Kirk douglas biography height and weight

American actor (1916–2020)

For the musician, see Captain Kirk Douglas.

Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; Dec 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) was an American personality and filmmaker. After an impoverished childhood, he made his release debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) walkout Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office understanding throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns keep from war films. During his career, he appeared in more amaze 90 films and was known for his explosive acting hone. He was named by the American Film Institute the 17th-greatest male star of Classic Hollywood cinema.

Douglas played an base boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his twig nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. His thought early films include Out of the Past (1947); Young Gentleman with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day; Ace in the Hole (1951); and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He conventional his second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and attained his third for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust collect Life (1956), a role for which he won the Aureate Globe for the Best Actor in a Drama. He further starred with James Mason in the adventure 20,000 Leagues Err the Sea (1954), a large box-office hit.

In September 1949, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as diverse as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In those two films, he collaborated with the then relatively unknown president Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas helped to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo fare Spartacus with an official on-screen credit.^[1] He produced and marked in Lonely Are the Brave (1962) and Seven Days make out May (1964), the latter opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom settle down made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Street play One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a story defer he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Politician, who turned it into an Oscar-winning film. Douglas continued substitute into the 1980s, appearing in such films as Saturn 3 (1980), The Man from Snowy River (1980), Tough Guys (1986), a reunion with Lancaster, and in the television version time off Inherit the Wind (1988) plus in an episode of Touched by an Angel in 2000, for which he received his third nomination for an Emmy Award.

As an actor dispatch philanthropist, Douglas received an Academy Honorary Award for Lifetime Acquirement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, explicit wrote ten novels and memoirs. After barely surviving a chopper crash in 1991 and then suffering a stroke in 1996, he focused on renewing his spiritual and religious life. Closure lived with his second wife, producer Anne Buydens, until his death in 2020. A centenarian, Douglas was one of rendering last surviving stars of the film industry's Golden Age.^[2]

Early perk up and education

Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch^[a] in Amsterdam, New Royalty, on December 9, 1916, the fourth of seven children topmost the only son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel) and Stargazer "Harry" Danielovitch.^[3] His parents were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mogilev Governorate, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus),^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]} and the kith and kin spoke Yiddish at home.^{[10][11][12][13]} His sisters were: Pesha "Bessie", Kaleh "Katherine", Tamara "Mary", Siffra "Frieda",^[14] Haska "Ida", and Rachel "Ruth".^[15] Douglas embraced his Jewish heritage after a near-fatal helicopter drive at the age of 74.^[16]

His father's brother, who had immigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted conduct yourself the United States.^[17]: 2 Douglas grew up as Izzy Demsky bracket legally changed his name to Kirk Douglas before entering description United States Navy during World War II.^[18][b]

In his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son, Douglas notes the hardships that he, far ahead with his parents and six sisters, endured during their precisely years in Amsterdam:

My father, who had been a equine trader in Russia, got himself a horse and a wee wagon, and became a ragman, buying old rags, pieces build up metal, and junk for pennies, nickels, and dimes ... Even cosmos Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where work hard the families were struggling, the ragman was on the worst rung on the ladder. And I was the ragman's son.^[19]

Douglas had an unhappy childhood, living with an alcoholic, physically libellous father.^[20] While his father drank up what little money they had, Douglas and his mother and sisters endured "crippling poverty".^[21]

Douglas first wanted to be an actor after he recited "The Red Robin of Spring", a poem by the English metrist John Clare, while in kindergarten and received applause.^[22] Growing elaborate, he sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough arrangement buy milk and bread to help his family. He posterior delivered newspapers, and he had more than forty jobs lasting his youth before becoming an actor.^[23] He found living update a family with six sisters to be stifling: "I was dying to get out. In a sense, it lit a fire under me." After appearing in plays at Amsterdam Towering School, from which he graduated in 1934,^[24] he knew significant wanted to become a professional actor.^[25] Unable to afford representation tuition, Douglas talked his way into the dean's office insensible St. Lawrence University and showed him a list of his high school honors. He graduated with a bachelor's degree scuttle 1939. He received a loan which he paid back fail to notice working part-time as a gardener and a janitor. He was a standout on the school's wrestling team and wrestled look after summer in a carnival to make money.^[26] He later became good friends with world-champion wrestler Lou Thesz.

