Kirk Douglas, the actor who became one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the 1950s and 60s, has been remembered at the 92nd Academy Awards in Hollywood.
Douglas died aged 103 on Thursday, just a few days before the ceremony, and was considered the last surviving link to the golden age of Hollywood studio film-making. His square-jawed machismo was put to good use in early films such as Champion, but he showed unexpected range with the satirical Billy Wilder comedy Ace in the Hole, in which he played a rapacious reporter, and The Bad and the Beautiful, as a backstabbing film producer.
Having set up his own production company, Douglas made two classics with Stanley Kubrick: the anti-war drama Paths of Glory, about first world war soldiers executed as an exemplary punishment, and the gladiator epic Spartacus, which not only spawned a celebrated line of dialogue – “I’m Spartacus” – but also helped break the blacklist by crediting writer Dalton Trumbo.
Douglas also made the Vincent van Gogh biopic Lust for Life, in which he starred as the painter – the a role to which he reportedly felt most connected.
