Actor Kirk Douglas, one of Hollywood’s few bona fide living legends, turns 100 years old today.
That is impressive enough — along with his remarkable contributions to American film history— but Douglas also joins a fairly long list of Hollywood actors who became centenarians and sometimes worked into their 90s.
Also on that list is Olivia de Havilland, who is still with us at 100 and living in Paris. Surviving at 102 is Norman Lloyd, who appeared in Trainwreck in 2015. Those who have passed away after hitting 100 include Luise Rainer, Gloria Stuart, Bob Hope, George Burns, Anne Sheridan and many others. Flamboyant actress and socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor is currently 99 and will turn 100 in February.
Douglas, father of actor-producer Michael Douglas, reached his Hollywood superstardom in the 1950s and ‘60s. His personal power and resiliency allowed him to break studio contracts, set up an independent film production company and help end the odious Hollywood blacklist that had ruined so many careers.
Significantly, Douglas risked his own career — but persevered and triumphed — when he hired blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to adapt the novel Spartacus to the screen. With emerging master Stanley Kubrick as director, Spartacus (1960) showcased Douglas in the title role and became a siren song for human rights activism in the 1960s. Trumbo got an official on-screen credit and the walls of blacklist dungeon started to crumble.
Douglas was born as Issur Danielovitch in extreme poverty in Amsterdam, New York, on Dec. 9, 1916. As the son of Jewish immigrants who fled the old Russian empire, Douglas described his hardscrabble childhood in his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman’s Son.
His life changed, obviously for the better, when he managed to get a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. One classmate and close friend was Lauren Bacall, who has confessed to having a wild teen crush on Douglas but could not persuade him to reciprocate. Douglas and Bacall did co-star memorably in the smokin’ musical biopic, Young Man with a Horn (1950).
Meanwhile, Douglas married another classmate, Diana Dill, who became his first wife and mother of Michael Douglas. They divorced in 1951. Douglas remains with his second wife, Anne Buydens, whom he married in 1954.
Douglas succeeded first on the American stage, then in Hollywood films after serving in the U.S. Navy during WWII. Bacall helped him land his debut role in film, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). But it was Douglas’ obvious talent, his intense energy and a lifelong stubborn streak that pushed him to stardom.
Between 1949 and 1956, Douglas was Oscar-nominated as best actor three times for Champion (1949), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956). Forty years later, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences awarded him with an honorary Oscar for his then 50 years of contributions as “a creative and moral force” in Hollywood.
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