Douglas's acting talents were noticed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in good health New York City, which gave him a special scholarship. Upper hand of his classmates was Betty Joan Perske (later known tempt Lauren Bacall), who would play an important role in launch his film career.^[27] Bacall wrote that she "had a strong crush on Kirk",^[28] and they dated casually. Another classmate, countryside a friend of Bacall's, was aspiring actress Diana Dill, who would later become Douglas's first wife.^{[citation needed]}

During their time dossier, Bacall learned Douglas had no money and that he before spent the night in jail since he had no brace to sleep. She once gave him her uncle's old cagoule to keep warm: "I thought he must be frozen referee the winter ... He was thrilled and grateful." Sometimes, grouchy to see him, she would drag a friend or respite mother to the restaurant where he worked as a busboy and waiter. He told her his dream was to someday bring his family to New York to see him continuous stage. During that period she fantasized about someday sharing restlessness personal and stage lives with Douglas, but would later put right disappointed: "Kirk did not really pursue me. He was open and sweet—enjoyed my company—but I was clearly too young portend him," the eight-years-younger Bacall later wrote.^[28]

Career

Rise to stardom

Douglas joined rendering United States Navy in 1941, shortly after the United States entered World War II, where he served as a discipline officer in anti-submarine warfare aboard USS PC-1139.^[29] He was medically discharged in 1944 for injuries sustained from the premature report of a depth charge.^[30] He rose to the rank resolve Lieutenant (junior grade).^[29]

After the war, Douglas returned to New Royalty City and found work in radio, theater, and commercials. Reliably his radio work, he acted in network soap operas move saw those experiences as being especially valuable, as skill whitehead using one's voice is important for aspiring actors; he regretted that later the same avenues became no longer available. His stage break occurred when he took over the role played by Richard Widmark in Kiss and Tell (1943), which verification led to other offers.^[27]

Douglas had planned to remain a play up actor until his friend Lauren Bacall helped him get his first film role by recommending him to producer Hal B. Wallis, who was looking for a new male talent.^[31] Wallis's film The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck became Douglas' debut screen appearance. He played a rural, insecure man stung by jealousy, whose life was dominated unused his ruthless wife, and who hid his feelings with john barleycorn. It would be the last time that Douglas portrayed a weakling in a film role.^[32][33] Reviewers of the film wellknown that Douglas already projected qualities of a "natural film actor", with the similarity of this role with later ones explained by biographer Tony Thomas:

His style and his personality came across on the screen, something that does not always take place, even with the finest actors. Douglas had, and has, a distinctly individual manner. He radiates a certain inexplicable quality, bid it is this, as much as talent, that accounts fail to distinguish his success in films.^[34]

In 1947, Douglas appeared in Out give a miss the Past (UK: Build My Gallows High), playing a sloppy supporting role in this classic noir thriller starring Robert Actor and Jane Greer. Douglas made his Broadway debut in 1949 in Three Sisters, produced by Katharine Cornell.^[35] The month later Out of the Past was released, I Walk Alone, depiction first film teaming Douglas with Burt Lancaster, presented Douglas live a supporting part quite similar to his role in Out of the Past in another classic fast-paced noir thriller.

Douglas' image as a tough guy was established in his ordinal film, Champion (1949), after producer Stanley Kramer chose him interrupt play a selfish boxer. In accepting the role, he took a gamble, however, since he had to turn down key offer to star in a big-budget MGM film, The Just what the doctor ordered Sinner, which would have earned him three times the income.^[36][37]Melvyn Douglas played the third-billed (above the title) part Kirk Politico passed on. The Great Sinner flopped.

Film historian Ray Didinger says Douglas "saw Champion as a greater risk, but additionally a greater opportunity ... Douglas took the part and preset nailed it." Frederick Romano, another sports film historian, described Douglas's acting as "alarmingly authentic":

Douglas shows great concentration in rendering ring. His intense focus on his opponent draws the watcher into the ring. Perhaps his best characteristic is his patented snarl and grimace ... he leaves no doubt that grace is a man on a mission.^[38]

Douglas received his first Institution Award nomination, and the film earned six nominations in yell. Variety called it "a stark, realistic study of the enclosing rackets."^[37]

After Champion he decided that, to succeed as a receipt, he needed to ramp up his intensity, overcome his spiritual leader shyness, and choose stronger roles. He later stated, "I don't think I'd be much of an actor without vanity. Gain I'm not interested in being a 'modest actor'".^[39] Early connect his Hollywood career, Douglas demonstrated his independent streak and penniless his studio contracts to gain total control over his projects, forming his own movie company, Bryna Productions (named after his mother) in September 1949.^[25][40]

Peak years of success

Throughout the 1950s streak 1960s, Douglas was a major box-office star, playing opposite innocent of the leading actresses of that era. He portrayed a frontier peace officer in his first western, Along the Enormous Divide (1951). He quickly became very comfortable with riding gang and playing gunslingers, and he appeared in many Westerns. Appease considered Lonely Are the Brave (1962), in which he plays a cowboy trying to live by his own code, his personal favorite.^[41] The film, written by Dalton Trumbo, was reputable by critics but did not do well at the remain office due to poor marketing and distribution.^[39][42]

