KIRK DOUGLAS

One of the last great stars of the Hollywood Golden Age, Kirk Douglas, died last month at the age of 103.

Born into poverty in the city of Amsterdam, New York, on 9 December 1916, Issur Danielovich Demsky was the son of Jewish immigrants. One of seven siblings, he worked more than 40 jobs in his youth, and paid his way through the American Academy of Dramatic Arts by wrestling professionally and working as a bellhop and a car-park attendant. Going by the stage name Kirk Douglas, he was several plays into a Broadway career when he enlisted in the US Navy in 1941. Two years later he was medically discharged and married former classmate Diana Dill, with whom he had two children – actor-producer Michael and producer Joel.

Douglas made his screen debut in 1946, playing opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love Of Martha Ivers. The following year he made a strong impact as the villain in Jacques Tourneur’s classic corkscrew noir,

Out Of The Past. But it was in 1949’s Champion that the cleft-chinned actor found his groove, essaying virility and vulnerability as washed-up boxer Midge Kelly. For his performance, Douglas received the first of his three Oscar nominations – the others were for playing a vicious film producer in 1952’s The Bad And The Beautiful, and a tormented Vincent Van Gogh in 1956’s Lust For Life – though he was not awarded a gong until he collected an honorary Oscar in 1996, just weeks after suffering a stroke.

A driven actor who, by his own admission, frequently played “sons of bitches” – his standout performance is as a ruthless, mercenary journalist in

Billy Wilder’s scathing 1951 satire Ace In The Hole – Douglas was as tough off the screen as he was on it. In 1955 he formed his production company Byrna so that he might escape the studios’ iron fist (“No one’s my boss,” he growled), and Byrna’s 1960 Roman slave epic Spartacus, in which Douglas also starred, defied the anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy era by hiring blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Spartacus was helmed by Stanley Kubrick, who had previously directed Douglas in Byrna’s seminal 1957 anti-war drama, Paths Of Glory.

A Hollywood power player who fought injustices, served four US presidents as a special ambassador and created a charitable foundation, Douglas’ career was nonetheless dogged by allegations of sexual harassment and worse. True or false, it casts a deep shadow on a life and career that was otherwise heroic. JG