He was the last great star of Hollywood’s Golden Age. And yesterday tributes poured in for Kirk Douglas who has died aged 103.
With his rugged good looks, dimpled chin and steely blue-eyed stare, he appeared in more than 90 films including 1960’s Spartacus in a career spanning seven decades.
Family members led the tributes with son Michael saying: “To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years….But to me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine, a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband.”
Michael’s wife and Douglas’ daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta Jones simply wrote: “To my darling Kirk, I shall love you for the rest of my life. I miss you already. Sleep tight.”
Star Trek actor William Shatner described him as “an incredible icon” while co-star George Takei praised him as “a champion for many causes.”
Kirk with son Michael (Image: NC)
Danny DeVito called him “the inspirational scalawag,” adding: “Great hanging with you man”
and director Steven Spielberg said Douglas left behind a “breathtaking body of work”.
Jamie Lee Curtis, whose dad Tony Curtis starred opposite Douglas in Spartacus, said he had “LOVED you as the world loved you. Your Passion.Talent. Politics. Family. Art. Strength.” Meanwhile Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone described the star as one of his heroes.
Douglas’ extraordinary life started from humble beginnings. Born Issur Danielovich Demsky to penniless Jewish immigrants in New York in 1916, his parents had fled Russia to escape being forced into the army.
Catherine Zeta Jones simply wrote: “To my darling Kirk, I shall love you for the rest of my life. I miss you already. Sleep tight.” (Image: 2003 Getty Images)
The only boy in a family of six girls, he claimed to have had more than 40 jobs to earn enough money to buy food.
He changed his name to enlist in the US Navy during World War II before making his debut in 1946’s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, opposite Barbara Stanwyck.
Douglas’ desperation to escape his tough start in life helped propel him to the top and he earned three Oscar nominations during his career – for 1949 boxing drama Champion, 1952’s The Bad and The Beautiful and 1956 biopic Lust for Life in which he portrayed Vincent Van Gogh. He failed to clinch a win but was awarded an honorary gong in 1996.
Kirk married Anne Buydens after they met on the set of Lust For Life (Image: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
His many other screen roles included a role in swashbuckling historical drama The Vikings, but it’s for Roman empire epic Spartacus he was best known, as the leader of a slave revolt. It produced the classic cinematic moment when the recaptured slaves are ordered to reveal their leader in exchange for their lives.
Instead each in turn declares: “I am Spartacus” – sealing their own fate.
Spartacus also marked the moment when Douglas defied the Hollywood blacklist – where left-learning or suspected Communist sympathisers in the film industry were denied work. He hired one such suspect, Dalton Trumbo, to write the movie.
John Wayne and Kirk Douglas holding the reins of their captured armored stagecoach in a scene from the film ‘The War Wagon’ (Image: 2012 Getty Images)
Douglas’ love life proved just as eventful as any of his films. His first relationship was with his English teacher Mrs Livingston who seduced him when he was just 14.
He married first wife Diana Dill in 1943 and the pair had two sons, actor Michael and producer Joel.
They divorced in 1951 and three years later he married Anne Buydens after they met on the set of Lust For Life. While they remained together until his death, he confessed to affairs with actresses including Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Patricia Neal – while she was dating Gary Cooper – and Gene Tierney. He later told how Tierney would like him to surprise her for sex by unexpectedly climbing through her window.
Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster address the guests 25 March 1985 in Hollywood at the 57th Annual Academy Awards (Image: ROB BOREN/AFP via Getty Images)
Despite his infidelity, Anne stood by him and they had two sons, Peter, a producer and Eric an actor. Tragedy would strike in 2004 though when Eric died in 2004 from an overdose aged 46.
Douglas also had a difficult relationship with son Michael, who felt he put ambition over dad duties.
Their biggest fallout came in adult life when Michael convinced Douglas to sell him the rights to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and refused to cast his dad in the lead.
Michael instead hired a younger Jack Nicholson and the 1975 movie cleaned up at the Oscars, leaving Douglas furious.
Kirk Douglas and Frank Sinatra laugh together at the Moulin Rouge (Image: Darlene Hammond/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
They made up but both father and son shared a tendency for womanising and when it was falsely reported Michael was in rehab for sex addiction in the 1990s, his dad joked: “What’s wrong with sex addiction? I’ve had it all my life. It’s never bothered me.”
In 1991 Douglas narrowly survived a helicopter crash and suffered a stroke five years later which left him with slurred speech and damaged facial nerves. Despite that he attended the Oscars two weeks later to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. Afterwards he was inspired to focus more on religion and spirituality.
Douglas made his final screen appearance in 2004 and his last public appearance was in 2018 when son Michael unveiled his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He spent the last years of his life surrounded by his family and died one of Tinseltown’s greatest stars. As he said: “I came from from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