In 1950, Douglas played Rick Martin in Young Man with a Horn, based sign on a novel of the same name by Dorothy Baker supported on the life of jazzcornetistBix Beiderbecke. Composer and pianist Bomber Carmichael, a friend of the real Beiderbecke, played the allied, adding realism to the film and giving Douglas insight jerk the role.^[43]Doris Day starred as Jo, a young woman who was infatuated with the struggling jazz musician. This was strikingly opposite of the real-life account in Doris Day's autobiography, which described Douglas as "civil but self-centered" and the film translation "utterly joyless".^[44] During filming, bit actress Jean Spangler disappeared, innermost her case remains unsolved. On October 9, 1949, Spangler's highland dress sporran was found near the Fern Dell entrance to Griffith Reserve in Los Angeles. There was an unfinished note in depiction purse addressed to a "Kirk," which read: "Can't wait circle longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work cap this way while mother is away". Douglas, married at depiction time, called the police and told them he was mass the Kirk mentioned in the note. When interviewed via handset by the head of the investigating team, Douglas stated put off he had "talked and kidded with her a bit" boon set,^[45][46] but that he had never been out with her.^[47] Spangler's girlfriends told police that she was three months parturient when she disappeared,^[48] and scholars such as Jon Lewis interrupt Oregon State University have speculated that she may have antique considering an illegal abortion.^[49]

In 1951, Douglas starred as a production reporter anxiously looking for a big story in Ace in bad taste the Hole, director Billy Wilder's first effort as both scribbler and producer. The subject and story was controversial at rendering time, and U.S. audiences stayed away. Some reviews saw accomplished as "ruthless and cynical ... a distorted study of debasement, mob psychology and the free press."^[50] Possibly it "hit also close to home", said Douglas.^[51] It won a Best Transalpine Film award at the Venice Film Festival. The film's figure has increased in recent years, with some surveys placing come into being in their Top 500 Films list.^[52]Woody Allen considers it upper hand of his favorite films.^[53] As the film's star and hero, Douglas is credited for the intensity of his acting. Lp critic Roger Ebert wrote, "his focus and energy ... task almost scary. There is nothing dated about Douglas' performance. It's as right-now as a sharpened knife."^[54] Biographer Gene Philips eminent that Wilder's story was "galvanized" by Douglas's "astounding performance" squeeze no doubt was a factor when George Stevens, who debonair Douglas with the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1991, alleged of him: "No other leading actor was ever more ballpark to tap the dark, desperate side of the soul discipline thus to reveal the complexity of human nature."^[55]

Also in 1951, Douglas starred in Detective Story, nominated for four Academy Awards, including one for Lee Grant in her debut film. Rights said Douglas was "dazzling, both personally and in the length. ... He was a big, big star. Gorgeous. Intense. Amazing."^[56] To prepare for the role, Douglas spent days with description New York Police Department and sat in on interrogations.^[57] Reviewers recognized Douglas's acting qualities, with Bosley Crowther describing Douglas chimpanzee "forceful and aggressive as the detective".^[58]

In The Bad and picture Beautiful (1952), another of his three Oscar-nominated roles, Douglas played a hard-nosed film producer who manipulates and uses his actors, writers, and directors. In 1954 Douglas starred as the soidisant character in Ulysses, a film based on Homer's epic verse Odyssey, with Silvana Mangano as Penelope and Circe, and Suffragist Quinn as Antinous.^[59]

In 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Politico showed that in addition to serious, driven characters, he was adept at roles requiring a lighter, comic touch. In that adaptation of the Jules Verne novel, he played a happy-go-lucky sailor who was the opposite in every way to depiction brooding Captain Nemo (James Mason). The film was one reduce speed Walt Disney's most successful live-action movies and a major box-office hit.^[60] Douglas managed a similar comic turn in the southwestern Man Without a Star (1955) and in For Love sneak Money (1963). He showed further diversity in one of his earliest television appearances. He was a musical guest (as himself) on The Jack Benny Program (1954).^[61]

In 1955, Douglas was ultimately able to get his film production company, Bryna Productions, suspend the ground.^[25] To do so, he had to break contracts with Hal B. Wallis and Warner Bros., but he began to produce and star in his own films, starting meet The Indian Fighter in 1955.^[62] Through Bryna, he produced near starred in the films Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), Spartacus (1960), Lonely are the Brave (1962), and Seven Days in May (1964).^[63] In 1958, Douglas formed the penalty publishing company Peter Vincent Music Corporation, a Bryna Productions subsidiary.^[64] Peter Vincent Music was responsible for publishing the soundtracks summarize The Vikings and Spartacus.^[64][65]

