Kirk Douglas 'acted like a star when he was a nobody,' producer Stanley Kramer once remarked. 'He came at you,…
“acted like a star when he was a nobody,” producer Stanley Kramer once remarked. “He came at you, center stage, and there it was.” Douglas vibrated cocksure masculinity, bringing a beguiling blend of charisma and menace to an impressive collection of cinematic antiheroes during a seven-decade career., and an instrumental figure in breaking the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist, Douglas died Wednesday at 103, his family announced.
“It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103,” son. “To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.”
Born Issur Danielovitch on Dec. 9, 1916, and later known as Izzy Demsky, Douglas was the son of illiterate Russian Jewish immigrants. His hardscrabble upbringing in Amsterdam, New York, seeped into his many characters, who often led with his trademark chin., a 1988 autobiography. ”It’s my background, damn it.”
Izzy Demsky became Kirk Douglas while working at a summer stock playhouse during college, and he went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where he was a classmate of Lauren Bacall and met his first wife, Diana Dill. He legally changed his name before serving a stint in the Navy in World War II.
Hunger for respect and success fueled Douglas’ rise, first on Broadway and eventually in Hollywood, where he became one of the most successful actors of the postwar period.Champion. Mixed in were iconic turns as Doc Holliday opposite Burt Lancaster’s Wyatt Earp in 1957’sAs one of the producers behind, he fought for a young Stanley Kubrick to take over as director after Anthony Mann was fired.
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