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Kirk Douglas has been the recipient of numerous honors both in the United States and abroad in recognition of both his film and philanthropic work. In 1996, Kirk won an Honorary Academy Award “for fifty years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community.” He has been nominated for the Academy Award as Best Actor three times: for Champion in 1950, The Bad and the Beautiful in 1953, and Lust for Life in 1957. He received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1991. In 1999, the AFI also placed him on its list of the top fifty stars of American cinema. In 1981, Kirk was presented with the Presidential Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest civilian award, in recognition of his work as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department throughout the world. The French government presented him with the Legion of Honor in 1985. In 2001, he received the National Medal of the Arts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Kirk has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, one of the few ever to be stolen and replaced. In 2004, a street in Palm Springs, California was named “Kirk Douglas Way” in his honor.
His career as an actor has been one of the foundations of Kirk Douglas’s life. Family has been the other. Although Kirk began life as a “ragman’s son,” in the words of the title of his best-selling autobiography, he went on to found one of the entertainment industry’s best-known and most creative dynasties. Kirk was married to actress Diana Dill from 1943 until 1951. Rhe couple had two sons: actor-producer Michael, born in 1944, and film producer Joel, born in 1947. Kirk married the former Anne Buydens, whom he met while working on the production of the film Act of Love, in 1954. This marriage also produced two sons, Peter, who was born in 1955, and Eric, born in 1958. Kirk and Anne’s marriage is notable for its longevity, and the couple celebrated a second “recommitment” ceremony on their 50th wedding anniversary in 2004. Kirk and Anne live in Beverly Hills and Montecito, California, For several decades, they maintained a residence in Palm Springs. Here’s more about the other members of the Douglas clan: Anne Douglas Anne Douglas was born Anne Buydens in Hannover, Germany. Recognizing the evils of fascism, though barely a teenager, she fled that country for Switzerland and Belgium, where she became a citizen. Fluent in several languages, she eventually settled in Paris, doing film translations and writing subtitles. After the war, Mrs. Douglas continued her work in film and television, moving into public relations and handling protocol for the Cannes Film Festival. In 1953, while working as public relations manager for the French-American co-production Act of Love, she met her husband-to-be, the film’s star Kirk Douglas. The following year, the couple married in Las Vegas.
In 1955, the Douglases formed one of Hollywood’s first independent production companies, the Bryna Company, named for Kirk's mother. Mrs. Douglas has served as the company’s president for many years. In 1964, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas established The Douglas Foundation, one of the film industry’s first private charitable institutions. Among the Foundation initiatives with which Mrs. Douglas has been most closely involved are the Anne Douglas Center of the Los Angeles Mission, which cares for homeless women, and the Anne & Kirk Douglas School Playground Award, which funds the building and restoration of playgrounds at schools in inner-city and disadvantaged areas of Los Angeles.
In recognition of her philanthropic activities, Mrs. Douglas was named Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1969, and received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen from the American Institute of Public Service in 2003. The Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center presented her with the Evelyn Clayburgh Award for distinguished service, and in 1997, she became the first recipient of the Cedars-Sinai Women’s Cancer Research Institute’s Women of Courage Award. A proud United States citizen, Mrs. Douglas has traveled the world, often in the company of her husband, as a goodwill ambassador on behalf of the U.S. State Department and U.S. Information Agency, which presented her with its Directors' Award for superior achievement. Her arts activities have included service on the boards of the Mark Taper Forum, the Los Angeles Music Center’s Center Theatre Group, and the Palm Springs Desert Museum. She has been inducted into the Fashion Hall of Fame, and was voted onto the international list of Best Dressed Women three separate times.
In 1984 and 1985, Michael established himself as a swashbuckling romantic lead opposite Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone and its sequel The Jewel of the Nile. In 1987, he appeared in the hit thriller Fatal Attraction and won the Academy Award as Best Actor for his role as the avaricious Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Other notable film roles include The War of the Roses (1989), Basic Instinct (1992), Falling Down (1993), Traffic and Wonder Boys (both 2000), and a turn with his father Kirk and son Cameron in It Runs in the Family (2003). More recently, he starred as Liberace in the acclaimed HBO production of Behind the Candelabra. Michael was married to Diandra Luker from 1977 to 2000, and the couple have one son, Cameron, born in 1978. Michael married actress Catherine Zeta-Jones in 2000, and their children Dylan and Carys were born in 2000 and 2003 respectively. The couple live in New York City.
