Douglas turns 100
Tea party for Hollywood legend
— As Hollywood star Kirk Douglas turns 100 on Friday, he will be celebrating with a birthday party and the publication of a new book.
In May, Running Press/Turner Classic Movies will publish the new book, the actor’s 12th, written with his wife of 62 years, Anne Buydens Douglas. It’s called Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood.
His son Michael and Michael’s wife Catherine Zeta-Jones are hosting 150 or so friends and associates at a tea party in Beverly Hills to honour the actor born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam, N.Y., the son of Russian Jewish immigrants (from what is now Belarus).
Growing up poor, he took to acting while in high school and persuaded St. Lawrence University to lend him tuition money, which he paid back by working part-time as a gardener and a janitor.
After studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York (his classmates included Betty Joan Perkse, later known as Lauren Bacall), he went on to appear in 87 movies, including Spartacus (1960), Lonely Are the Brave (1962, which he often cites as a favourite) and his Oscar-nominated turns in Lust for Life (1956) and Champion (1949).
To mark his 99th birthday last year, he made a $15-million donation (all figures in U.S. dollars) to the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s new $35-million Alzheimer’s facility in Los Angeles that will be named the Kirk Douglas Care Pavilion. That brought to $40 million his lifetime donations to the organization.
One of the last survivors of Hollywood’s golden age, Douglas joins an exclusive club of Hollywood centenarians, including George Burns, Bob Hope, Norman Lloyd and Olivia de Havilland (who turned 100 in July).