Kirk Douglas Rose Up To Be Hollywood's King After Starting Life In Poverty

Feb 06, 2020 by apost team

Legendary actor Kirk Douglas has passed away Wednesday at the remarkable age of 103 in his Beverly Hills, California home.

He had a long, storied life that started in an unexpected place of poverty and ended in the upper echelons of Hollywood.

Kirk Douglas will be remembered as a major actor in the "Golden Age of Hollywood" who was nominated for three Oscars and worked with the contemporaries of his time who are still untouched in talent today, such as Stanley Kubrick and John Huston. The BBC notes that his impressive career spanned seven decades with more than 90 credits to his name.

He was also a family man who had 4 sons and stayed with his second wife Anne Buydens for 60 years until his death. His son Michael followed in his footsteps and cemented a Douglas family legacy in the film industry.

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His son Michael, who followed in his father's acting footsteps, posted the sad news on his Instagram:

"It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103. To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to."

Michael emphasized Kirk's family life and remembered him as a father and loved one to the Douglas clan first and foremost.

"But to me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine, a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband."

His early life was not reflective of his later personal and professional successes. He was born in 1916 as Issur Danielovitch to an impoverished Jewish family with six sisters, in Amsterdam, New York, according to the AP. His first autobiography was dubbed "The Ragman's Son," chronicling his early life as the son of an illiterate junk collector. The actor was later known as Isidore Demsky in university, and then finally as Kirk Douglas on stage.

The journey he took from Amsterdam to Los Angeles involved working a series of odd-jobs and enlisting in the Navy for a while before his friend Lauren Bacall recommended him for a role in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers." Before his big break, he graced the Broadway stage with his talent in a few small parts. Then the rest was history.

For his work in the arts, he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush, but also earlier the highest civilian honor possible, the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon him by President Jimmy Carter. Not bad for a young man named Issur.

What do you think about Kirk Douglas's rise to fame and fortune? Would the story be inspiring to others you know? Please pass it on to them to keep his memory alive.