Today, December 9th, Kirk Douglas is turning 100 year old! If you are looking for a legend of Hollywood and the cinema in general, go no further: Kirk Douglas has seen it all, he is the last dinosaur, whose career spans 5 decades!

                            

Just throw the name of great director, and you can be sure that he has worked with him. Stanley Kubrick? Twice! Elia Kazan? Sure! Brian de Palma...Been there, done that. John Sturges... Billy Wilder... William Wyler... Howard Hawks... Vicente Minnelli... Richard Fleischer... His career is a who's who of the greatest names behind a camera.

                                         

                                                                            In Richard Fleischer's VIKINGS

Kirk Douglas career is also the epitome of the Hollywood golden age, an age when the son of a Belarusian immigrant could make it to Hollywood and reinvent himself as the icon of the American Dream. 

 My father, who had been a horse trader in Russia, got himself a horse and a small wagon, and became a ragman, buying old rags, pieces of metal, and junk for pennies, nickels, and dimes. ... Even on Eagle Street, in the poorest section of town, where all the families were struggling, the ragman was on the lowest rung on the ladder. And I was the ragman's son.  [CREDIT]

                                                              

He was not only a great actor but a clever producer, who very early created his own production company in order to have free hands on the makings of such movies like SPARTACUS and PATHS OF GLORY, whose anti-war message was never an easy sell to Hollywood.

                                                 as the incorruptible Colonel Dax in Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY

And he took his job VERY seriously, which enabled him to have a large palette of characters at his disposal. From the heroic (Spartacus), to the ironic (Ace in the Hole), and with the moral one (Paths to Glory). All of this because of his own strict work ethic:

 Kirk Douglas was intelligent. When discussing a script with actors, I have always found it necessary to remember that they never read the other actors' lines, so their concept of the story is somewhat hazy. Kirk had not only read the lines of everyone in the picture, he had also read the stage directions. . . Kirk, I was to discover, always read every word, discussed every word, always argued every scene, until he was convinced of its correctness.... He listened, so it was necessary to fight every minute. [CREDIT]

    

                                                             As Van Gogh in Minnelli's LUST FOR LIFE (1956)

Happy birthday Kirk, and may your star shine as long and as luminously as your career!