Kirk Douglas has passed away

An amazing career and amazingly long life - however, he was alleged to have raped Natalie Wood when she was a teenager (which I point out since abuse of teenagers and women, in skating and elsewhere in society, is under discussion in other parts of this board).
 
The one, the only!!! What an amazing life! :respec:


I knew Kirk Douglas was very old, but I wasn't keeping track of how old. That's pretty amazing he reached 103 with all he's been through. It's like nine lives with how he reinvented himself and just kept striving toward new goals and interests. What a blessing he seems to have tremendously enjoyed his latter years surrounded by his loving family -- hard won love over so many years... :saint:

Kirk Douglas' acting and his personality were so larger than life. It's not a small thing what he did for Dalton Trumbo in the making of Spartacus.
 
aftershocks said:
Kirk Douglas' acting and his personality were so larger than life. It's not a small thing what he did for Dalton Trumbo in the making of Spartacus.
Click to expand...

I read Douglas' book I Am Spartacus about the making of the film and the busting of the blacklisting. Douglas mortgaged his future and went way out on a limb to get Spartacus made and made with a screenplay by a blacklisted writer. You are correct that it is no small thing that he did.
 
^^ Also, the movie, Trumbo, does a great job of dramatizing that very difficult blacklisted period of Dalton Trumbo's life and how he wrote scripts for no screen credit until Kirk Douglas came along and said, 'You're writing this script and you're going to get credit for writing it!'

en.wikipedia.org

Trumbo (2015 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Roman Holiday used to be one of my fave old films. For years after the film was made, it had been kept quiet that Trumbo wrote the script.
 
I appreciate his efforts against the black list and the slavish studio system. He was a true maverick in his day.
 
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I loved his performance in Spartacus but later I couldn't separate his performance in In Harm's Way from the man, esp because of the rumors of rape. I never really wanted to see him in anything else after that. I think he's the only actor that I identified so strongly as his character in a movie. That was really not fair to him I guess but then he never knew.
 
Not that I know of. The rape itself, sadly, seems to be accepted fact -- Natalie's sister told the NYT about it a few years ago, and I've heard that Natalie's biographies mention it too. But no one ever named the rapist until an anonymous blog commenter told the story a few years ago, and said it was Kirk. The commenter was thought to be Robert Downey, Jr., but his spokesman denied it, so who knows.

Did Robert Downey Jr. Really Just Accuse Kirk Douglas of a Brutal Rape?

Deep in the weeds of show business blogging, in the comments under a blind gossip item, the actor Robert Downey Jr. may have just laid a venomous bite on Kirk Douglas, accusing the legendary actor of raping actress Natalie Wood.
gawker.com
 
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I guess I'll always love him in the movie, Spartacus, the best. I can't begin to count the number of times I watched it, and no one else could have played the role of Spartacus like Kirk. It was as if the movie was made just for him. He was blessed with a long and amazing life. RIP, Kirk Douglas. ??
 
Natalie died in 1981 when Robert was 16. How would he know anything about it or be the one who accused Kirk? That doesn't make sense to me. IIRC it was her sister who told about it after her death.
 
ABC Nightly News showed a clip of a garden full of pavers inscribed with messages of love/respect for Kirk last night.
Natalie's was one of them.
 
Wyliefan said:
Not that I know of. The rape itself, sadly, seems to be accepted fact -- Natalie's sister told the NYT about it a few years ago, and I've heard that Natalie's biographies mention it too. But no one ever named the rapist until an anonymous blog commenter told the story a few years ago, and said it was Kirk. The commenter was thought to be Robert Downey, Jr., but his spokesman denied it, so who knows.

Did Robert Downey Jr. Really Just Accuse Kirk Douglas of a Brutal Rape?

Deep in the weeds of show business blogging, in the comments under a blind gossip item, the actor Robert Downey Jr. may have just laid a venomous bite on Kirk Douglas, accusing the legendary actor of raping actress Natalie Wood.
gawker.com
Click to expand...
I've been waiting for Lana to finally spill the beans on violent rapist Kirk Douglas. May he continue to rest in hell. Lana said she would wait until Natalie's rapist was dead until she revealed who Natalie's rapist was. It's been nearly two years since Kirk died and lived without consequences for 64 more years after the rape. Glad the word is out. And his son Micheal is not much better either. Pigs.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Natalie Wood was assaulted by Kirk Douglas, sister alleges

In her memoir 'Little Sister,' coming out next week, Lana Wood alleges that her late sister's assault occurred when she was just 16, and Douglas was 39.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
 
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Simone411 said:
I guess I'll always love him in the movie, Spartacus, the best. I can't begin to count the number of times I watched it, and no one else could have played the role of Spartacus like Kirk. It was as if the movie was made just for him. He was blessed with a long and amazing life. RIP, Kirk Douglas. ??
Click to expand...
He was blessed with getting away with at least one violent rape for the last 64 years of his life. Natalie Wood was tiny, only 5 feet tall, 0 inches. Imagine big strong Spartacus violently raping her when she was 16. I can't watch any movie he is in, especially Spartacus. RIH, Kirk Douglas. ???
 
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skatesindreams said:
His career was nearly ruined/ended due to substance abuse, IIRC.
Click to expand...

Yes. I had a huge girl crush on him back then, and followed his story closely. There was an incident called 'Goldilocks' IIRC - he wandered into his next door neighbor's house drunk/high and fell asleep in a child's bed.

He also did time for his transgressions, and spent six months or so in prison as I recall. And additional time in rehab.

And now, SFAIK, he is the highest paid actor in the world - for Iron Man.

Perhaps unfortunately, actually. Because Robert Downey Jr. is a brilliant actor. He doesn't get enough credit for that, although he did get an Oscar nom for 'Chaplin'. But there are other performances. For example, he plays a gay man dying of Aids in the film 'One Night Stand'. The film didn't receive much attention, but damn - RDJ just knocked it out of the ballpark.
 
ЭPiKUilyam said:
He was blessed with getting away with at least one violent rape for the last 64 years of his life. Natalie Wood was tiny, only 5 feet tall, 0 inches. Imagine big strong Spartacus violently raping her when she was 16. I can't watch any movie he is in, especially Spartacus. RIH, Kirk Douglas. ???
Click to expand...

The thing is - so many actors are being accused of rape these days. Female - and some male- victims are coming out of the closet. Rape has been normalized in certain cultures, still is. :wuzrobbed (ETA - rape in the Canadian hockey landscape is just coming to light in the news ATM).

I remember a boyfriend I had during the 80s - I was in my 20s, and he was older, earlier 40s. Women were just starting to demand boundaries with regard to how they were treated by men in the workplace.

To this day, I still remember him complaining that you couldn't even touch a woman anymore. That stuck with me because I was shocked in the sense that no one has a right to invade my personal space just because I am a woman.

This boyfriend was no rapist, no abuser. A fair bit chauvinistic, yes, but that was not unusual at the time.

There was and remains a notion that women's personal/physical spaces are always available to men. Maybe feminists will get to that in 50 years or so, once women have - hopefully - gained trued equality and equal access to the rewards and opportunities of society.
 
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