Joel Douglas Joel Douglas was born in 1947, the second son of Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill. His impact in the film business has been behind rather than in front of the camera. He served as unit production manager on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and co-produced both Romancing the Stone (1984) and Jewel of the Nile (1985). For several years he headed the Victorine film studio in Nice, France. Joel's wife Jo-Ann passed away in 2013. He lives in Palm Springs, California. Peter Douglas Peter Douglas was born in 1955, the eldest son of Kirk and Anne Douglas. He entered the film business in his late teens, as one of the first to be admitted into the prestigious Directors Guild of America Training Program.
In 1980, Peter produced his first film, the science-fiction time-travel classic The Final Countdown. He followed this with an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s fantasy masterpiece Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) for Disney. He then produced both Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989) starring Chevy Chase, for Universal, and wrote, directed, and produced the independent film A Tiger’s Tale (1988), featuring Ann-Margret. In television, Peter produced Amos, the highest-rated movie for television of 1985, and Inherit the Wind, for which he won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special in 1988. Moving into cable, he produced the Home Box Office Original Film The Enemy Within (1994). Peter makes films independently through his production company, Vincent Pictures. For several years, he was also President and Chief Operating Officer at the Bryna Company, where he was responsible for the development and production of television, cable and pay-perview programming, as well as the international distribution of a library of classic motion pictures.
For several years, Peter served as a member of the Board of Directors and Vice-Chairman of the Planning Committee of Cedars Sinai, Los Angeles’s preeminent medical center. Peter now serves as Executive Director of the Douglas Foundation. Peter married the former Lisa Schroeder in 1991. The marriage produced four children, Kelsey, Tyler, Ryan, and Jason. They divorced in 2014. Peter lives in Montecito, California. Eric Douglas Eric Douglas was born in 1958 and was Kirk and Anne Douglas’s youngest son. After studying at Pitzer College, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and the London Academy of Dramatic Arts, Eric followed his father Kirk and brother Michael into acting. He appeared in such films as The Flamingo Kid (1984) and The Golden Child (1986), as well as in several roles in episodic television. In the late ‘80s, Eric moved to New York City, where he developed a second career as an improv and stand-up comedian. Eric died in July 2004 and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
Kirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on December 9, 1916, in Amsterdam, New York. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants recently arrived in the United States, looking for a better life. His father Herschel (also known as Harry) worked as a ragman, an occupation immortalized in the title of Kirk’s best-selling 1988 autobiography,The Ragman’s Son. Kirk would later name his independent film production company after his mother, Bryna. Kirk was the only boy among six sisters. To help ends meet in his desperately poor family, Kirk took on a variety of odd jobs while growing up. He began acting in plays in high school, where he excelled in both academics and sports. He worked his way through St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, where he was a prominent member of the wrestling team. After graduation, Kirk attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City on a special scholarship. When World War II broke out, he joined the US Navy, from which he received an honorable discharge in 1944.
While serving in the Navy, Kirk saw a photo of Bermuda-born Diana Dill, a fellow student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, on the cover ofLifemagazine and swore he was going to marry her. True to his word, Kirk married Diana on November 2, 1943. The couple subsequently had two sons, Michael, born in 1944, and Joel, born in 1947, before divorcing in 1951. After his discharge from the Navy, Kirk began being cast on the New York stage, as well as in radio. Lauren Bacall, another of Kirk’s fellow students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, insisted that film producer Hal Wallis audition him for the Barbara Stanwyck filmThe Strange Love of Martha Ivers(1946). Kirk was cast and played his role to huge critical success, launching his Hollywood career. Kirk’s early film roles included appearances in two film classics, the film noirOut of the Past(1947), directed by Jacques Tourneur, and Joseph Mankiewicz’sA Letter to Three Wives(1949). In 1948, he appeared with Burt Lancaster inI Walk Alone. This was the first of a seven-film series of Douglas-Lancaster collaborations, which included such notable films as the WesternGunfight at the O.K. Corral(1957) and the political thrillerSeven Days in May(1964), directed by John Frankenheimer.
