something about Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) was a star in a generation of greats. He was more accessible than John Wayne, Cary Grant, and Charlton Heston, and he combined the complicated humanity of Henry Fonda with the versatility and authority of Burt Lancaster. He was a confident and squarely handsome man with a distinctive cleft chin. I always thought one of his greatest assets was how his grin seemed to suggest a mischievous inner life.

Now Kirk Douglas is gone. He will be remembered primarily for his role in the great Kubrick film, "Spartacus." Other favorites of mine include "Last Train From Gun Hill" and "Lonely Are the Brave." "Last Train From Gun Hill," released in 1959, co-stars the great Anthony Quinn; Douglas and Quinn are friends pitted against each other in an old West-style battle of wills. "Lonely Are the Brave," from 1962, is a great late Western, and, as Roger Ebert said of Lee Marvin's "Monte Walsh," "like a lot of recent Westerns, it's about the end of the old West."