Background

Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York. He was the son of Bryna "Bertha" (née Sanglel; 1884–1958) and Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch (c. 1884–1950). His parents were Jewish emigrants from Chavusy, Mogilev Region, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), and the family spoke Yiddish at home.

His father's brother, who emigrated earlier, used the surname Demsky, which Douglas's family adopted in the United States.

Growing up, Douglas sold snacks to mill workers to earn enough to buy milk and bread to help his family. Later, he delivered newspapers and during his youth worked at more than forty different jobs before getting a job acting.

Education

In high school, after acting in plays, he then knew he wanted to become a professional actor. Unable to afford the tuition, Douglas talked his way into the dean's office at St. Lawrence University and showed him a list of his high school honors. He received a loan which he paid back by working part-time as a gardener and a janitor. He was a standout on the wrestling team and wrestled one summer in a carnival to make money.

Douglas's acting talents were noticed at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, which gave him a special scholarship. One of his classmates was Betty Joan Perske (later to become better known as Lauren Bacall), who would play an important role in launching his film career. Bacall wrote that she "had a wild crush on Kirk," and they dated casually. Another classmate, and a friend of Bacall's, was aspiring actress Diana Dill, who would later become Douglas's first wife.

Career

Kirk Douglas enlisted in the United States Navy in 1941, shortly after the United States entered World War II, where he served as a communications officer in anti-submarine warfare aboard USS PC-1137. He was medically discharged for war injuries in 1944 sustained from the accidental dropping of a depth charge.

Douglas resumed his budding career, working hard to break into radio dramas and commercials before landing on the Great White Way in productions including "Alice in Arms" and "The Wind is Ninety" (1945).

Hollywood ingénue now a star overnight, thanks to Bogie and "To Have and Have Not" (1944), Lauren Bacall recommended her former classmate to director Hal Wallis, which led to Douglas' feature film debut opposite Barbara Stanwyck in "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" (1946). His career ramped up with features "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1947) and "Out of the Past" (1947). He enjoyed the first of seven roles opposite Burt Lancaster in "I Walk Alone" (1948) before truly achieving stardom as the unscrupulous boxer punching his way to the top in Stanley Kramer's "Champion" (1949). Douglas' Oscar-nominated performance established his forceful and intense screen persona, setting the tone for many more strong performances as selfish, cocky and egocentric characters. Douglas was bumped up to an average of three films a year and began working with the top directors of the day in Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" (1951), William Wyler's "Detective Story" (1951) and Howard Hawks' "Big Sky" (1952), all of which showcased the actor's coiled intensity and commanding movie star presence.

Focusing on his work, Douglas kicked off a four-film collaboration with director Vincente Minnelli, beginning with the riveting melodrama "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952), in which he played a ruthless movie mogul clawing his way to the top and leaving a trail of deception and betrayal in his wake. His violent, over-the-top scenes with an equally overly dramatic Lana Turner were borderline camp, but engrossing nonetheless, making the film a huge hit with audiences. Douglas earned a second Oscar nomination for the performance and went on to appear in Minnelli's romance "The Story of Three Loves" (1953) the following year. He hatched one of Hollywood's first independent production companies, named Bryna in honor of Douglas' mother. Bryna's first production, the Western "The Indian Fighter" (1955), was released later that year. He received far more attention - including a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination - for his portrayal of Vincent van Gogh in Minnelli's biopic "Lust for Life" (1956) - one of Hollywood's most rhapsodic takes on the obsessive, self-tortured artist.

Under the Bryna banner, Douglas brought Stanley Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" (1957) to theaters. It was a disappointment in its initial release, but grew in stature to the front rank of anti-war films. Douglas played a French Army officer (an attorney) who defends three soldiers unjustly accused of cowardice in the trenches during World War I, but the real star was Kubrick, whose camera moved inexorably through the carnage of battle, capturing a brutal authenticity. That same year, the Douglas-Lancaster electricity brightened famously in "Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957), creating a humorous public rivalry after starring roles as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. In the producer's chair, Douglas starred in the underappreciated Western "Last Train from Gun Hill" (1959) before he, Lancaster and Laurence Olivier delivered standout performances in the sparkling film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple" (1959), Shaw's take on how the bumbling British lost their American colonies.

