Kirk Douglas - # 220

Kirk Douglas, Indomitable Icon of Hollywood's Golden Age, Dies at 103

He was number 220 on the list.

The actor starred in such films as 'Champion,' 'The Bad and the Beautiful,' 'Lust for Life,' 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral' “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and 'Spartacus,' to name just a few.

Kirk Douglas, the son of a ragman who channeled a deep, personal anger through a chiseled jaw and steely blue eyes to forge one of the most indelible and indefatigable careers in Hollywood history, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 103.

“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” son Michael Douglas wrote on his Instagram account. “To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the Golden Age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”

Douglas walked away from a helicopter crash in 1991 and suffered a severe stroke in 1996 but, ever the battler, he refused to give in. With a passionate will to survive, he was the last man standing of all the great stars of another time.

Nominated three times for best actor by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956) — Douglas was the recipient of an honorary Oscar in 1996. Arguably the top male star of the post-World War II era, he acted in more than 80 movies before retiring from films in 2004.

"Kirk retained his movie star charisma right to the end of his wonderful life, and I'm honored to have been a small part of his last 45 years," Steven Spielberg said in a statement. "I will miss his handwritten notes, letters and fatherly advice, and his wisdom and courage — even beyond such a breathtaking body of work — are enough to inspire me for the rest of mine."

The father of two-time Oscar-winning actor-director-producer Michael Douglas, the Amsterdam, New York, native first achieved stardom as a ruthless and cynical boxer in Champion. In The Bad and the Beautiful, he played a hated, ambitious movie producer for director Vincente Minnelli, then was particularly memorable, again for Minnelli, as the tormented genius Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life, for which he won the New York Film Critics Award for best actor.

Perhaps most importantly, Douglas rebelled against the McCarthy Era establishment by producing and starring as a slave in Spartacus (1960), written by Dalton Trumbo, making the actor a hero to those blacklisted in Hollywood. The film became Universal’s biggest moneymaker, an achievement that stood for a decade.

Douglas’ many honors include the highest award that can be given to a U.S. civilian, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The broad-chested Douglas often bucked the establishment with his opinions, and he had the courage to back them up. “I’ve always been a maverick," he once said. "When I was new in pictures, I defied my agents to make Champion rather than appear in an important MGM movie they had planned for me [The Great Sinner, which wound up starring Gregory Peck]. Nobody had ever heard of the people connected to Champion, but I liked the Ring Lardner story, and that’s the movie I wanted to do. Everyone thought I was crazy, of course, but I think I made the right decision.”

Never one to toe the line with synthetic, movie star-type parts, Douglas played classic heels in a number of films. In 1951, he showed a keen flair for portraying strong-minded characters like the sleazy newspaper reporter in Billy Wilder’s The Big Carnival (aka Ace in the Hole) and the sadistic cop in William Wyler’s Detective Story. He played more sympathetic types in Out of the Past (1947), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957) as Doc Holliday, Paths of Glory (1957) and The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

Douglas was very particular in his role selection. “If I like a picture, I do it. I don’t stop to wonder if it’ll be successful or not,” he said in a 1982 interview. “I loved Lonely Are the Brave and Paths of Glory, but neither of them made a lot of money. No matter; I’m proud of them.”

His independent nature led him in 1955 to form his own independent film company, Bryna Productions. In the post-World War II era, Douglas was the first actor to take control of his career in this manner. Captaining his own ship, he soon launched a number of heady projects. Most auspiciously, he took a risk on a young Stanley Kubrick with Paths of Glory and Spartacus, films that feature two of Douglas’ finest performances. (He hired Kubrick for the latter after firing Anthony Mann a week into production.)

Indeed, Douglas backed his artistic and political opinions with action: His public announcement that blacklisted writer Trumbo would script Spartacus was a key moment in Hollywood’s re-acceptance of suspected communist figures.

During a Tonight Show appearance in August 1988 to promote his first book, The Ragman’s Son, Douglas told Johnny Carson that he often drew from personal experience for his work on film.

“What I found out when I wrote this book is I have a lot of anger in me,” he said. “I’m angry about things that happened many, many years ago. I think that anger has been a lot of the fuel that has helped me in whatever I’ve done.”

Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in the industrial town of Amsterdam. His parents, Jewish immigrants from Russia, raised seven children, and as soon as he was old enough, Douglas went to work to help support the family.

He put himself through St. Lawrence University by working as a janitor. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree, Douglas moved to Manhattan where, as a result of a single reading for the head of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, received a special scholarship.

