Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)

We spend a lot of time in Classical Hollywood on this blog, and in most cases we discuss actors who have long since passed.  Katherine Hepburn.  Bette Davis.  Clark Gable.  Spencer Tracy.  This past week, we added another name to that list, a man whose longevity (dying at the age of 103) has rivaled him in recent pop culture as much as his initial cinematic output.  This week, we lost Kirk Douglas.

Douglas's work runs nearly the entirety of Classical Hollywood, ranging from his early work playing second fiddle to actors like Barbara Stanwyck & Ann Sothern into his era of Hollywood leading roles, characters as diverse as Vincent van Gogh and Ulysses.  In 1960, he had his most iconic role in the film Spartacus, where Douglas took huge strides to end the Black List by hiring screenwriter Dalton Trumbo to pen the movie.

Kirk Douglas, if you look far enough into this site, has a complicated legacy with me.  While I forever adored the acting style of his son Michael (one of my all-time favorites), I was less enthused by his work, especially in older articles.  Douglas's overly dramatic presence in later pictures sometimes rubbed me the wrong way, but in recent years as we started to get into his earlier pictures, I've developed an appreciation for the way his presence as a desperate man in movies like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers or Out of the Past (my personal favorite of his films) informs the movies and brings them an added nuance their leading characters sometimes lack.  Douglas can rest assured that, while his time on this earth is no more, his lasting legacy, that of countless movies and cinematic experiences, will continue to live on, not just on this blog as we see more and more of them, but in the hearts of any filmgoer who is always ready to investigate a new (old) story.