We’ve posted so many sad farewells to aging stars. I thought it would be nice posting about someone before they pass. Kirk is 95 and still goes out to eat and signs autographs. The stroke he had over a decade ago took his voice but he still gets around reasonably well. Issur Danielovitch Demsky was born in 1916. I hope I’m doing that well at 95.
Any Kirk Douglas fans here? Favorite movies or books that he wrote?
I read The Ragman’s Son. Really moving bio of Kirk’s Jewish heritage and the family’s struggle as Russian immigrants in America. I was so moved by Kirk’s pride in his heritage and the poverty that he overcame.
Kirk was a fitness buff long before it became trendy. He worked out constantly all the way up into his eighties. That’s why he was able to play roles like Spartacus in his mid forties.
Kirk is giving a lot of his money to charity. 50 million is a lot of savings for a actor that was primarily a big star in the 1940’s,50’s, and 60’s. He never got the huge multimillion $ paychecks like his son Michael.
Glad his wife Anne is still alive. They’ve been married 58 years.
Kirk is the producer of two of my all-time favorite movies: Paths of Glory and Spartcus.
I saw him in a 2010 documentary just a couple of days ago, interviewed for a documentary on cinematographer Jack Cardiff. His voice may be slurred, but he is still completely comprehensible – that is, unless he’s gotten significantly worse in the last couple of years.
I heard a podcast of him on “Real Time with Bill Maher” about a month ago. He was surprisingly witty and even dropped the F-bomb. Bill said they had lunch together occasionally. He sounds like a great guy really.