Soon after graduating from the academy in 1941, Douglas made his Broadway debut in Spring Again, starring Grace George and C. Aubrey Smith, playing a singing messenger boy. In 1942, he enlisted in the Navy, attending the Midshipman School at Notre Dame, and was commissioned an ensign. He served on anti-submarine patrol in the Pacific as a communications officer until 1944, when he was honorably discharged as a lieutenant.

Returning to civilian life and Broadway, Douglas replaced Richard Widmark as the juvenile lead in Kiss and Tell and appeared in Trio and Star in the Window. It was his widely praised performance in The Wind Is Ninety that brought him to Hollywood’s attention. The year was 1946, and, at the suggestion of Lauren Bacall, producer Hal Wallis invited him to come to California for a screen test. Wallis was so impressed with Douglas that he cast him in the lead opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946).

Douglas would work with some of the century’s top directors, starring in such memorable films as Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and There Was a Crooked Man (1970), John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and John Huston’s The List of Adrian Messenger.

For Bryna, Douglas also starred in The Indian Fighter (1955), The Vikings (1958), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), Seven Days in May (1964) and The Brotherhood (1968).

One regret the actor-producer had was with one of his longtime pet projects, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Douglas starred as Randle Patrick McMurphy in the 1963 Broadway adaption of the Ken Kesey book and had optioned the project, but he never managed to make it into a film.

His son Michael and Saul Zaentz eventually produced the movie and, released in 1975, it collected five Academy Awards, including one for best picture. He received half of Michael's share of the profits, and his son often joked that it was the most money dad had ever made as a producer.

"He's completely inspirational," Michael said during an interview at the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival. "When you finally reach an age when you're not feeling like you have to compete with your father and you can look at him [as an equal] … of course, that took me until I was 60."

A man of restless energy and various interests, Douglas supported many causes and worked in public service. During the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson eras, he toured widely for the U.S. Information Agency and the U.S. State Department as a goodwill ambassador, going on missions to South America, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

In 1966, on behalf of the State Department, Douglas visited six Iron Curtain countries: Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. He often regaled acquaintances about a visit to Yugoslavia, where he managed a private visit with President Tito, much to the chagrin of the British ambassador who had been waiting for weeks for such an opportunity.

When the baffled British ambassador asked Douglas how he’d managed it, he replied, “Mr. Ambassador, how many movies have you made?” Realizing that a Hollywood star was in a unique position to enter domains beyond even established professionals, he sagely used his celebrity status to meet important people from all walks of life.

Successive presidents recognized Douglas’ good works: A citation of his efforts was inserted into the Congressional Record. In 1981, he received the Medal of Freedom for his “significant cultural endeavors as an actor and a goodwill ambassador.”

Further honors came to him in 1968 when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, during its Golden Globe ceremony, presented him with the Cecil B. DeMille Award. (In January 2017, he made a surprising visit to the Globes, serving as a presenter with his daughter-in-law, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.)

Douglas' humanitarian efforts earned him the American Award, presented by the Thomas A. Dooley Foundation. He was perhaps most proud of the honorary degree of Doctor of Fine Arts conferred on him by his alma mater, St. Lawrence.

In March 2009, Douglas starred in an autobiographical one-man show, Before I Forget, at the Center Theater Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City.

While making a film in France, Douglas met Parisienne Anne Buyden. They were married in 1954 and had two sons, Peter and Eric. She's 100 and survives him.

In May 2017, the actor's 11th book, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood, was published. (His first was his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son.)

On his 99th birthday, Douglas and his wife donated $15 million toward a new $35 million care center at the Motion Picture Television Fund home in Woodland Hills.

Sons Michael and Joel (a producer) were from Douglas’ 1943-51 marriage to actress Diana Dill, who died in 2015 at age 92.

Filmography

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1946      The Strange Love of Martha Ivers              Walter O'Neil    

1947      Out of the Past Whit Sterling     

Mourning Becomes Electra          Peter Niles         

1948      I Walk Alone       Noll "Dink" Turner          

The Walls of Jericho        Tucker Wedge  

1948      My Dear Secretary           Owen Waterbury            

1949      A Letter to Three Wives                 George Phipps  

Champion            Michael "Midge" Kelly    Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actor

1950      Young Man with a Horn                 Rick Martin        

The Glass Menagerie      Jim O'Connor    

1951      Along the Great Divide   Marshal Len Merrick      

Ace in the Hole Chuck Tatum     

Detective Story Detective Jim McLeod   

1952      The Big Trees     Jim Fallon           

The Big Sky         Jim Deakins        

The Bad and the Beautiful            Jonathan Shields               Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actor