Kirk achieved full-fledged stardom, and his first Academy Award nomination, in 1949, playing a ruthless boxer inChampion, directed by Mark Robson. This was Kirk’s first part playing “sons of bitches” and heels. It certainly wasn’t the last, despite the many heroic roles he would also take on. Kirk’s next starring role was as a jazz trumpeter, based on Bix Beiderbecke, inYoung Man with a Horn(1950), where he played opposite Doris Day. In 1951, Kirk starred as an unscrupulous reporter in Billy Wilder’sAce in the Hole. Although the film was not a success on its first release, it is now recognized as one of both Wilder’s and Kirk’s best. That same year, he starred in the successful crime dramaDetective Story, directed by William Wyler. Kirk also started playing a variety of Western roles at this time, first inAlong the Great Divide(1951), and then in Howard Hawks’s 1952 filmThe Big Sky. Kirk garnered his second Oscar nomination with another role as a heel, the “bad” film producer in Vincente Minnelli’s 1952 Hollywood melodramaThe Bad and the Beautiful, opposite Lana Turner. Kirk and Minnelli reunited ten years later forTwo Weeks in Another Town, a sequel of sorts set in Rome during the ’60s heyday of the international film industry.
An earlier European film,Act of Love(1953), is notable because he married the film’s publicist, the German-born Belgian Anne Buydens, the following year. This marriage produced two sons, Peter, who was born in 1955, and Eric, born in 1958. Kirk and Anne’s marriage is notable for its longevity, with the couple celebrating a second “recommitment” ceremony on their 50th wedding anniversary. In the year of his marriage to Anne, Kirk appeared in one of his best-loved comic roles, as a sailor in the hit Disney live-action version of Jules Verne’s20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In 1956, he starred in another memorable role, as Vincent Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli’s film biographyLust for Life, for which he received a third Oscar nomination. In recent years, it has become common for film stars to form their own production companies. In 1955, when Kirk formed The Bryna Company, the practice was virtually unheard of. The company produced a critical hit early on:Paths of Glory(1957), the classic World War I anti-war drama directed by Stanley Kubrick, in which Kirk starred as Colonel Dax, a French commander who faces a life-defining moral dilemma. Just a year later, Kirk took on a very different kind of leading role in the rousing adventureThe Vikings, a huge box-office hit.
The Bryna Company’s finest moment may have been the production ofSpartacus (1960), again directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas in the title role of what is arguably the greatest “sword and sandal” epic film ever. The film is further distinguished by Kirk’s insistence that formerly banned screenwriter Dalton Trumbo be credited under his own name. This effectively ending the McCarthy-era blacklist, an achievement Kirk regards as the high point of his career. In 2012, following the 50th anniversary of the film’s release, Kirk explored the trials and tribulations behind the making of this classic and the breaking of the blacklist in his book I Am Spartacus! In 1962, Kirk appeared in one of his favorite roles, as a cowboy whom time has passed by in the intimateLonely Are the Brave, also written by Dalton Trumbo and produced by Bryna. A year later, Kirk began a series of international trips, often accompanied by his wife Anne, as a goodwill ambassador for the US State Department. In 1964, Anne and Kirk established The Douglas Foundation (www.douglasfoundation.org), one of the entertainment industry’s oldest and largest private philanthropic organizations. The Foundation’s work, focusing on health, education, and the disadvantaged, continues unabated.
At about the time he started The Douglas Foundation, Kirk starred as Randall McMurphy in a New York stage adaptation of the Ken Kesey novelOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kirk eventually assigned the motion picture rights to the novel to his son Michael, who went on to produce a film version that swept the Academy Awards in 1975. Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Kirk appeared in a series of major motion pictures, often with international settings, includingThe List of Adrian Messenger(1963),In Harm’s Way(1965),Is Paris Burning?(1966),The Arrangement(1969),Once Is Not Enough (1975), andThe Fury(1978), directed by Brian De Palma. In 1980, he appeared in the science-fiction time-travel classicThe Final Countdown, produced by his son Peter, and in 1982 travelled to Australia to star in the hit,The Man from Snowy River. In the ’80s, Kirk turned to feature-length television films. He played the title role inAmos(1985), which was the highest-rated film for television of its year, and then appeared as William Jennings Bryan in an adaptation of the stage playInherit the Wind, which won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special in 1988.
