Farewell Kirk Douglas, Hollywood icon, was 103 years old – Culture & Entertainment

It was arguably the last of Hollywood’s “toughs” of the golden years and legend has it that he got scared only once when he suffered a stroke in early 1996 and arrived at the hospital literally terrified ” as doctors rushed to tell reporters. But then he came to the wonderful age of 103, stroke apart from Issur Danielovitch, real name of Kirk Douglas (ANSA CINEMA CARD), Hollywood icon and classic movie stars like Spartacus (ANSA CINEMA FACTSHEET)

Rocky physique, angular character as the directors who directed him well know, Douglas faced with prideful stubbornness the difficulty that life placed before him: from the chronic poverty of childhood to the difficult relationships with his father who also encouraged him in his career, the difficult management of the four sons: in addition to Michael (ANSA CINEMA FACTSHEET), also Joel, Peter and Eric of whom he was an egocentric and intrusive father-master. But the role of ‘macho’ was not the only one he loved to remember in a long and articulated career.

Born in Amsterdam in New York state on December 9, 1916 from a family of illiterate Russians (his father, as he will remember in his autobiography, was a “ rag seller ”) he continued to study as a waiter, then a wrestler, then finally the director of the Academy of Dramatic Art admitted it free of charge.

Her film debut after an apprenticeship on Broadway is due to Lauren Bacall. In fact, it was Bogart’s wife who reported it to the producer of ” The strange love of Marta Ivers ”, which marked the beginning of his career in 1946. He referred to his first films to talk about the versatility of his career, alongside the Stanwyck had in fact been an alcoholic attorney in “Letterá a tre wogli”, then in 1949 he will be in the film that will give him popularity and an Oscar nomination (“The great champion”), in the role of a selfish boxer. Meanwhile, two years earlier on the set of ‘The streets of the city’ ‘he had met Burt Lancaster, the lifelong friend with whom he will shoot other sixteen films up to’ ‘Two types incorrigible’ ‘.

All films in which he embodied the hard classic. Protagonist of iconic films such as ‘Spartacus’, ‘Orizzonti di Gloria’, ‘The beautiful and the ugly’. For years his birthday celebrated him by giving to others: “Giving to charity is an egoistic act – he said – because it makes me feel good”. In 2015, with his wife Anne Buydens – also a centenarian – with whom he had shared his life for over 60 years, he donated $ 15 million to a Los Angeles clinic for former Hollywood actors and workers affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Nominated for an Oscar three times, Douglas received the Academy’s most prestigious award: the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.

After the death of his son Eric from an overdose, other tragedies struck the actor in the nineties: in 1991 Douglas miraculously survived a helicopter accident where two of his flight companions lost their lives. In 1996 a stroke took his word away. But tenacious as always, with hours and hours of rehabilitation therapies, Kirk regained at least a little the ability to communicate until he won the Oscar and passed the century. Of him, among the last representatives of the Hollywood of the golden years, the athletic physique remains, the blue look and an unmistakable dimple in the middle of the chin. The news of the death of the legend of the cinema was given by his son, the actor Michael Douglas, with a Facebook post: “It is with great sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us, at the age 103 years old. For the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of cinema who lived long in his silver years, a humanitarian activist whose dedication to justice indicated a standard to which we can all suck. But for us he was just a dad. “