1953      The Story of Three Loves               Pierre Narval     

The Juggler         Hans Muller       

Act of Love          Robert Teller     

1954      The Jack Benny Program                               TV series

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea    Ned Land            

1955      The Racers          Gino Borgesa    

Ulysses Odysseus             aka Ulysses

Man Without a Star         Dempsey Rae    

The Indian Fighter            Johnny Hawks   

1956      Lust for Life         Vincent van Gogh             Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actor

1957      Top Secret Affair               Maj. Gen. Melville A. Goodwin  

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral           Doc Holliday      

Paths of Glory    Colonel Dax       

1958      The Vikings         Einar     

1959      Last Train from Gun Hill                 Matt Morgan    

The Devil's Disciple          Richard "Dick" Dudgeon               

1960      Strangers When We Meet            Larry Coe            

Spartacus            Spartacus            Also co-executive producer

1961      Town Without Pity           Major Garrett   

The Last Sunset                 Brendan "Bren" O'Malley             

1962      Lonely Are the Brave       John W. "Jack" Burns     

Two Weeks in Another Town      Jack Andrus       

1963      The Hook             Sgt. P.J. Briscoe

The List of Adrian Messenger      Various                

For Love or Money          Donald Kenneth "Deke" Gentry

1964      Seven Days in May           Colonel Jiggs Casey         

1965      In Harm's Way   Commander Paul Eddington       

The Heroes of Telemark                Dr Rolf Pedersen             

1966      Cast a Giant Shadow       Col. Mickey Marcus        

Is Paris Burning?               Gen. George Patton       

1967      The Way West   Sen. William J. Tadlock  

The War Wagon                Lomax  

1968      Once Upon a Wheel        Himself                 Documentary

A Lovely Way to Die        Jim Schuyler      

The Brotherhood             Frank Ginetta     Also producer

1969      The Arrangement            Eddie Anderson               

1970      There Was a Crooked Man...       Paris Pitman Jr.

The Johnny Cash Show   Himself/Singer TV series (1 episode: #1.18)

1971      To Catch a Spy   Andrej

The Light at the Edge of the World            Will Denton        Also producer

A Gunfight          Will Tenneray   

1972      The Master Touch            Steve Wallace   

1973      Scalawag              Peg         Also director

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Musical TV movie

1974      Mousey                George Anderson            TV movie

1975      Posse    Marshal Howard Nightingale       Also director/producer

Once Is Not Enough         Mike Wayne      

1976      Victory at Entebbe           Hershel Vilnofsky             TV movie

1977      Holocaust 2000                 Robert Caine      aka Rain of Fire and The Chosen

1978      The Fury               Peter Sandza     

1979      The Villain           Cactus Jack        

1980      Saturn 3               Adam   

Home Movies    Dr. Tuttle "The Maestro"              

The Final Countdown     Capt. Matthew Yelland

1982      The Man from Snowy River          Harrison/Spur   

Remembrance of Love   Joe Rabin            

1983      Eddie Macon's Run          Marzack              

1984      Draw!    Harry H. Holland               TV movie

Hollywood Greats            Himself                 TV series (1 episode: "John Wayne")

1985      Amos     Amos Lasher       TV movie

1986      Tough Guys        Archie Long       

1987      Queenie               David Konig        TV movie

1988      Inherit the Wind               Matthew Harrison Brady              

1991      Oscar     Eduardo Provolone        

Veraz/Welcome to Veraz              Quentin               

Tales from the Crypt       General Kalthrob              TV series (1 episode: "Yellow")

1992      The Secret           Grandpa Mike Dunmore                TV movie

1994      A Century of Cinema       Himself                 Documentary

Greedy Uncle Joe McTeague      

Take Me Home Again     Ed Reece              TV movie

1996      The Simpsons    Chester J. Lampwick        Voice, TV series (1 episode: "The Day the Violence Died")

1997      Xena: Warrior Princess   Spartacus            TV series; archive footage (1 episode: "Athens Academy of the Performing Bards")

1999      Diamonds            Harry Agensky  

2000      Touched by an Angel      Ross Burger        TV series (1 episode: "Bar Mitzvah")

2003      It Runs in the Family        Mitchell Gromberg          His son Michael Douglas and grandson Cameron Douglas also appeared in the film

2004      Illusion Donald Baines   

2008      Empire State Building Murders   Jim Kovalski        TV movie; aka Meurtres à L'Empire State Building; final role

Radio appearances

Year       Program               Episode/source

1947      Suspense             "Community Property"

1950      Screen Directors Playhouse         Champion

1950      Suspense             The Butcher's Wife

1952      Lux Radio Theatre            Young Man with a Horn

1954      Lux Radio Theatre            Detective Story