Kirk Douglas says he would be lost without his wife Anne

He pushes his wheeled walker before him like a chariot, head held high, steering across the living room’s hardwood floor to the champagne-coloured heavy silk couch in his Beverly Hills mansion, easing himself into the oversized plumped-up sofa.

His tanned face is slack with a century of weathering.

His speech is slow, slurred by the vestiges of a stroke two decades ago.

The star of Spartacus, The Bad And The Beautiful and Lust For Life feels every one of his 100 years.

Yet in his sparkling blue eyes there is no mistaking the love as Kirk Douglas gazes at Anne, his wife of 62 years. “I owe her so much,” says Kirk, who turned 100 in December.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without her. It will be 63 years next month. My god, how did it happen?”

Anne smiles: “You say ‘yes, darling’ a lot. We have a great relationship and have trusted each other, rightly or wrongly,” she says with a mischievous grin, taking his hand.

“We’re there for each other with love and enormous friendship.”

The room is elegantly stocked with paintings, sculptures and flowers but it was in a forgotten corner of a cupboard that Anne found the sweetest remembrance of their romance: a treasure trove of love letters dating back to 1953.

Those billet-doux and other intimate notes have been compiled into a touching and at times brutally honest new book, Kirk And Anne, offering an insight into one of Hollywood’s longest marriages.

“I had no idea she had kept them all these years,” says Kirk.

“I said, ‘We have to make this into a book.’”

But their correspondence also shows that the course of their true love did not always run smooth.

Recently divorced from Diana Dill, with whom he had sons Michael and Joel, Kirk was filming in Paris in 1953 when he hired German-born Anne Buydens as his trilingual personal secretary.

They soon began an affair even though he was seriously romancing Italian screen siren Pier Angeli.

“Anne was a sophisticated woman, unlike my virginal Pier Angeli, who took her mother on all our dates,” Kirk recalls.

He grew closer to Anne but: “I warned her not to expect a commitment. I was secretly engaged to Pier Angeli. I cannot believe how insensitive I was. I asked Anne to come to Bulgari and help me choose an engagement ring for Pier. She did it without a murmur but she must have been seething inside.”

Anne admits: “This was a particularly painful period for me… Kirk never tried to hide his dalliances from me.”

Confesses Kirk: “I was very active and saw lots of women.”

But Anne got her revenge.

“I threw him a surprise birthday party in his Paris apartment and invited every woman that he had had an affair with or took out, all standing in a long line when he arrived,” she laughs.

“Kirk opened the door, looked at the line-up and, smiling, whispered to me, ‘You b****!’”

Kirk proposed to Angeli in Paris on her 21st birthday but when she said yes Kirk lost all interest.

“Over dinner, knowing there were no obstacles to a night of passion, I fell out of love with her. I was bored with the conversation. Also there was no chemistry between us when we kissed as the clock struck midnight. I broke off our engagement.”

Liberated, he wrote dozens of passionate notes to Anne from distant film locations.

From Acapulco he wrote: “How I wish you were here. The bed next to mine is empty – and I wish you were in it.”

They exchanged letters in fluent French, German and English.

He called her “Darling” and “Stolz,” meaning “haughty”. She called him “Mein Liebling,” “Mon Cheri” and “Mon Amour”.

Yet still Kirk saw other women despite his letters to Anne: “I have been dating very little… Come to me, darling. My heart is empty and I need you near.

”After a year of their affair Anne gave Kirk an ultimatum, threatening to leave for ever: “I allowed you during this time to push me around emotionally and, if I don’t want to get hurt for good, I have to stop you from starting it again.”

Days later Kirk found Anne packing her bags. “That’s when it hit me,” he says.

“I would be lost without her. If she got on that plane she would never give me another chance. Suddenly, blessed with clarity, I asked Anne to marry me.”

They planned a whirlwind Las Vegas marriage that weekend.

“It wasn’t a romantic wedding but it was legal,” he says.

Yet because of visa delays Anne had to remain apart from Kirk for two months after their wedding, inspiring some emotional missives.

In one cable Kirk wrote of his frustration as their separation dragged on: “Have all the clocks in the world stopped running, is the earth no longer revolving on its axis, let’s give it a shove, Kirk.”

In another letter he wrote: “I miss you so much my darling. And I need you so much. I want our marriage to be a very happy, successful one.”

In Germany filming Stanley Kubrick’s The Paths Of Glory, Kirk wrote at 2.30am: “How incomplete I am without my family. How can any man live alone?”

Kirk waves a gnarled finger at me across the coffee table littered with orchids.

“Two things happened to make her my partner for life,” he says.

“She was suspicious of my business partner and it turned out he had taken all my money. I was broke but would never have known without Anne. Then she stopped me getting on a private plane to New York with Elizabeth Taylor’s husband, producer Mike Todd. Anne insisted, ‘I don’t want you on that plane.’ “She told me to fly commercial – and Todd’s plane crashed, killing everyone aboard. She saved my life. Now I always trust her intuition.”

On July 19, 1958 he wrote: “How often I think that if I weren’t married to you I’d be in awful shape. I’d be a bum and a drunkard without you. And the awful thing is I keep needing you more and more as I get older!”

Kirk smiles: “That’s still true.”

The couple, who had sons Peter and Eric together, the latter dying of an overdose aged 46, still make a handsome pair: Kirk in a baby blue sweater and black trousers, Anne in beige trousers and matching cardigan over a black jersey.

Yet they sit in a living room with no movie posters or awards from his 90 films over 60 years in Hollywood.

“It no longer gives me pleasure to look at the signed posters of my movies hanging there,” he says.

“I’ve outlived many of the friends I worked with and I miss them.”

After his massive stroke in 1996 Kirk admits contemplating suicide: “Feeling so sorry for myself I pulled out the gun I had saved from Gun- fight At The OK Corral to kill myself.”

But reviewing his life he realised: “I had been lucky – even with my stroke… Thank god for Anne’s tough love or I would have wallowed forever in self-pity.”

Their love is undiminished today, says Kirk: “We have been married more than 62 years and my unabated admiration and need for this remarkable woman still astounds me.”

Anne agrees: “This is the story of an unending love affair.”

“Love you,” says Kirk, smiling. “Love you more,” Anne replies, getting the final word.

To pre-order Kirk And Anne: Letters Of Love, Laughter And A Lifetime In Hollywood by Kirk and Anne Douglas (published by Running Press on May 25, £16.99) please call the Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562310, or send a cheque or postal order made payable to The Express Bookshop to: Kirk & Anne Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth, Cornwall, TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk

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