In 1960, Douglas and Bryna productions made history when, in the middle of anti-communist witch hunts that blacklisted Hollywood talent suspected of being communist sympathizers, Douglas insisted on crediting blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo for his screen adaptation of Howard Fast's novel Spartacus. This courageous action - perhaps Douglas' overriding offscreen legacy - essentially ended the blacklist, allowing banned filmmakers to openly return to the industry. "Spartacus" (1960) itself also became an instant classic of the ancient "sand & sandles" epic genre. He again collaborated with Trumbo on the Western "Lonely Are the Brave" (1962), where Douglas essayed a fugitive steeped in the values of the old West who escapes into the Rocky Mountains on horseback in this melancholy and powerful film that eventually attained cult status and earned the star a BAFTA nomination.

Douglas bought the rights to Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and adapted it for Broadway, where he appeared in 1963 in the role of Randel P. McMurphy. Lancaster and Douglas showed up heavily disguised in character roles for John Huston's engaging murder mystery "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1963) and returned to leading roles in John Frankenheimer's absorbing political thriller, "Seven Days in May" (1964). After releasing a solid run of Westerns and World War II films like "Her s of Telemark" (1965), "Is Paris Burning?" (1966) and "The Way West" (1967), shifting tides in American cinema began to render postwar heroes like Douglas a thing of the past. So instead, he sought new opportunities, keeping close to his son-of-a-bitch persona in Martin Ritt's mafia drama "The Brotherhood" (1968) and in Elia Kazan's study of the modern man "The Arrangement" (1969), but that role was originally intended for very different actor, Marlon Brando, and it fit Douglas as poorly as Brando's own clothes might have.

Even as Douglas-type Westerns were evolving into a different entity, he soldiered on in the comedic "There Was a Crooked Man" (1970) and the dark, psychedelic "The Gunfight" (1971) opposite Johnny Cash. His directing debut "Scalawag" (1973) was an unsuccessful mash-up of musical, Western and pirate films, and highlighted that the sturdy leading man was having difficulty transitioning into a new era of filmmaking and public taste. In 1975, Douglas sat by frustrated when, after having tried unsuccessfully to bring "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" to the big screen for a decade, son Michael finally produced the film and the studio cast Jack Nicholson in his former stage role. Nicholson went on to win Best Actor and the film Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Douglas released his sophomore directing effort that year, faring better with the Western "Posse" (1975), in which he returned to tried and true territory and as a haughty, self-obsessed sheriff. He teamed with fellow aging star Burt Lancaster in the TV movie "Victory at Entebbe," (ABC, 1976) and appeared in the spooky thriller "The Fury" (1978) before taking the stage in a tour de force performance as grown-up Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in Bernard Sabath's "The Boys in Autumn" (1981). Douglas took on another dual role in the Australian Western "The Man from Snowy River" (1983), a family video favorite for its eye-filling scenery and incredible action sequences with wild horses. He earned an Emmy nomination in the title role of the CBS movie "Amos" (1985), which led Douglas to become active in the cause of elderly abuse, for which he even testified before the Congressional Select Sub-Committee on Aging. In 1986, Lancaster and Douglas brought the curtain down on their collaboration with the good-natured parody and aptly titled feature, "Tough Guys" (1986).

Douglas published the memoir The Ragman's Son in 1988, and the bestseller sparked a new writing career. His first novel Dance with the Devil was released in 1990, a year before he made headlines for surviving a Los Angeles helicopter crash that killed two fellow passengers. The Douglas Foundation opened the doors of the Anne Douglas Center for Women, a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles, and Douglas returned to bookstores with well-received titles The Secret in 1992 and Last Tango in Brooklyn in 1994. He starred opposite Craig T. Nelson in the father-son reconciliation TV film "Take Me Home Again" (NBC, 1994) and made a rare comedy appearance as a crotchety family elder in the feature "Greedy" (1994), which fell short of expectations but not because of Douglas, whose love of life clearly came through in a dynamic performance. In 1996, a debilitating stroke permanently impaired his speech but Douglas made an emotional public comeback to accept a lifetime achievement Oscar at the 1996 Academy Awards, despite his impaired speech.

