Celebrating Kirk Douglas’s Centennial
With a career spanning more than seven decades, Kirk Douglas has long since earned his place among the most luminous figures in Hollywood history. After cutting his teeth on the New York stage, he began his film career in the 1946 Barbara Stanwyck vehicle The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, which was soon followed by memorable roles in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives, and Mark Robson’s Champion. In addition to cultivating his reputation as one of Hollywood’s immortal tough guys, Douglas also tried his hand at developing projects behind the camera, releasing two Stanley Kubrick masterpieces, the antiwar drama Paths of Glory and the historical epic Spartacus, through his own Bryna Productions. Today, on his one hundredth birthday, we’re saluting this indefatigable star with the above excerpt from a 1979 television interview, which features Douglas regaling his audience with hilarious stories of being spotted in public.
