FAREWELL TO A HOLLYWOOD LEGEND
The world lost one of the final survivors of the golden age of movies when Kirk passed away at the age of 103 last week
He was the original Hollywood gladiator with the chiselled looks and muscular body to match, forever immortalised for his role as the leader of a slave rebellion in the 1960 epic Spartacus, but Kirk Douglas was an even bigger champion of the repressed in real life.
The film won four Academy Awards, but Kirk put his own career on the line by hiring writer Dalton Trumbo, who was at the time blacklisted in paranoid post-wwii Hollywood for suspected Communist sympathies, helping end the Mccarthy era of exclusion.
MORE THAN A STAR
It was just one of many brave moves Kirk made throughout his illustrious career – he was nominated for three Oscars in the 10 years after he made his film debut in 1946 – both on and off the big screen.
He campaigned with his second wife Anne to build 400 playgrounds in Los Angeles and established the Anne Douglas Center for homeless women, the Kirk Douglas High School to help trouble troubled students finish their educa education and the Kirk Dou Douglas Theatre to nur nurture young actors. He also donated
$ $15 million to help b build the Kirk Douglas C Care Pavilion.
“It is with t tremendous sadness t that my brothers and I announce that Kirk D Douglas left us today a at the age of 103,” M Michael wrote on his Ins Instagram account, cele celebrating his father’s incre incredible generosity and so social conscience. “To th the world, he was a legend, an a actor from the golden age o of movies who lived wwell well into his golden years, a humanitar humanitarian whose commitmen commitment to justice and the causes he h believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.
‘But to me and my brothers he was simply Dad’
“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.”
The son of a rag collector, Kirk, was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York, and worked as a janitor and gardener to pay for his tuition at St Lawrence University in Canton.
But he found his calling when he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York – where he met classmate and future star Lauren Bacall – before enlisting in the Navy at the start of WWII. A bout with amoebic dysentery led to an honourable discharge in 1944.
This became a blessing in disguise as his Hollywood career soon took off with Kirk garnering accolades for his roles in Champion, The Bad And The Beautiful, Lust For Life and Lonely Are The Brave.
MORAL FORCE
“There’s a single thread drawing all his characters together,” director Steven Spielberg said when he presented Kirk with a lifetime achievement Academy Award for his influence as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community.
“It’s called conscience. Every person he ever played had one... Kirk Douglas never made his characters simple. No good guys or bad guys. He shaded heroics with self-doubt and shaped his villainy with compassion.”
This famed actor with the tough guy persona said he never set out to be a movie star, and didn’t dwell on his screen legacy, telling People magazine in 1988 that he had been “more adventurous in my choice of roles than most stars of my generation”.