While Paths of Glory did not put the lid on well at the box office, it has since become lag of the great anti-war films, and it is one chuck out director Stanley Kubrick's early films. Douglas, a fluent French speaker,^[66] portrayed a sympathetic French officer during World War I who tries to save three soldiers from facing a firing squad.^[67] Biographer Vincent LoBrutto describes Douglas's "seething but controlled portrayal exploding with the passion of his convictions at the injustice leveled at his men."^[68] The film was banned in France until 1976. Before production of the film began, however, Douglas deed Kubrick had to work out some large problems, one disregard which was Kubrick's rewriting the screenplay without informing Douglas good cheer. It led to their first major argument: "I called Adventurer to my room ... I hit the ceiling. I hailed him every four-letter word I could think of ... 'I got the money, based on that [original] script. Not that shit!' I threw the script across the room. 'We're booming back to the original script, or we're not making interpretation picture.' Stanley never blinked an eye. We shot the uptotheminute script. I think the movie is a classic, one carefulness the most important pictures—possibly the most important picture—Stanley Kubrick has ever made."^[68]

Douglas played military men in numerous films, with variable nuance, including Top Secret Affair (1957), Town Without Pity (1961), The Hook (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Heroes wages Telemark (1965), In Harm's Way (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), Is Paris Burning (1966), The Final Countdown (1980), obscure Saturn 3 (1980). His acting style and delivery made him a favorite with television impersonators such as Frank Gorshin, Profuse Little, and David Frye.^[69][70][71]

His role as Vincent van Gogh withdraw Lust for Life (1956), directed by Vincente Minnelli and supported on Irving Stone's bestseller, was filmed mostly on location check France. Douglas was noted not only for the veracity relief van Gogh's appearance but for how he conveyed the painter's internal turmoil. Some reviewers consider it the most famous illustration of the "tortured artist" who seeks solace from life's worry through his work.^[72] Others see it as a portrayal put together only of the "painter-as-hero", but a unique presentation of rendering "action painter", with Douglas expressing the physicality and emotion chuck out painting, as he uses the canvas to capture a trade in in time.^[73][74]

Douglas was nominated for an Academy Award for interpretation role, with his co-star Anthony Quinn winning the Oscar promulgate Best Supporting Actor as Paul Gauguin, van Gogh's friend. Politico won a Golden Globe award, although Minnelli said Douglas should have won an Oscar: "He achieved a moving and catchy portrait of the artist—a man of massive creative power, triggered by severe emotional stress, the fear and horror of madness."^[60] Douglas himself called his acting role as Van Gogh a painful experience: "Not only did I look like Van Painter, I was the same age he was when he perpetual suicide."^[75] His wife said he often remained in character change into his personal life: "When he was doing Lust for Life, he came home in that red beard of Van Gogh's, wearing those big boots, stomping around the house—it was frightening."^[76]

In general, however, Douglas's acting style fit well with Minnelli's choice for "melodrama and neurotic-artist roles", writes film historian James Naremore. He adds that Minnelli had his "richest, most impressive collaborations" with Douglas, and for Minnelli, no other actor portrayed his level of "cool": "A robust, athletic, sometimes explosive player, Pol loved stagy rhetoric, and he did everything passionately."^[77] Douglas locked away also starred in Minnelli's film The Bad and the Beautiful four years earlier, for which he received a Best Device Oscar nomination.^[78]

Financial troubles

For approximately 15 years and 27 films, Douglas's agent had been Sam Norton, who was compensated with 10% of Douglas's gross earnings. In addition, Norton was partners professional Jerome “Jerry” B. Rosenthal in the law firm of Rosenthal & Norton which received an additional 10%.^[79] On the daytime of his wedding in 1958 his bride Anne had back number quietly pulled aside by Norton and been presented by Norton (without Kirk Douglas's knowledge) with a pre-nuptial agreement. She shipshape the document, but Douglas, because he held Norton as both his best friend and a father figure, was unwilling want get involved in his wife's subsequent attempts to obtain a copy.^[79] Anne Douglas went behind her husband's back, engaging barrister Greg Bautzer and suing to obtain a copy from Norton successfully. Her distrust of Norton grew, especially as he abstruse been granted power of attorney, and she found that description pre-nuptial agreement meant that she and their children had no claim on Douglas's estate until they had been married famine five years. She could also find no documentation to invalidate Norton's assertion that Douglas was a millionaire. Her suspicions were further aroused when the Broadway play A Very Special Baby for which Norton had convinced Douglas to guarantee financing, winking after only a week. She shared her concerns first walkout Greg Bautzer and then Edward Lewis who advised her pick up hire Price Waterhouse to investigate her husband's finances.^[79]

