Born fighter who played Spartacus helped rip up Hollywood’s blacklist
Kirk Douglas, the intense, muscular actor with dimpled chin who starred in Spartacus, Lust for Life and dozens of other films, helped fatally weaken the blacklist against suspected Communists and reigned for decades as a Hollywood maverick and patriarch.
His granite-like strength and underlying vulnerability made the son of illiterate Russian immigrants one of the top stars of the
20th century. He appeared in more than 80 films, in roles ranging from Doc Holliday in
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral to Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life.
He worked with some of Hollywood’s greatest directors, from Vincente Minnelli and Billy Wilder to Stanley Kubrick and Elia Kazan. His career began at the peak of the studios’ power, more than 70 years ago, and ended in a more diverse, decentralised era that he helped bring about.
Always competitive, Douglas never received an Academy Award for an individual film, despite being nominated three times – for
Champion, The Bad and the Beautiful, and Lust for Life. But in 1996, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him an honorary Oscar.
In his latter years, he was a final link to a so-called ‘‘Golden Age’’, a man nearly as old as the industry itself.
In his youth, he represented a new kind of performer, more independent and adventurous than Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and other giants of the Hollywood studio era of the 1930s and 1940s, and more willing to speak his mind.
Reaching stardom after World War II, he was as likely to play cads (the movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful, the journalist in
Ace in the Hole) as he was suited to play heroes, as alert to the business as he was at home before the camera.
He started his own production company in
1955, when many actors still depended on the studios, and directed some of his later films.
A born fighter, Douglas was especially proud of his role in the downfall of Hollywood’s blacklist, which halted and ruined the careers of writers suspected of proCommunist activity or sympathies.
Douglas, who years earlier had reluctantly signed a loyalty oath to get the starring role in
Lust for Life, provided a crucial blow when he openly credited the former Communist and Oscar winner Dalton Trumbo for script work on Spartacus, the epic about a slave rebellion in ancient Rome that was released in 1960.
‘‘Everybody advised me not to do it because you won’t be able to work in this town again. But I was young enough to say to hell with it,’’ Douglas said about Spartacus in a 2011 interview. ‘‘I think if I was much older,
I would have been too conservative: ‘Why should I stick my neck out?’ ’’
Douglas rarely played lightly. He was compulsive about preparing for roles and a supreme sufferer on camera, whether stabbed with scissors in Ace in the Hole or crucified in Spartacus. His personal favourite role was in the 1962 western Lonely are the Brave, which included a line of dialogue from a Trumbo script he called the most personal he ever spoke on screen: ‘‘I’m a loner clear down deep to my very guts.’’
Kirk Douglas was an acrobat, a juggler, a self-taught man who learnt French in his 30s and German in his 40s. He was born Issur Danielovitch to an impoverished Jewish family in Amsterdam, New York.
He took the name Kirk Douglas as he worked his way through the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, choosing ‘‘Douglas’’ because he wanted his last name still to begin with ‘‘D’’ and ‘‘Kirk’’ because he liked the hard, jagged sound of the ‘‘K’’.
Douglas was a star in high school and in college he wrestled and built the physique that was showcased in many movies. One of his strongest childhood memories was of flinging a spoonful of hot tea into the face of his intimidating father. ‘‘I have never done anything as brave in any movie,’’ he later wrote.
Beginning in 1941, Douglas won some small roles on Broadway, served briefly in the navy and received a key Hollywood break when an old friend, Lauren Bacall, recommended he play opposite Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. His real breakthrough came as an unscrupulous boxer in 1949’s Champion, a low-budget production he was advised to turn down. ‘‘After
Champion, I was a tough guy. I did things like playing van Gogh, but the image lingers.’’
He had long desired creative control and
Champion was followed by a run of hits that gave him the clout to form Bryna Productions in 1955, and a second company later.
Many of his movies, such as Kubrick’s
Paths of Glory, The Vikings, Spartacus, Lonely Are the Brave and Seven Days in May, were produced by his companies.
In his 70s, he became an author, his books including the memoir The Ragman’s Son and two novels. ‘‘We are living in a town of make-believe,’’ he said in
2014. ‘‘I have done about 90 movies. That means that every time I was pretending to be someone else.
‘‘There comes a time in your life when you say, Well, who am I? I have found writing books a good substitute to making pictures. When you write a book, you get to determine what part you are playing.’’
Douglas also became one of Hollywood’s leading philanthropists. The Douglas Foundation has donated millions to a wide range of institutions.
As a young man, he lived like a movie star, especially in the pre-#MeToo era. He was romantically linked with many of his female co-stars. He had been married to Diana Dill, but they divorced in 1951. Three years later, he married Anne Buydens, whom he met in Paris while he was filming Act of Love.
Douglas had two children with each of his wives and all went into show business, against his advice. Besides Michael, they are Joel and Peter, both producers, and Eric, an actor who died of a drug overdose in 2004.
Kirk Douglas’ film credits in the 70s and
80s included Brian De Palma’s The Fury and a comedy, Tough Guys, that co-starred Burt Lancaster, his long-time friend.
‘‘I’ve often said I’m a failure, because I didn’t achieve what I set out to do,‘‘ Douglas said in 2009. ‘‘My goal in life was to be a star on the New York stage. The first time I was asked by [film producer] Hal Wallis to come to Hollywood, I turned him down. ‘Hollywood? That trash? I’m an actor on the Broadway stage!’ ’’ –AP
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‘‘Everybody advised me not to do it because you won’t be able to work in this town again. But I was young enough to say to hell with it.’’
Kirk Douglas on publicly crediting a former Communist for his film script work during the Hollywood blacklist period
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