Kirk Douglas, death of the last Hollywood giant

Text by: Aurore Lartigue Follow

Actor, director and producer, it is a legend of the cinema of the XXth century which disappears this Wednesday February 5 at the age of 103 years. But also a personality committed to the journey in the form of an American dream.

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We ended up believing him immortal. Kirk Douglas had survived a helicopter crash; it was believed to have been struck down by two heart attacks. But still, the giant got up and went back to battle. He had even learned to speak again and again, even if his blond hair had long since turned white. Again on December 9, 2018, we saw the photos of the Douglas family posing with a smile for the 102 years of the Patriarch. A mythical age at the height of the legend of the last of the sacred monsters of the golden age of Hollywood. A legend built over an extended filmography on which he walked his famous dimple for more than half a century.

The course of the American actor, director and producer has everything from the American dream. The only boy in a family of six sisters, born on December 9, 1916, he is still called Issur Danielovitch when his parents, Russian Jews, flee the pogroms for America and New York State. Money is as scarce as the family is large. Poverty, the quest for paternal love and the anti-Semitism of the late 1920s marked the first years of his life. Enough to forge its fighting spirit, between fights and odd jobs to survive.

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The wrestler

Wrestling, precisely, is the sport in which he will excel at university. But there is something else that already drives young Issur. In Le fils du chiffonnier , the first volume of his autobiography published in 1989, he recounts the birth of his vocation. This poem recited at school, the applause that transcends it. He dreams of comedy. And glory. After graduation, he launched out and entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. It is there that he meets Diana Dill, his future wife. This is also where Issur becomes Kirk Douglas.

In 1941, the actor was ready to do battle in the theater. He made his Broadway debut in small roles, but quickly left the boards to join the navy. In his memoirs, he describes himself with humor as a nickel-plated sailor, subject to seasickness and finally reformed after an injury caused by a failure of a sailor from his own crew ...

Cinema picks him up on his return. It was his friend Lauren Bacall , met at the theater academy, who put his foot in the stirrup by landing him an essay in The Grasp of Crime . On target. He, the man of the east coast and the theater, finds himself thrown into the arena of the exuberant Hollywood. Culture shock.

Between the two of us, Hollywood

Kirk Douglas in 1963. Credit: Wikimedia commons

Getting started is not easy. Kirk Douglas is still nothing and we make him feel it. In his autobiography, he tells of his naive dazzling in front of the riot of pleasures which he discovers while attending his first evening after this first role. " What had I not been invited to such receptions when I was starving in New York! The beginner gawks at all the stars seen on the screen. He dreams of speaking with Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. And ends up being blown by the starlet who accompanied him. Kirk Douglas did not see the blow coming. Welcome to the unforgiving world of Hollywood! Actor is stunned, but not knocked out " Hollywood looks like a crowded streetcar running at full speed, and endlessly young talented actors and actresses jump inside, pushing the others back. (…) Keeping your mental balance in Hollywood is a huge task , ”he describes.

Whatever his wounded pride, Kirk Douglas has not forgotten little Issur and for him, revenge is a dish that can be eaten cold. In his autobiography, he jubilantly pinpoints those who despised him. And the blows rain. Hollywood of course, his first agent, and even this professor of the Theater Academy who had thrown in his face that he was not made for this job.

As for women, the American athlete physique puts the competition down. After his marriage to Diana Dill, he went on to conquer: Rita Hayworth, Norma Peal, Gene Tierney, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, etc. He remarried with Anne Buydens in 1954.

Kirk Douglas is not afraid to make choices. While he is offered a blockbuster, he prefers a role tailored to his measure in the film of an unknown. In Champion , he embodies a boxer whose dreams of glory will lead him to his loss. The film was released in 1948 and earned him a first Oscar nomination.

Committed producer

From then on, Kirk Douglas became a star. He goes on movies and badass roles. In total, almost 80. He tours with the biggest ones: La Femme aux chimères by Michael Curtiz, Le Gouffre aux chimères by Billy Wilder, The Captive with Clear Eyes by Howard Hawks, Les Ensorcelés by Vincent Minelli, the Western Settlement at OK Coral alongside Burt Lancaster, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings by Richard Fleischer, which he produces.

Settlement of accounts at OK Corral
Settlement of accounts at OK Corral Trailer VO

Because in 1954, he created his production company, Bryna, after his mother's name. The opportunity for him, an assertive democrat, to address committed subjects. He produced and embodied The Passionate Life of Vincent Van Gogh , a trying role that almost won out over his mental health.

In The Paths of Glory , an antimilitarist film and a time censored in France, he is a colonel at the head of a mutiny. A man who stands against the absurdity of a fight lost in advance, the suicidal assault led by a French regiment in 1916.

"I am Spartacus! "

In the 1960s, Kirk Douglas was at the height of his glory, but he did not give up. He runs tirelessly with one idea in mind: to produce Spartacus . The filming, which he recounts in I am Spartacus , is complicated. Director Anthony Mann is replaced by Stanley Kubrick, just 32, who has to deal with headliners. The film is a public success crowned by four Oscar, but it costs a lot of money, 13 million dollars, one of the biggest budgets of the time, and will never be profitable. In The Son of the Ragpicker , he writes: “ Spartacus occupied three years of my life, more time than the real Spartacus spent fighting against the Roman Empire. But it is with this role of gladiator, incarnation of all the fights carried out for freedom, that Kirk Douglas enters definitively the legend. Questioned in 2006 by the Allo Ciné site, he mentioned the peplum: " It is a film that shows how we must find and maintain control of our destiny. If I look at my life, I feel like a gladiator who really knew how to choose and lead his battles to free himself and live at the top of my lungs. "

Kirk Douglas directed by Stanley Kubrick in "Spartacus". Credit: Wikimedia commons

Among his fights, there is also McCarthyism. During the witch hunt , he entrusts several scenarios, including that of Spartacus , to Donald Trumbo who then appears on the terrible black list of personalities (actors, directors, screenwriters, etc.) condemned for anti-American activities and prohibited from working at Hollywood.

With the 1970s, the golden age of Hollywood is definitely gone and Kirk Douglas turns less. There will still be The Arrangement by Elia Kazan (1969), The Reptile by Joseph Manckiewicz (1970) and Furie (1978) by Brian de Palma.

Latest battles

Many times nominated for an Oscar for the best actor trophy, Kirk Douglas finally had to wait for an Honorary Oscar in 1996 to see his five decades of career rewarded.

One of his latest feats of arms was in September 2016, during the American presidential campaign, that he signed it. While Clint Eastwood , another sacred monster of American cinema, went it alone by championing Donald Trump, in a text published by the Huffington Post , Kirk Douglas, almost 100 years old, gave his feelings on the American campaign.

Taking up an often tempted and disapproved comparison between the Republican candidate and Adolf Hitler, he recalled the dark hours he had known: " I was 16 when this man took power in 1933. During the decade that preceded, we made fun of him - he was not taken seriously. He was considered a buffoon who could never deceive a civilized and educated population with his hateful and nationalist rhetoric. The "experts" considered it a joke. They were wrong. "

" I thought I had seen everything so far. But in my life, I had never seen such a fear campaign waged by one of the main candidates for the American presidency , "he lamented, warning about the consequences, if ever this" evil "took root in the country.

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