From rags to riches... the remarkable Kirk Douglas
CHANNELLING the pent-up anger fuelled by his impoverished childhood, Kirk Douglas’s rugged good looks and muscular intensity propelled him to Hollywood stardom.
Millions flocked to watch his movies as he became a part of a golden era of leading men that included John Wayne, Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman.
To men, he embodied everything they strove to be, while women fawned over his brooding chiselled looks.
But while celebrated with awards for his on-screen appearances, Douglas’s finest role was that of Hollywood’s greatest hero behind the cameras.
While his name appeared in lights around the world, his battle against Tinsel Town’s darkest chapter is the legacy that he has left behind following his death at
103 on Wednesday.
Rallying against his paymaster movie bosses, Douglas defied the anti-communist blacklist in the US during the late 1940s and early 50s
After freeing himself from the shackles of a studio contract he, like Burt Lancaster and John Wayne, formed his own company. He then made waves in Hollywood by embarking on the 1960 film version of Spartacus, Stanley Kubrick’s Roman epic.
He played the rebellious Thracian Spartacus who, born and raised a slave, is sold to Gladiator trainer Batiatus.
After weeks of being trained to kill for the arena, Spartacus turns on his owners and leads the other slaves in rebellion.
Douglas insisted on hiring blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – who was expelled during the McCarthy era on suspicion of Communist sympathies – to pen the movie’s script.
So defiant was Douglas that he put Trumbo’s name in the credits rather than one of the pseudonyms he used.
“It was such a terrible, shameful time,” Douglas said. “Dalton was in prison because he refused to answer questions, so I decided, the hell with it. I’m going to put his name on it.
“I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of because it broke the blacklist.”
Douglas said he probably only got away with the move because Universal Studios was in the process of being sold and was in a weak bargaining position.
Whatever the case, the decision to name Trumbo started the ball rolling to end the blacklist, paving the way for others to follow suit.
Douglas’s willingness to fight for what he believed came from his tough upbringing. Born the poor son of an illiterate Russian-Jewish immigrant in December 1916, he was named Issur Danielovitch.
Growing up in Amsterdam, New York, a city 35 miles north west of Albany, he was the only boy among six sisters.
By the time he went to school, the family name changed to Demsky and Issur had become Isadore, or Izzy.
The city’s mills did not hire Jews, so
his father, Herschel, became a rag and bone man. “Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, the ragman was on the lowest rung on the ladder,” Douglas wrote. “I was the ragman’s son.” A hulking man who drank heavily and got into fights, his father often let his family fend for themselves. Douglas estimated he had held down 40 different jobs – among them delivering newspapers and washing pots – before he found success in Hollywood. He appeared in a few minor Broadway productions in 1940 but put his career on hold and enlisted in the US Navy, training in anti-submarine warfare. He also renewed his friendship with Diana Dill. They married in 1943, just before he left for the Second World war as a communications officer. After being injured in an accidental explosion in 1944 Douglas was discharged.
He returned to the US where the couple had two sons, Michael and Joel, before divorcing in 1951.
Later Douglas admitted to cheating on Dill and also his current wife, Anne Buydens. Throughout Hollywood, he was known as a serial womaniser.
“I’m a son of a bitch, plain and simple,” he admitted in his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman’s Son. The actor kissed and told on Joan Crawford, Linda Darnell, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth, Evelyn Keyes, Marilyn Maxwell, Patricia Neal, Ann Sothern and Gene Tierney.
His two marriages brought him four sons, all of whom entered the movie business – Joel and Peter as producers, Michael and Eric as actors. In his first 11 years of film acting he was nominated three times for the Best Actor Oscar – in 1950 for Champion, in 1953 for the Hollywood expose The Bad and the Beautiful and in 1957 as Vincent Van Gogh in the biopic Lust for Life.
With more than 92 acting credits, after his retirement, he battled various setbacks. In 1986 Douglas was fitted with a pacemaker to correct an irregular heartbeat. In 1991 he survived a helicopter crash that killed two. In January 1996 he suffered a debilitating stroke that left him with severely impaired speech and depression. He later said he felt so hopeless he became suicidal, putting the loaded gun he had used in Gunfight at the OK Corral in his mouth. Before he could pull the trigger, he hit a bad tooth, causing such pain he had second thoughts. But he fought his way back and later that year appeared at the Academy Awards to accept an Oscar for lifetime achievement.
He was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented by
Jimmy Carter just days before he left office in 1981, and a Kennedy Centre Honors award, presented in 1994 by President Bill Clinton.
In his later years, he devoted his time to charity, campaigning with his wife to build playgrounds in Los Angeles and establishing the Anne Douglas Center for Homeless Women, for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction.
Douglas never worried about his legacy, as he was “more adventurous in my choice of roles than most stars”.
Nor did he concern himself over how he would be viewed once dead. He said: “Why should we think we’re so special that we cannot just die? No, you only go around once and just hope you get the brass ring. The rest is ego.”