|
If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
|
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch in 1916 in New York), the son of poor Russian immigrants, managed to get a university degree in acting and a scholarship
at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Betty Perske (the future Lauren Bacall) was his classmate.
In 1941 he was drafted for World War II. When he returned, Bacall found him a part in a Hollywood movie which led to minor parts in two noir films:
Jacques Tourneur's
Out of the Past (1947)
and
Byron Haskin's I Walk Alone (1947), his first collaboration with fellow actor Burt Lancaster.
He also acted in
Joseph Mankiewicz's
A Letter To Three Wives (1949),
Michael Curtiz's jazz musical Young Man with a Horn (1950) and in
Raoul Walsh's western
Along the Great Divide (1951).
The western would remain one of his favorite genres.
Douglas si impose con parti di personaggio violento,
cinico, arrogante, "duro" risoluto e inesorabile a partire da
Mark Robson's Champion (1949), in which he plays a violent boxer,
Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole/ The Big Carnival (1951), in which he plays a cynical reporter,
and
William Wyler's Detective Story (1951),
in which he plays a hard-boiled detective.
In realta' fu attore e produttore intelligente e illuminato, per quanto
portato dal talento a interpretazioni spesso eccessive:
Howard Hawks' western The Big Sky (1952);
Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952);
King Vidor's western Man Without a Star (1955);
Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), in which he played Vincent van Gogh;
Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960), both conceived by Douglas himself for the production company that he had opened in 1955;
John Sturges' westerns Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), another collaboration with Lancaster,
and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959);
Richard Quine's Strangers When We Meet (1960);
Robert Aldrich's western The Last Sunset (1961);
Vincent Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town (1962);
David Miller's western Lonely Are the Brave (1962), the rare case in which Douglas played a good man;
John Huston's
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), in which he played a serial killer;
John Frankenheimer's political thriller Seven Days in May (1964), another one with Lancaster;
Otto Preminger's war movie
In Harm's Way (1965);
Martin Ritt's mafia movie Brotherhood (1968);
Elia Kazan's
The Arrangement (1969);
Joseph Mankiewicz's western spoof There Was A Crooked Man (1970);
Brian Depalma's spy thriller The Fury (1978);
and
Stanley Donen's sci-fi movie Saturn 3 (1980).
He directed two films: Scalawag (1973) and
Posse (1975), un western con allusioni politiche, protagonista
un demagogo da watergate circondato da individui senza scrupoli che vengono smascherati proprio dal
bandito che dovrebbero combattere.
In 1996 he suffered a stroke that limited his ability to speak and de facto
terminated his career. He died in 2020 at the age of 104.
|