In 1997, Douglas released a second autobiographical work, Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning and the Douglas Foundation funded a citywide program to fix up more than 400 children's playgrounds in Los Angeles. The same year, he reunited with longtime friend Lauren Bacall in the light comedy "Diamonds" (1997) co-starring Dan Aykroyd. Douglas was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hollywood Film Festival in 1997 and another from the Screen Actor's Guild in 1999. In 2002, he released a third autobiography, My Stroke of Luck. The following year he and son Michael - known to have had a tumultuous relationship (made perhaps worse through career jealousies once Michael's star eclipsed his father's) - made a long overdue screen pairing (along with Michael's son Cameron and Douglas' ex-wife, Diandra) in the comedy "It Runs In the Family" (2003), the story of a dysfunctional New York family and their attempts to reconcile.

In 2005, Douglas allowed a longtime friend, actress-director Lee Grant, to explore the storied careers and relationship of Douglas and his equally famous son Michael in the HBO documentary "A Father...A Son...Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2005).

The final roles of Kirk Douglas included the 2004 movie Illusion by Michael Goorjian and the TV movie Empire State Building Murders of 2008. The video version of Douglas’s 2009 autobiographical one-man show, Before I Forget, was first broadcasted in January 2010 in a form of a documentary.

Kirk Douglas published a couple of his last books, I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist and Life Could Be Verse: Reflections on Love, Loss, and What Really Matters were published in 2012 and 2014 respectively.

Achievements

• 

  During his career, Kirk Douglas appeared in more than 90 movies. Douglas was known for his explosive acting style. As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas received three Academy Award nominations and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement.
  
  Douglas was honored by governments and organizations of various countries, including France, Italy, Portugal, Israel, and Germany. In 1981, Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter. In 1984, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In 1990, he received the French Legion of Honor for distinguished services to France in arts and letters. In 1991, he received the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 1994, Douglas's accomplishments in the performing arts were celebrated in Washington, D.C., where he was among the recipients of the annual Kennedy Center Honors. In 1999, he received the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he received the National Medal of Arts award from President Bush.
  
  For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Douglas has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Blvd.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter, and a Lifetime in Hollywood 2017
  • I Am Spartacus! 2012
  • The Ragman's Son 1988
  • My Stroke of Luck 2003
  • Climbing the Mountain 2001
  • Dance With the Devil 1990
  • Let's Face It: 90 Years of Living, Loving, and Learning 2007
  • Last Tango in Brooklyn 1994
  • Young Heroes of the Bible 1999
  • The Ragman's Son by Kirk Douglas 1988

• movie

  • Saturn 3 1980
  • The Final Countdown 1980
  • The Way West 1967
  • Catch Me A Spy 1971
  • Town Without Pity 1961
  • Along the Great Divide 1951
  • The Big Trees 1952
  • The Bad and the Beautiful 1952
  • My Dear Secretary 1948
  • Remembrance of Love 1982
  • Man Without a Star 1955
  • Strange Love of Martha Ivers 1946
  • The Fury 1978
  • Master Touch 1972
  • Lust for Life 1956
  • Lonely are the Brave 1962
  • Tough Guys 1986
  • Ulysses 1955
  • Seven Days in May 1964
  • Last Train from Gun Hill 1959
  • Detective Story 1951
  • Champion 1949
  • Posse 1975
  • The Vikings 1958
  • Paths of Glory 1957
  • Two Weeks in Another Town 1962
  • Gunfight at the O.K. Corral 1957
  • Diamonds 1999
  • The Last Sunset 1961
  • Illusion 2004
  • The Hook 1963
  • Ace in the Hole 1951
  • The Arrangement 1969
  • Young Man with a Horn 1950
  • Spartacus 1960
  • The Brotherhood 1968
  • 20,000 Leagues under the Sea 1954
  • Cast a Giant Shadow 1966
  • Out of The Past 1947
  • A Letter to Three Wives 1949
  • Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid 1982
  • Greedy 1994
  • Once is Not Enough 1975
  • There Was a Crooked Man 1970
  • It Runs in The Family 2003
  • The War Wagon 1967
  • Rain of Fire 2000
  • Eddie Macon's Run 1983
  • Top Secret Affair 1957
  • The Secret 1992

Religion

In February 1991, Douglas was injured in a collision between the helicopter he was in and a small plane above Santa Paula Airport. Two other people were also injured; two people in the plane were killed. This near-death experience sparked a search for meaning by Douglas, which led him, after much study, to embrace the Judaism in which he had been raised. He documented this spiritual journey in his book, Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning (2001).

