He Was Spartacus

In 1996, Issur Danielovitch was given an award for lifetime achievement in his field. He'd suffered a stroke the year before and it limited his speech, and so his son and friends urged him to just say "Thank you," when presented with the award and then leave.

But Issur -- who years before had changed his name to the more movie-friendly "Kirk Douglas" -- said he looked at the crowd and felt he had to say more. So he did, thanking his four sons for being "proud of the old man," thanking his wife and thanking the people who were saluting him with the honor. Douglas went on to write several books about his life after the stroke, which stretched from the mid-90s to today as he passed away at the age of 103.

Douglas's death leaves only very few connections to what is sometimes called Hollywood's "Golden Age," a time when public relations departments, studios and cooperative media worked together to make sure that the great stars of the time remained larger than life instead of tarnished by the tawdry characteristics found in lesser mortals. Douglas, though by any measure one of the great stars of this era and a definitive movie tough guy, was one willing to step outside the illusion. He claimed that as the producer of Spartacus his championing of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo played a central role in breaking the so-called "blacklist" of leftist writers and actors following the McCarthy anti-communist fervor. That claim's disputed today, but it seems clear that when someone of Douglas' stature weighed in by using and crediting Trumbo that the list's power had greatly evaporated.

Douglas played in more than 90 movies and dozens of stage shows. In addition to the stalwart Spartacus, he's probably best remembered as the tough guy, bad or good, whose seemingly jovial smile masked a hair-trigger ability to detonate an explosion of violence, either verbal or physical. Like many of the biggest names of the movies' golden years, he was an icon in almost every appearance -- but unlike some of his contemporaries, he had the acting chops to help you see the character instead of the actor.