Kirk Douglas dies at 103
Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend, stage and screen actor spanning 6 decades had died aged 103. Hi s 1960 classic Spartacus, in which he played the titular character won him for Oscars.
Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danelovich Demsky in the city of Amsterdan , New York State, in 1916, to penniless Jewish immigrants he got it first Oscar nomination for the 1949 boxing story Champion. His son is Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas. Kirk Douglas’s father had fled Russia to escape conscription into the Tsar’s army. One of seven children, he sold snacks to local mill workers to earn enough money to buy food and his autobiography claims to have had more than 40 jobs. He began actin gin school plays and later decided a theatrical career was for him. “the one thing in my life that I always knew, that was always constant, was that I wanted to be an actor”.
Michael in a statement said: “ It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today. To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies….but to me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad”. He paid his way through drama college by fighting professionally, ushering and working in car park attendant and bellhop. He became an inter-collegiate wrestling champion. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts where his classmates were Betty Joan Perske, who later to be known as Lauren Bacall and the Bermudian actress Diana Dill.
IN 1941 he was enlisted in the US Navy, but was invalidated out two years later because of injury and in November 1943, he married his former classmate Diana Dill.]
Douglas had initially planned to become a stage actor, but Lauren Bacall recommended him to producer Hal B Wallis who was casting The Strange Love of ~Martha Ivers, playing opposite to Barbara Stanwyck, already an established star. `He made his name as a washed-up boxer, Midge Kelly, in Champion in 1949 which earned him his first of three Oscar nominations., but never won the coveted award. Douglas was honoured in the 1996 Academy Awards for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the movie industry. His ambition was rooted in his Russian origins and was determined to defy privilege and anti-semitism.
He won critical acclaim for his portrayal in Vincent van Gogh in Lust for life in 1956.
He defied the anti-communist witch-hunts of the Ma?Carthy era by openly hiring a blacklisted writer ?Dalton Trumbo, to script Saprtacus, which won four Oscars, the movie about a slave who rebelled against the Roman empire.
Douglas served four US presidents in the role of special ambassador, and in 1981 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also created a charitable foundation and donated more than $1m to the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
Douglas wrote two novels, Dance with the Devil and The Secret.
He prided himself on playing the tough guys, the sort of characters he once described as “sons of bitches”.