In 1988, Kirk also published his immensely popular autobiographyThe Ragman’s Son,and started yet another career as an author. His books encompass both novels, such asDance With the Devil(1990) andLast Tango in Brooklyn(1994), and non-fiction, includingClimbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning(2001), My Stroke of Luck (2003), and I Am Spartacus! (2012). In 2014, he published his first book of poetry, Life Could Be Verse. As his books of reflections reveal, even after achieving stardom, Kirk faced his share of adversity and grief. He was seriously injured in a helicopter accident near Santa Paula, California, northwest of Los Angeles, in 1993. He then suffered a severe stroke in 1996, which impaired his ability to speak and from which he has largely rehabilitated himself. His youngest son, Eric, died tragically in 2004. While Kirk never departed from the Jewish faith in which he was raised, he became more deeply involved in Hebraic studies late in life, and underwent a traditional if rare second bar mitzvah at the age of 83. He is also a proud grandparent seven times over.
Kirk has received numerous honors in the United States and aborad in recognition of both his film and philanthropic work. He accepted the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1991. In 1999, the AFI also placed him on its list of the top fifty stars of American cinema. In 1996, Kirk won an Honorary Academy Award “for fifty years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community.” Kirk has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, one of the few ever to be stolen and replaced. In 2004, a street in Palm Springs, California, was named “Kirk Douglas Way” in his honor. In 1981, Kirk was also presented with the Presidential Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest civilian award, in recognition of his work throughout the world as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department. The French government presented him with the Legion of Honor in 1985. In 2001, he received the National Medal of the Arts at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Kirk maintains a busy schedule of film, television, and public appearances, in addition to his many philanthropic activities. He is the rarest of the rare: a classic film star with immense life-long impact and appeal.
Kirk Douglas: 9 Amazing Facts About Hollywood's Favorite "Spartacus"
1. His Real Name Is Izzy Demsky Kirk Douglas is not his real name. It's a name he created for himself in the early 1940s. He was born Issur Danielovitch near New York City in 1916, the son of JewishRussian immigrants. His parents, Herschel and Bryna had left what is today Belarus to move to America and start a new life. Young Issur, nicknamed "Izzy," had six sisters, and the family spoke Yiddish at home. Prior to the family's immigration, an uncle had relocated to the United States and changed his surname to "Demsky." Issur's parents decided to do the same, and the future actor was raised as Izzy Demsky.
2. Izzy Once Ran for President! In the 1930s, young Izzy had acted in some school plays and realized he wanted to become a professional actor. And as he matured, the women began to notice him, including his English teacher who seduced her young pupil when he was just 14. To pursue his acting ambitions, Kirk set his heart on attending St. Lawrence University but didn't have the money to pay for tuition. Up until now, he'd worked dozens of different jobs to help his struggling family, and he simply hadn't been able to save anything for college tuition. So he arranged a meeting with a Dean and talked his way into the school's Drama program, promising to pay back a loan if the school would accept him. They did, and Issur repaid the debt by working part-time as a janitor and gardener. In fact, the ambitious young lad landed a spot on the university's wrestling team and was voted President of the Class of 1939. He graduated with a degree in English and won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, where he decided to change his name: he was now going to be known as Kirk Douglas.
3. Dating Humphrey Bogart's Future Wife During his first year at the Academy, Kirk became friends with an even younger aspiring actress named Betty Joan Perske. Young Betty Joan, still a young teen, would later admit that she had a serious crush on her 24-year-old classmate, but he was more interested in her friend, another actress by the name of Diana Dill. None-the-less, Kirk and Betty Joan dated occasionally and a warm and lasting friendship was created. When the war broke out in 1941, young Kirk joined the Navy and married his girlfriend Diana. But what he didn't know was that he would resume his friendship with his classmate Betty Joan, only by now she'd changed her name too: she was Lauren Bacall.
4. Kirk Douglas: World War II Hero Kirk Douglas' career on the New York stage had barely begun when World War II broke out. Douglas enlisted in the United States Navy in 1941 and attended the midshipman school at Notre Dame. Graduating as a naval ensign, he was sent to the Pacific Theatre, assigned to an Anti-Submarine Unit as a communications officer. Most of 1942 and 1943 were spent aboard small patrol crafts in the Pacific Ocean war zone, searching out Japanese subs. It was during a sub-hunt that Douglas suffered internal injuries when a depth charge exploded prematurely. He spent months in San Diego's Balboa Hospital before receiving a medical discharge in 1944.
