same script.

"First Blood" sees Stallone's Vietnam vet and former Green Beret return home to a United States that isn't all that happy to see him. After he escapes police custody and absconds to the Washington wilderness, Rambo is forced to single-handedly take on the police force of Hope, Washington alongside the state patrol and national guard, which he of course manages with relative ease. While Brian Dennehy's Sheriff William Teasle is focused on bringing down the rogue soldier, Richard Crenna's Colonel Samuel R. Trautman flies in to offer his guidance. Rambo's former commander even delivers a classic warning to Teasle and co. when he says, "I didn't come here to rescue Rambo from you, I came here to rescue you from him."

It's this sort of thing Stallone wanted more of in the script. Sly initially thought "First Blood" would ruin his career, and asked for significant recuts that reduced his dialogue to a minimum and allowed other characters to speak about him, thereby turning Rambo into a sort of all-powerful mythical figure who others speak of in hushed tones. Evidently, no amount of script changes were going to suit Kirk Douglass, however, who was originally set to deliver Trautman's line but left "First Blood" due to "artistic differences." In reality, he and director Ted Kotcheff just couldn't agree on Trautman's dialogue, and Douglas departed despite actually filming some scenes.  

It wasn't just script issues that held back the inaugural Rambo film. Shooting "First Blood" in Canada led to a string of delays and according to AFI, producer Ed Carlin suffered a heart attack before being replaced by Buzz Feitshans. AFI also cites December 1981 issues of The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety as reporting that Kirk Douglas was initially cast as Colonel Samuel R. Trautman, and was even present in Vancouver for filming, but left the project claiming "artistic differences." At the time, the outlets reported that these differences had to do with the script and the following year, the New York Times claimed that Douglas was originally set to play an "important cameo role as Mr. Stallone's Army trainer" but that the actor "left after his small but flashy cameo was drastically cut." But in the years since these reports first emerged, we've learned a little more about what prompted the screen legend to leave the production.

In 2017, "First Blood" director Ted Kotcheff spoke to Entertainment Weekly about Douglas' time on the film, and painted a pretty unflattering picture of the veteran star. According to Kotcheff, Douglas flew out to Vancouver and was there for the very beginning of production, but was, in the director's estimation, "a strange man." As Kotcheff remembered it, the actor "had an unsettling manner of always talking about himself in the third person" and demanded that he be allowed to say lines which were originally written for other characters, despite the director's attempts to change his mind. "He was a big star," said Kotcheff. "We wanted to bend over backwards. I sent him the script when he was performing in a play in San Francisco. He loved the script and said he wanted to do it. Then when he got up there, he started quarreling, before he even started to shoot. 'This line's gotta be changed.' 'I don't like this scene.'" In Kotcheff's recollection, Douglas' suggestions for dialogue were "like a B-film, circa 1940," all of which prompted the director to finally speak to the producers. "I said to the producers, 'I can't please this guy,'" recalled the director. "'I've rewritten this damn scene four times trying to incorporate the things he tells me, then when he sees it in front of the page he doesn't like it.'"

Finally, Kotcheff was given the go-ahead to confront Douglas and asked the "Paths of Glory" star whether he'd be willing to simply shoot the script they'd written. Alas, the actor wasn't having it. "He said, 'Okay, Kirk Douglas goes back to Los Angeles.'"

After Kirk Douglas departed "First Blood," Richard Crenna came in to play Colonel Trautman. Though he wasn't as big a star as Douglas and was never going to be as perfectly cast in the role as Sylvester Stallone was in the lead, he did an admirable job and brought decades of experience to a role that required a certain amount of authority and wisdom. Crenna also played the role in the next two movies, and was there for John J. Rambo's transformation from haunted Vietnam vet to unstoppable killing machine. But it seems he came close to only appearing in the first movie. In fact, every one of the characters, including Rambo himself, came close to only appearing in a single Rambo movie as "First Blood" — which remains the best Rambo movie to this day — was initially supposed to be a one-and-done.

In his EW interview, Ted Kotcheff explained how he'd envisioned the film as "Rambo's suicide mission," wherein a soldier deeply troubled by his role in the Vietnam war went on one final rampage which ended with him being surrounded by the police and army. "The Colonel comes in there to put him out of his misery," explained Kotcheff of the original ending. "[Rambo] says, 'I know you have a gun underneath your jacket there. You created me. Now, you have to kill me.' And he pulls out the gun. But [The Colonel] can't do it, of course. But Rambo reaches out, presses the trigger, and blows himself away. The whole scene was awfully moving. He kills himself!"

This was to be the big finale of the movie, and the crew even shot this scene before Sylvester Stallone suggested they keep Rambo alive and they reworked it to leave the hero intact. Had Douglas remained on the project, this would have been his biggest moment in the whole film, with Kotcheff acknowledging that he would have been the one holding the gun that Sly's hero uses to end his life. In the end neither Douglas nor Crenna appeared in this scene, which was replaced with the version in which Rambo survives, thereby setting him up for multiple sequels (and one heck of a kill count).