Kirk Douglas has died at age 103, having outlived his co-stars John Wayne, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Laurence Olivier, Lana Turner, Robert Mitchum, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Fredric March and Patricia Neal.
Douglas’ distinctive talent was the intensity and power that he could project. He was an icon of explosive virility. It seemed that ferocity was always about to erupt from his buffed chest and piercing eyes. This was one dangerous dude.
Douglas was recruited from the New York stage for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946, and followed it with Out of the Past, a masterpiece of film noir. Those performances soon got him leading roles that took advantage of his ability to be sexy and despicable at the same time – the news media noir Ace in the Hole and the showbiz noir The Bad and the Beautiful.
As a pioneering indie producer, Douglas made – and starred in – the blockbuster epic Spartacus. His decision to openly credit screenwriter Dalton Trumbo helped to end the Hollywood blacklist (and also it really helped that Spartacus was a massive financial success).
Along with Spartacus and Ace in the Hole, my two favorite Kirk Douglas performances came in the 1960s:
- Seven Days in May (1964): In this political thriller, Douglas showd his range by playing a profoundly decent man, for whom “patriotic” meant “devoted, dutiful and loyal to the nation’s principles”, not “jingoistic”.
- In Harm’s Way (1965): Douglas dominates this star-studded WW II epic, playing a heroic guy who does something really, really bad and then seeks to redeem himself with an act of sacrifice.
Douglas filled Spartacus, Ulysses and The Vikings with shirtless virile charisma. There’s really nothing to The Vikings except for action adventure (and a scary contact lens for Kirk), but it’s been a guilty pleasure of mine since the first time it played on TV.