In his earlier autobiography, The Ragman's Son (1988), he recalled, "years back, I tried to forget that I was a Jew," but later in his career he began "coming to grips with what it means to be a Jew," which became a theme in his life. In an interview in 2000, he explained this transition:

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

Douglas noted that the underlying theme of some of his films, including The Juggler (1953), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and Remembrance of Love (1982), was about "a Jew who doesn't think of himself as one, and eventually finds his Jewishness." The Juggler was the first Hollywood feature to be filmed in the newly established state of Israel. Douglas recalled that while there, he saw "extreme poverty and food being rationed." But he found it "wonderful, finally, to be in the majority." Its producer, Stanley Kramer, tried to portray "Israel as the Jews' heroic response to Hitler's destruction."

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

Politics

Douglas was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party. He wrote letters to politicians who were friends. He noted in his memoir, Let's Face It (2007), that he felt compelled to write to former president Jimmy Carter in 2006 in order to stress that "Israel is the only successful democracy in the Middle East... (and) has had to endure many wars against overwhelming odds. If Israel loses one war, they lose Israel."

Actor Kirk Douglas suggested he saw similarities between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, in an op-ed published months before his 100th birthday. While not mentioning the Republican nominee by name, the Jewish actor quoted directly from a recent speech by Trump, in which he argued for ideological screening tests for potential immigrants.

Views

Douglas stated that the keys to acting success are determination and application: "You must know how to function and how to maintain yourself, and you must have a love of what you do. But an actor also needs great good luck. I have had that luck." Douglas had great vitality and explained that "it takes a lot out of you to work in this business. Many people fall by the wayside because they don't have the energy to sustain their talent."

He virtually ignored interventionist directors. He prepared himself privately for each role he played, so that when the cameras were ready to roll he was suitably, and some would say egotistically and even selfishly, inspired to steal every scene in a manner comparable in modern times to Jack Nicholson's modus operandi.

Douglas and his wife have donated to various non-profit causes during his career. 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 Maria Riccio Bryce, who won the school Thespian Society's Kirk Douglas Award in 1968. In 2012 he donated $5 million to St. Lawrence University, his alma mater. The college used the donation for the scholarship fund he began in 1999.

He has donated to various schools, medical facilities and other non-profit organizations in southern California. These have included the rebuilding of over 400 Los Angeles Unified School District playgrounds that were aged and in need of restoration. They 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. They supported the Anne Douglas Childhood Center at the Sinai Temple of Westwood. In March 2015, Kirk and his wife donated $2.3 million to the Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Since the early 1990s Kirk and Anne Douglas have donated up to $40 million to Harry's Haven, an Alzheimer's treatment facility in Woodland Hills, to care for patients at the Motion Picture Home. To celebrate his 99th birthday in December 2015, they donated another $15 million to help expand the facility with a new two-story Kirk Douglas Care Pavilion.

Quotations: "In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail."

"People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed."

"I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life."

"I didn't think I was so tough until I did 'Champion'; then I was a tough guy."

"No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right."

"The learning process continues until the day you die."

"God bless Dad, he came to every one of my shows. I was bad, and I had horrible stage fright. My dad was so relieved - he'd say, 'You were terrible; this kid is not going to be an actor.' Finally, I did a play and he said, 'Son - you were really good.'"

"Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that's what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody."

"If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married."

"Why can't a woman be more like a dog, huh? So sweet, loving, attentive."

Membership

Kirk Douglas established The Douglas Foundation, a civic-minded charity involved in health and community programs.

Personality

As a producer, Douglas had a reputation of being a compulsively hard worker who expected others to exude 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 all elements of his film-making. This was partly due to his high opinion of actors, movies, and moviemaking: "To me it is the most important art form—it is an art, and it includes all the elements of the modern age." He also stressed prioritizing the entertainment goal of films over any messages, "You can make a statement, you can say something, but it must be entertaining."

