100 Years Old - What a Life ...

A Hollywood Epic: Kirk Douglas Writes Script for 100th Birthday

Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; December 9, 1916) is an American actor, producer, director, and author. After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he had his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s and 1960s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war movies. During a sixty-year acting career, he has appeared in over 90 movies, and in 1960 helped end the Hollywood Blacklist.

He has survived a helicopter crash, a stroke, heart surgery, family tragedy, battle injuries in the Second World War and a glorious but tempestuous Hollywood career in which he took on and defeated the blacklisting of writers suspected of communist leanings.Kirk Douglas, the last of the Golden Age male movie stars, turns 100 tomorrow and he plans to celebrate in style with a tea party and a glass of vodka, as befits his Russian-American immigrant roots.

The gathering for about 200 people in Beverly Hills will be hosted by his eldest son Michael and his daughter-in-law, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The guest list includes Steven Spielberg, and representatives of the numerous charities to which the actor and his wife have donated more than $100 million over the years.Also present will be his rabbi and his cardiologist: he has been told he can have a drink on his special day, even though he is under strict medical orders to abstain from alcohol. “My only job is to stay well and rested so I can show up and be charming,” Douglas said recently.

Interviewed by Closer magazine, he said: “I am always asked for advice on living a long and healthy life. I don’t have any. I do believe, however, that we have a purpose for being here. I was spared after a helicopter crash and a stroke to do more good in the world before I leave it.”

Despite his health problems the trademark glistening blue eyes are undimmed, the jaw still juts and the chin dimple is unmistakeable, more than 70 years after his first director asked him to have it filled in. He sees himself as a very different person from the prickly performer who starred in almost 90 films, including Spartacus, Gunfight At The O.K. Corral and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

In a 1987 tribute Burt Lancaster, who starred with him in seven films, said: “Kirk would be the first to tell you he’s a very difficult man. I would be the second.” Douglas agreed. “If anyone I worked with is still alive, they will attest that I wasn’t Mr Popularity,” he said in 2014. “I had a lot of anger matched by a lot of arrogance.”

He attributes his longevity and his mellowing to his “soulmate”, his second wife, Anne, a Belgian he met while filming Act of Love in Paris in 1953 and who stayed by his side despite his many infidelities in their early years of marriag

He was born Issur Danielovitch, the son of illiterate Russian peasants who fled the pogroms and emigrated to New York state. He grew up in poverty dreaming of the stage. Forty jobs, a stint in the US Navy — he was wounded in an encounter with a Japanese submarine — and a brief career as a wrestler followed before he made it to Hollywood with the help of his drama school friend Lauren Bacall. By then he had changed his name to Kirk Douglas.

In later life his humanitarian work and writing took precedence — he is working on his 12th book— punctuated by tragedy. In 1991 a helicopter crash that killed two compressed his spine and left him three inches shorter. In 1996 he suffered a stroke and had to learn to speak again. In 2004 his son Eric died of an overdose and in 2010 his grandson Cameron was jailed for drug dealing.

Michael Douglas was then diagnosed with throat cancer, but made a full recovery. Today he cites his father’s “stamina and tenacity” as his defining qualities. “He has taught me always to give it your best shot,” Michael said. “He’s the full package.”

Long players

Olivia De Havilland, 100 The Gone With The Wind star won two Oscars. She and her sister Joan Fontaine are the only siblings to win Academy Awards in a lead acting category.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, 99 Known less for her films than for her nine husbands.


Dame Vera Lynn, 99 The wartime “forces’ sweetheart” is the oldest living artist to reach No 1 in the UK album chart, in 2009.