Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Hollywood’s golden oldies
MARION McMULLEN looks at the stars with staying power as cinema great Kirk Douglas turns 102
‘I’M too old to change. Like Popeye, ‘I yam, what I yam.’ Love me or hate me, just don’t be indifferent,” Kirk Douglas once said.
The cleft-chinned star of movies like Spartacus, Lust For Life and The Vikings is 102 on December 9 and attended a ceremony last month honouring his actor son Michael Douglas with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in California.
Born Issur Danielovitch to Jewish immigrants from what is now Belarus, Kirk went on to make more than 90 films and once explained his success by saying: “I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.”
Gone With The Wind’s Olivia De Havilland turned 102 on July 1.
She was born in Japan in 1916 to British parents and made her mark in films like Captain Blood and The Adventures Of Robin Hood.
She was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth last year for services to drama – the oldest woman ever to receive the honour – and is now the only surviving major cast member of Gone With The Wind.
Olivia, who lives in retirement in Paris, once declared: “I consider every birthday a victory.”
Calamity Jane and Pillow Talk film star Doris Day celebrated her 96th birthday on April 3 and says she still gets fan mail from all over the world.
Known as America’s Sweetheart, she was born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in 1922 and said last year: “I’ve always said that age is just a number and I have never paid much attention to birthdays.”
The animal lover set up the Doris Day Animal League in California in 2008 and her Doris Day Animal Foundation offers scholarships to veterinary students. She once said: “I’ve never met an animal I didn’t like – and I can’t say the same thing about people.”
American comedy star Betty White is also 96 and an animal lover, too. Sitcom The Golden Girls brought her international fame and she kept the laughter coming as a cast regular on Hot In Cleveland.
She once joked: “I may be a senior, but so what? I’m still hot.”
Throaty-voiced actress Glynis Johns played a mermaid in 1948 movie Miranda, was mother-of-two Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins and appeared alongside Sandra Bullock playing granny Elsie in While You Were Sleeping.
She celebrated her 95th birthday in October and now lives in retirement in Santa Monica in Los Angeles.
Murder She, Wrote’s TV detective Angela Lansbury turned 93 this year and is still working. The Londonborn actress, who was made a Dame in 1994, makes a cameo appearance in the new Mary Poppins Returns movie and is still fondly remembered for her magical film role in Bedknobs And Broomsticks.
She says: “Providing I can put one foot in front of the other, I will continue to act.”
Ninety-two-year-old Chitty Chitty Bang Bang star Dick Van Dyke also appears in Mary Poppins playing Bert and Mr Dawes Senior in the original 1964 movie with Julie Andrews. He once joked: “I’ve retired so many times now it’s getting to be a habit.”
Melvin Kaminsky, better known as comedy writer and actor Mel Brooks, also turned 92 earlier this year and is still working.
The Young Frankenstein and The Producers writer is still working and was the voice of Vlad in this year’s Hotel Tranylvania 3 movie A Monster Vacation.
He also has three forthcoming projects on the go – Blazing Samurai, Fairy Tale Forest and the as-yet-untitled Lani Pixels projects.
He once pointed out: “You’re young forever when you write. Alfred Hitchcock directed until the day he died. As long as you don’t have any dementia or Alzheimer’s, if you have your All-Bran every day and clear yourself out, I think your brains are gonna be all right.”
Heat Of The Night, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and To Sir, With Love film star Sidney Poitier, who turned 91 in February, was the first African American to win the leading actor Oscar for Lilies Of The Field in 1963. He was presented with his award by Mel Brooks’ wife actress Anne Bancroft.
Sidney once pointed out: “Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt and I still have all of my teeth.”