Kirk Douglas, one of the last superstars of Hollywood’s golden age of cinema, who was renowned for his intense, muscular performances in Spartacus and Paths of Glory, on Wednesday died at the age of 103.
The US leading man, producer and director came to prominence in the late 1940s and never lost his popularity, taking on nearly 100 movies over a six-decade career that endured beyond a severe stroke in his later years.
His death at his family home in Beverly Hills, California, was confirmed by his son, Michael, the Oscar-winning actor and filmmaker.
Photo: AFP
“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” Michael Douglas said on Facebook. “To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years.”
Tributes poured in from across Hollywood and around the world on social media, with many declaring: “I am Spartacus,” in a nod to Douglas’ legendary role as a rebellious Roman slave.
Director Steven Spielberg said that Kirk Douglas “retained his movie star charisma right to the end,” while actor Danny DeVito tweeted: “103 years on this earth. That’s got a nice ring to it! Great hanging with you, man.”
Seinfeld star Jason Alexander praised him as “an absolute legend of a star and human,” saying that “we could use a true Spartacus.”
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awards the Oscars, tweeted: “Goodbye to a Hollywood legend.”
Not unlike his title character in Spartacus, Kirk Douglas was known throughout his life for his fiercely rebellious streak.
In his early movie days, he would clash with studio heads over his choice of roles, before ultimately splitting off to form his own production company, Bryna — one of the first major post-war stars to do so.
“It was pretty rare then,” Variety senior vice president Tim Gray said. “Kirk Douglas was very stubborn, but he wasn’t self-indulgent — he wasn’t a party boy wasting people’s time showing up late, things like that.”
On Spartacus, Kirk Douglas hired Dalton Trumbo — one of the “Hollywood Ten” blacklisted as a suspected communist under the [Joseph] McCarthy era — to write the screenplay.
Unlike many producers during the time, he refused to hide this fact, instead using Trumbo’s real name in the credits.
Kirk Douglas missed out on taking home the trophy on each of his three Oscar nominations, the last for his performance in the 1956 film Lust for Life, and never won a competitive Academy Award.
He was instead granted an honorary lifetime achievement statuette by the Academy in 1996 — just months after his stroke — “for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community.”
Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch to Jewish-Russian immigrants in upstate New York in 1916, began as a stage actor before serving in the US Navy during the World War II.
He graduated to movies when Casablanca producer Hal Wallis signed him in 1946 and he became a star for his portrayal of a double-crossing and womanizing boxer in 1949’s Champion.
His subsequent roles would often mirror his real-world, larger-than-life and intense persona, including Oscar-nominated turns as a ruthless movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful and tortured artist Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life.
Douglas told the New York Times in a 1984 interview that he had “always been attracted to characters who are part scoundrel,” adding: “I don’t find virtue photogenic.”
Michael Douglas praised his father’s “commitment to justice and the causes he believed in,” which “set a standard for all of us to aspire.”
“Kirk’s life was well lived and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come,” Michael Douglas added.
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
LEFT AND RIGHT: Battling anti-incumbent, anticommunist sentiment, Jeanette Jara had a precarious lead over far-right Jose Antonio Kast as they look to the Dec. 14 run Leftist candidate Jeannette Jara and far-right leader Jose Antonio Kast are to go head-to-head in Chile’s presidential runoff after topping Sunday’s first round of voting in an election dominated by fears of violent crime. With 99 percent of the results counted, Jara, a 51-year-old communist running on behalf of an eight-party coalition, won 26.85 percent, compared with 23.93 percent for Kast, the Servel electoral service said. The election was dominated by deep concern over a surge in murders, kidnappings and extortion widely blamed on foreign crime gangs. Kast, 59, has vowed to build walls, fences and trenches along Chile’s border with Bolivia to
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
DEATH SENTENCE: The ousted leader said she was willing to attend a fresh trial outside Bangladesh where the ruling would not be a ‘foregone conclusion’ Bangladesh’s fugitive former prime minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday called the guilty verdict and death sentence in her crimes against humanity trial “biased and politically motivated.” Hasina, 78, defied court orders that she return from India to attend her trial about whether she ordered a deadly crackdown against the student-led uprising that ousted her. She was found guilty and sentenced to death earlier yesterday. “The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate,” Hasina said in a statement issued from hiding in India. “They are biased and politically motivated,” she
RSS