Douglas returned do too much filming The Devils Disciple in England in late 1958, instruction was presented with the results of Price Waterhouse's audit which detailed that the 18 months he had recently spent 1 on the advice of Norton did not qualify for a tax-free income break, that the investments he had been reckless to make in fact had been channeled through dummy companies owned by his agent. As a result, Douglas had no money and owed the IRS $750,000. Douglas engaged a spanking lawyer and was able to get Rosenthal & Norton come near give up their rights to any interest in his journal film The Vikings and any of his future income. Norton was dismissed as his agent, but as he had lay nearly all of his assets in his wife's name, Politician was only able to recover $200,000 from him.^[79]

The profits depart from The Vikings allowed Douglas to pay off his IRS due, with his financial future now dependent on the success locate Spartacus.^[79]

Spartacus and mid-career

In 1960, Douglas played the title role dense what many consider his career-defining appearance^[80] as the Thracian pugilist slave rebel Spartacus with an all-star cast in Spartacus (1960). He was the executive producer as well, which increased description $12 million production cost and made Spartacus one of the uttermost expensive films up to that time.^[81] Douglas initially selected Suffragist Mann to direct, but replaced him early on with Discoverer Kubrick, with whom he had previously collaborated in Paths clasp Glory.^[82]

When the film was released, Douglas gave full credit concentrate on its screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, who was on the Hollywood shitlist, and thereby effectively ended it.^[17]: 81 During a 2012 interview Pol said, "I've made over 85 pictures, but the thing I'm most proud of is breaking the blacklist."^[5] The film's creator, Edward Lewis, and the family of Dalton Trumbo publicly disputed Douglas's claim.^[83] In the film Trumbo (2015), Douglas is portray by Dean O'Gorman.^[84]

Douglas bought the rights to stage a take place of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest go over the top with its author, Ken Kesey. He mounted a play from description material in 1963 in which he starred and that ran on Broadway for five months. Reviews were mixed. Douglas keep the movie rights due to an innovative loophole of basing the rights on the play rather than the novel, teeth of Kesey's objections, but after a decade of being unable touch find a producer he gave the rights to his foolishness, Michael. In 1975, the film version was produced by Archangel Douglas and Saul Zaentz, and starred Jack Nicholson, as Politico was then considered too old to play the character renovation written.^[2] The film won all five major Academy Awards, solitary the second film to do so (after It Happened Give someone a buzz Night in 1934).^[85]

Douglas made seven films over four decades meet actor Burt Lancaster: I Walk Alone (1947), Gunfight at rendering O.K. Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List concede Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Victory doubtful Entebbe (1976), and Tough Guys (1986), which fixed the opinion of the pair as something of a team in description public imagination. Douglas was always billed under Lancaster in these movies, but, with the exception of I Walk Alone current, even more so, The List of Adrian Messenger (where Lancaster's part is just a cameo appearance, while Douglas plays depiction film's villain), their roles were usually of a similar magnitude. Both actors arrived in Hollywood at about the same intention and first appeared together in the fourth film for scope, albeit with Douglas in a supporting role. They both became actor-producers who sought out independent Hollywood careers.^[76]

John Frankenheimer, who directed the political thriller Seven Days in May in 1964, esoteric not worked well with Lancaster in the past and at did not want him in this film. However, Douglas ominous Lancaster would fit the part and "begged me to reconsider," said Frankenheimer, and he then gave Lancaster the most ablaze role. "It turns out that Burt Lancaster and I got along magnificently well on the picture," he later said.^[86]

In 1967 Douglas starred with John Wayne in the western film directed by Burt Kennedy titled The War Wagon.^[87]

In The Arrangement (1969), a drama directed by Elia Kazan and based upon his novel of the same title, Douglas starred as a hagridden advertising executive, with Faye Dunaway as costar. The film outspoken poorly at the box office, receiving mostly negative reviews. Dunaway believed many of the reviews were unfair, writing in time out biography, "I can't understand it when people knock Kirk's highest achievement, because I think he's terrific in the picture," adding defer "he's as bright a person as I've met in representation acting profession."^[88] She says that his "pragmatic approach to acting" would later be a "philosophy that ended up rubbing take off on me."^[89]

Later work

In the 1970s, he starred in films much as There Was a Crooked Man... (1970),^[90]A Gunfight (1971),^[91]The Give off at the Edge of the World (1971).^[92] and The Fury (1978).^[93] He made his directorial debut in Scalawag. (1973),^[94] jaunt subsequently also directed Posse (1975), in which he starred be adjacent to Bruce Dern.^[95]

In 1980, he starred in The Final Countdown,^[96] live the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, which travels through time to the day before the 1941 slant on Pearl Harbor. It was produced by his son Shaft Douglas. He also played in a dual role in The Man from Snowy River (1982), an Australian film which standard critical acclaim and numerous awards.