As an actor, he dived into every role, dissecting not only his own lines but all the parts in the script to measure the rightness of the role, and he was willing to fight with a director if he felt justified.

Physical Characteristics: Rugged good looks, rough-hewn voice, a rippling wrestler’s physique, that one-of-a-kind chin, Douglas was a movie star the moment he strode onto the screen in "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers" in 1946.

For most of his career, Douglas enjoyed good health and what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of energy. On January 28, 1996, he suffered a severe stroke, impairing his ability to speak. Doctors told his wife that unless there was rapid improvement, the loss of the ability to speak was likely permanent. After a regime of daily speech-language therapy that lasted several months, his ability to speak returned, although it was still limited. He was able to accept an honorary Academy Award two months later in March and thank the audience. He wrote about this experience in a book, My Stroke of Luck, which he hoped would be an "operating manual" for others on how to handle a stroke victim in their own family.

Quotes from others about the person

• Reviewers of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) noted 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 happen, even with the finest actors. Douglas had, and has, a distinctly individual manner. He radiates a certain inexplicable quality, and it is this, as much as talent, that accounts for his success in films."
  
  Melville Shavelson, who produced and directed Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), said that it didn't take him long to discover what his main problem was going to be in directing Douglas:
  
  "Kirk Douglas was intelligent. When discussing a script with actors, I have always found it necessary to remember that they never read the other actors' lines, so their concept of the story is somewhat hazy. Kirk had not only read the lines of everyone in 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 convinced of its correctness.... He listened, so it was necessary to fight every minute."
  
  Douglas's wife, Anne, attributes his tough childhood to the energy he devotes to acting:
  
  "He was reared by his mother and his sisters and as a schoolboy he had to work to help support the family. I think part of Kirk's life has been a monstrous effort to prove himself and gain recognition in the eyes of his father... Not even four years of psychoanalysis could alter the drives that began as a desire to prove himself."

Interests

• Politicians

  Jimmy Carter

Connections

Douglas married twice, first to Diana Dill, on November 2, 1943; they divorced in 1951. The couple had two sons, actor Michael Douglas and producer Joel Douglas. Afterwards, in Paris, he met producer Anne Buydens (born Hannelore Marx; April 23, 1919, Hanover, Germany) while acting on location in Lust for Life.

She originally fled from Germany to escape Nazism and survived by putting her multilingual skills to work at a film studio, doing translations for subtitles. They married on May 29, 1954. In 2014 they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. They had two sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor. Eric Douglas died on July 6, 2004 from an accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription drugs.

Father:

Herschel Danielovitch

(1884–1950)

Mother:

Bryna Sanglel

(1884–1958)

Spouse:

Anne Buydens

(b. 23 April 1919)

Anne Buydens is a German-born Belgian-American philanthropist, producer, and occasional actress. She has also been a member of the International Best Dressed List since 1970. She is married to actor Kirk Douglas.

ex-spouse:

Diana Douglas

(January 22, 1923 – July 3, 2015)

Diana Douglas was a Bermudian actress who was known for her marriage to actor Kirk Douglas, from 1943 until their divorce in 1951. Diana Douglas was the mother of Michael and Joel Douglas.

Son:

Michael Douglas

(b. September 25, 1944)

Michael Douglas is an American actor and producer. Douglas's career includes a diverse range of films in the independent and blockbuster genres, for which he has received a number of accolades, both competitive and honorary.

Son:

Joel Douglas

(b. January 23, 1947)

Joel Douglas is an American film producer.

Son:

Peter Douglas

(b. November 23, 1955)

Peter Douglas is an American television and film producer, a son of actor Kirk Douglas and his second wife, the German American producer Anne Buydens.

Son:

Eric Douglas

(June 21, 1958 – July 6, 2004)

Eric Douglas was an American actor and stand-up comedian. Douglas was the youngest son of actor Kirk Douglas and his second wife Anne Buydens.

Friend:

Lauren Bacall

(September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014)

Lauren Bacall was an American actress known for her distinctive voice and sultry looks.

References

• American Legends: The Life of Kirk Douglas
  2014
• The Very Best of Kirk Douglas: Thoughts of a Hollywood Legend
  2014
• The Films of Kirk Douglas
  1972
• Kirk Douglas
  1976