5. Walt Disney Talked Kirk Into Singing In the 1940s and early 1950s, Walt Disney's movies were either feature-length cartoons, documentaries or filmed in Great Britain. But Walt made a momentous decision and decided to use his Burbank-located Disney Studios for filming 1954's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, starring Kirk Douglas as Ned Land. This was the first live-action movie ever filmed there, and Kirk became Disney's first big-time film star. Of any early Kirk Douglas movie, this was the one that really gave his career a boost. While many of the underwater sea scenes were filmed in The Bahamas, however, Disney had to rent 20th Century Fox's huge outdoor water tank for some of the scenes using scaled-down replicas. And some of the opening scenes were filmed at nearby Universal International. And as a last point of trivia, Douglas sang two songs in the movie, and "Whale of a Tale" was recorded and released to the general public in both an album, and as a single. In his 1955 movie Man Without a Star, there is a scene where Douglas appears to be playing the banjo and singing, although he is not a banjo player, and some observers think the singing was dubbed. In any event, by the time his movie career was winding down, Douglas would be better-remembered for the cleft in this chin than for his singing...
6. Kirk Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest! In 1975, the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest accomplished something in Tinseltown that had only happened once before: it won all five major Academy Awards: Picture, Actor and Actress, and Supporting Actor and Actress. It had only been done once before, in 1934's It Happened One Night. The film won Michael Douglas an Oscar since he was one of the film's producers. But! What few people know is that his father Kirk had bought the rights to the novel a decade earlier, and had starred in the 1963 Broadway production. Unable to find a buyer for the movie rights, Kirk gave the rights to his son Michael and sat back to watch his son enjoy the success he'd envisioned many years earlier.
7. Burt and Kirk: Friends and Foes Kirk Douglas was paired with many of the greatest actors and actresses in Hollywood during his career, but he and Burt Lancaster made a convincing on-screen pair. Over the years there would be seven Kirk Douglas/Burt Lancaster movies, beginning with 1948's I Walk Alone, to 1986's Tough Guys. During the nearly four decades inbetween, the duo also acted in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Devil's Disciple, the List of Adrian Messenger, Seven Days in May, and Victory at Entebbe. Douglas always got second-billing, but their on-screen time was generally equal. And the closeness they appeared to share in their movies didn't carry over to their private lives. In fact, the two actors were quite competitive with each other and occasionally took little "digs" at the other in public. Nonetheless, they respected each other's acting talents, even if working together occasionally caused some bruised egos. In 1987, at an American Academy of Dramatic Arts tribute to Kirk, Lancaster addressed the audience and said, "Kirk would be the first person to tell you he's a very difficult man..." He paused momentarily, and then continued, "…and I would be the second."
8. I Coulda Been a Contender! Kirk Douglas never won an Academy Award for a film role, but there were plenty of highly acclaimed Kirk Douglas movies where he could have qualified. Nonetheless, in 1996 he was given an honorary Oscar for his 50 years in the entertainment industry. In 1953 he turned down an offer to star in Stalag 17. The part went to William Holden, and it won him the Best Actor Academy Award. In 1965, it was Douglas, not Lee Marvin who was first approached about playing the alcoholic gunman, Kid Shelleen in the very popular Cat Ballou, but again Douglas said no, and the part won Marvin his only acting Oscar. Douglas will later write he regretted his decisions. Two other movies that he could have been a part of were also huge successes much to his chagrin: he was selected ahead of John Wayne to star in the 1949 war drama, Sands of Iwo Jima, but chose to appear in Champion. Sands of Iwo Jima raked in nearly $8 million at the box office, while Champion took in $2.5 million. And film lovers might be surprised to learn that Douglas was originally supposed to play the part of Col. Sam Trautman in Sylvester Stallone's first Rambo movie, First Blood. But Douglas wanted extensive changes made in the script. He wanted the Trautman character to kill Stallone at the end of the movie and the producers refused to budge. So this was another potential Kirk Douglas movie role he didn't get. Richard Crenna got the part, and the film was a great fan favorite and went on to enjoy several popular sequels.
9. Douglas and The Duke While Douglas is better known for teaming up on the big screen with actor Burt Lancaster, he also co-starred in three John Wayne movies. The duo first paired in 1965's In Harm's Way, followed by 1966's Cast A Giant Shadow, and their third and final film was considered their best, 1967's The War Wagon. Wayne was a staunch Republican, and Douglas an outspoken Democrat. In 1966 while filming The War Wagon, Wayne appeared in a TV commercial supporting Ronald Reagan for California governor. Douglas responded by appearing in his own ad for Democrat incumbent Edmund G. Brown. The two men would argue politics during the entire filming process. Douglas will later say that Wayne was a great "movie star," but not much of an actor.