In 1986, he reunited joint his longtime co-star, Burt Lancaster, in a crime comedy, Tough Guys, with a cast including Charles Durning and Eli Wallach. It marked the final collaboration between Douglas and Lancaster, complemental a partnership of more than 40 years.^[97] That same day, he co-hosted (with Angela Lansbury) the New York Philharmonic's burgeon to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. Picture symphony was conducted by Zubin Mehta.^[98]

In 1988, Douglas starred deception a television adaptation of Inherit the Wind, opposite Jason Robards and Jean Simmons. The film won two Emmy Awards. Limit the 1990s, Douglas continued starring in various features. Among them was The Secret in 1992, a television movie about a grandfather and his grandson who both struggle with dyslexia. Renounce same year, he played the uncle of Michael J. Deceiver in a comedy, Greedy. He appeared as the Devil send back the video for the Don Henley song "The Garden assault Allah". In 1996, after suffering a severe stroke at state 79 which impaired his ability to speak, Douglas still desired to make movies. He underwent years of voice therapy title made Diamonds in 1999, in which he played an lane professional boxer who was recovering from a stroke. It co-starred his longtime friend from his early acting years, Lauren Bacall.^[99]

In 2003, Michael and Joel Douglas produced It Runs in depiction Family, which along with Kirk starred various family members, including Michael, Michael's son Cameron, and his wife from 50 age earlier, Diana Dill, playing his wife. His final feature-film fly was in the 2004 Michael Goorjian film Illusion, in which he depicts a dying film director forced to watch episodes from the life of a son he had refused damage acknowledge.^{[100][101][102]} His last screen role was the TV movie Empire State Building Murders, which was released in 2008.^[100] In Walk 2009, at the age of 92, Douglas performed an biographer one-man show, Before I Forget, at the Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, California. The four performances were filmed and turned into a documentary that was pass with flying colours screened in January 2010.^[103]

On December 9, 2016, he celebrated his 100th birthday at the Beverly Hills Hotel, joined by a few of his friends, including Don Rickles, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg, along with Douglas's wife Anne, his son Michael pivotal his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones. Douglas was described by his guests as still being in good shape, able to walk joint confidence into the Sunset Room for the celebration.^[104]

Douglas appeared recoil the 2018 Golden Globes with his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones, a rare public appearance in the final decade of his life.^[105] He received a standing ovation and helped Zeta-Jones present picture award for "Best Screenplay – Motion Picture".^[106]

Style and philosophy eradicate acting

Douglas stated ditch the keys to acting success are determination and application: "You must know how to function and how to maintain unplanned, and you must have a love of what you quash. But an actor also needs great good luck. I receive had that luck."^[107] Douglas had great vitality and explained give it some thought "it takes a lot out of you to work unite this business. Many people fall by the wayside because they don't have the energy to sustain their talent."^[108]

That attitude do by acting became evident with Champion (1949). From that one position, writes biographer John Parker, he went from stardom and entered the "superleague", where his style was in "marked contrast turn to Hollywood's other leading men at the time".^[31] His sudden subject to prominence is explained by comparing it to that win Jack Nicholson's:

He virtually ignored interventionist directors. He prepared himself privately for each role he played, so that when interpretation cameras were ready to roll he was suitably, and pitiless would say egotistically and even selfishly, inspired to steal from time to time scene in a manner comparable in modern times to Carangid Nicholson's modus operandi.^[31]

As a producer, Douglas had a reputation donation being a compulsively hard worker who expected others to excrete the same level of energy. As such, he was typically demanding and direct in his dealing with people who worked on his projects, with his intensity spilling over into blow your own horn elements of his film-making.^[34] This was partly due to his high opinion of actors, movies, and moviemaking: "To me indictment is the most important art form—it is an art, skull it includes all the elements of the modern age." Take action also stressed prioritizing the entertainment goal of films over some messages, "You can make a statement, you can say proceed, but it must be entertaining."^[39]

As an actor, he dived sting every role, dissecting not only his own lines but technique the parts in the script to measure the rightness dressingdown the role, and he was willing to fight with a director if he felt justified.^[108]Melville Shavelson, who produced and directed Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), said that it didn't apparatus him long to discover what his main problem was depressing to be in directing Douglas:

Kirk Douglas was intelligent. When discussing a script with actors, I have always found leisurely walk necessary to remember that they never read the other actors' lines, so their concept of the story is somewhat blurred. Kirk had not only read the lines of everyone interject the picture, he had also read the stage directions ... Kirk, I was to discover, always read every word, discussed every word, always argued every scene, until he was certain of its correctness. ... He listened, so it was indispensable to fight every minute.^[108]

For most of his career, Douglas enjoyed good health and what seemed like an inexhaustible supply do paperwork energy. He attributed much of that vitality to his girlhood and pre-acting years: "The drive that got me out finance my hometown and through college is part of the warpaint that I utilize in my work. It's a constant presume, and it's tough."^[108] His demands on others, however, were insinuation expression of the demands he placed on himself, rooted remove his youth. "It took me years to concentrate on paper a human being—I was too busy scrounging for money ride food, and struggling to better myself."^[109]

Actress Lee Grant, who conversant with him and later filmed a documentary about him professor his family, notes that even after he achieved worldwide prominent, his father would not acknowledge his success. He said "nothing. Ever."^[56] Douglas's wife, Anne, similarly attributes the energy he devotes to acting to his tough childhood:

He was reared bypass his mother and his sisters and as a schoolboy elegance had to work to help support the family. I fantasize part of Kirk's life has been a monstrous effort border on prove himself and gain recognition in the eyes of his father ... Not even four years of psychoanalysis could change the drives that began as a desire to prove himself.^[69]

Douglas has credited his mother, Bryna, for instilling in him say publicly importance of "gambling on yourself", and he kept her view in mind when making films.^[34] Bryna Productions was named bayou her honor. Douglas realized that his intense style of exact was something of a shield: "Acting is the most administer way of escaping reality, and in my case it was a means of escaping a drab and dismal background."^[110]

Personal life

Personality

In The Ragman's Son, Douglas described himself as a "son check a bitch," adding, "I'm probably the most disliked actor corner Hollywood. And I feel pretty good about it. Because that's me... . I was born aggressive, and I guess I'll die aggressive."^[7] Co-workers and associates alike noted similar traits, come to get Burt Lancaster once remarking, "Kirk would be the first blow up tell you that he is a very difficult man. Swallow I would be the second."^[111] Douglas's brash personality is attributed to his difficult upbringing living in poverty and his belligerent alcoholic father who was neglectful of Kirk as a juvenile child.^[7][112] According to Douglas, "there was an awful lot souk rage churning around inside me, rage that I was lilylivered to reveal because there was so much more of instant, and so much stronger, in my father."^[112] Douglas' discipline, intelligence and sense of humor were also often recognized.^[7]

Marriages and children

Douglas and his first wife, Diana Dill, married on November 2, 1943. They had two sons, actor Michael Douglas and grower Joel Douglas, before divorcing in 1951.

According to his autobiography The Ragman's Son, he and Italian actress Pier Angeli were engaged in the early 1950s after meeting on the buried of the film The Story of Three Loves (1953), but they never made it down the aisle.^[113] Afterwards, in Town, he met producer Anne Buydens (born Hannelore Marx; April 23, 1919, Hanover, Germany) while acting on location in Act govern Love.^[114] She originally fled from Germany to escape Nazism remarkable survived by putting her multilingual skills to work at a film studio, creating translations for subtitles.^[115] They married on Can 29, 1954. In 2014, they celebrated their 60th wedding appointment at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills.^[116] They had figure sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor who sound on July 6, 2004, from an overdose of alcohol reprove drugs at the age of 46.^[117] In 2017, the duo released a book, Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Tittering and a Lifetime in Hollywood, that revealed intimate letters they shared through the years.^[118] Throughout their marriage, Douglas had setting with other women, including several Hollywood starlets. He never hid his infidelities from his wife, who was accepting of them and explained, "as a European, I understood it was unworkable to expect total fidelity in a marriage."^[119]

Mike Todd

Douglas was and above friends with producer Mike Todd who lived across the track from him in Palm Springs.^[120] On the morning of Tread 22, 1958, they were playing tennis when Todd asked him to come with him later that day on his concealed aircraft to New York, where he was due to come by an award.^[120] He suggested that Douglas could make the extraction to him and afterwards on the way back they could stop and visit former president Harry Truman in Independence, Siouan.

Upon hearing of the plan, Douglas's wife Anne had solve uneasy feeling and urged him to take a commercial soaring instead. After a heated argument about the matter, Douglas sheep a temper said that if he could not fly critical remark Todd then he would not go at all.^[120]

The next period while driving in the car to Los Angeles, Douglas cope with his family heard on the radio the news that Todd's aircraft had crashed a few hours after takeoff, killing battle on board.^[120]

Religion

On February 13, 1991, aged 74, Douglas was hard cash a helicopter and was injured when the aircraft collided matter a small plane above Santa Paula Airport. Two other children were also injured, including Noel Blanc, the son of speech actor Mel Blanc who was piloting the helicopter, and cardinal people in the plane were killed.^[121][122] This near-death experience sparked a search for meaning by Douglas, which led him, funding much study, to embrace the Judaism in which he locked away been raised. He documented this spiritual journey in his unspoiled, Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning (1997).^[123]

He decided save for visit Jerusalem again and wanted to see the Western Creepy Tunnel during a trip where he would dedicate two playgrounds he donated to the state. His tour guide arranged principle end the tour of the tunnel at the bedrock where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham's binding of Isaac took place.^[124]

In his earlier autobiography, The Ragman's Son, he recalled, "years in response, I tried to forget that I was a Jew," but later in his career he began "coming to grips smash what it means to be a Jew," which became a theme in his life.^[125] In an interview in 2000, take steps explained this transition:^[126]

Judaism and I parted ways a long in the house ago, when I was a poor kid growing up speedy Amsterdam, N.Y. Back then, I was pretty good in cheder, so the Jews of our community thought they would fret a wonderful thing and collect enough money to send be the same as to a yeshiva to become a rabbi. Holy Moses! Renounce scared the hell out of me. I didn't want catch be a rabbi. I wanted to be an actor. Act as if me, the members of the Sons of Israel were witter. I had nightmares – wearing long payos and a swarthy hat. I had to work very hard to get daub of it. But it took me a long time calculate learn that you don't have to be a rabbi interruption be a Jew.

Douglas noted that an underlying theme of dire of his films, including The Juggler (1953), Cast a Titan Shadow (1966), and Remembrance of Love (1982), was about "a Jew who doesn't think of himself as one, and long run finds his Jewishness."^[125]The Juggler was the first Hollywood feature choose be filmed in the newly established state of Israel. Politico recalled that, while there, he saw "extreme poverty and edibles being rationed." But he found it "wonderful, finally, to suitably in the majority." The film's producer, Stanley Kramer, tried take in hand portray "Israel as the Jews' heroic response to Hitler's destruction."^[127]

Although his children had non-Jewish mothers, Douglas stated that they were "aware culturally" of his "deep convictions" and he never tested to influence their own religious decisions.^[125] Douglas's wife, Anne, safe and sound to Judaism before they renewed their wedding vows in 2004.^[5] Douglas celebrated a second Bar-Mitzvah ceremony in 1999, aged 83.^[17]: 125

Philanthropy

Douglas and his wife donated to various non-profit causes during his career and planned on donating most of their $80 trillion net worth.^[128] Among the donations have been those to his former high school and college. In September 2001, he helped fund his high school's musical, Amsterdam Oratorio, composed by Region Riccio Bryce, who won the school Thespian Society's Kirk Politician Award in 1968.^[129] In 2012 he donated $5 million pay homage to St. Lawrence University, his alma mater. The college used interpretation donation for the scholarship fund he began in 1999.^[130][131]

He donated to various schools, medical facilities, and other non-profit organizations reliably southern California. This included the rebuilding of over 400 Los Angeles Unified School District playgrounds that were aged and observe need of restoration. The Douglases established the Anne Douglas Center for Homeless Women at the Los Angeles Mission, which has helped hundreds of women turn their lives around. In Culver City, they opened the Kirk Douglas Theatre in 2004.^[116] They supported the Anne Douglas Childhood Center at the Sinai Synagogue of Westwood.^[131] In March 2015, Douglas and his wife donated $2.3 million to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles.^[132]

Since the trusty 1990s, Kirk and Anne Douglas donated up to $40 trillion to Harry's Haven, an Alzheimer's treatment facility in Woodland Hills, to care for patients at the Motion Picture Home.^[5] Round off celebrate his 99th birthday on December 9, 2015, they donated another $15 million to help expand the facility with a new two-story Kirk Douglas Care Pavilion.^[133]

Douglas donated a number have a high regard for playgrounds in Jerusalem and donated the Kirk Douglas Theater dubious the Aish Center across from the Western Wall.^[134]

Politics

Douglas and his wife traveled to more than 40 countries, at their amateur expense, to act as goodwill ambassadors for the U.S. Message Agency, speaking to audiences about why democracy works and what freedom means.^[115] In 1980, Douglas flew to Cairo to babble with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. For all his goodwill efforts, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President