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Kirk Douglas RIP

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  • Started watching Spartacus late this evening on Sky Cinema. Great film. Forgot it is three hours long but conveniently there is an intermission half way through. Will save the second half for tomorrow.
    I miss the old fashioned interlude during a long film .. time to stretch the legs, get an ice cream, discuss the first half .. just like going to football (except for the ice cream) .. AND if the film was rubbish gave you a chance to walk out without it being too obvious
  • Great actor. Handsome bastard. RIP Kirk.
  • Started watching Spartacus late this evening on Sky Cinema. Great film. Forgot it is three hours long but conveniently there is an intermission half way through. Will save the second half for tomorrow.
    I miss the old fashioned interlude during a long film .. time to stretch the legs, get an ice cream, discuss the first half .. just like going to football (except for the ice cream) .. AND if the film was rubbish gave you a chance to walk out without it being too obvious
    Yep. Back on it now. Seemed like a good place to pause at midnight last night.
  • I always liked the story (may well be a myth?) that when filming began on The Vikings, he argued that his dimpled chin was his trademark and refused to wear a beard for the role. (This despite playing a bearded Vincent Van Gogh just two years earlier.) He had also apparently challenged the entire (male) cast and crew to a beard growing contest before filming started, only to turn up clean shaven.

    Evidently, the producers considered keeping their star happy to be worth letting him go beardless, but decided to give Ernest Borgnine an extra line in the film ripping the piss out of Douglas for his vanity:
    ”He’s so vain of his beauty, he won’t let a man’s beard hide it. He scrapes his face like an Englishman!”

    Incidentally, Borgnine played Douglas’ father, but was actually younger than him!


  • Am getting much more sentimental in my old age. A bit of a tear in my eye at the end of Spartacus this evening.
  • What a wonderful man. Put his money where his mouth was and put his career on the line for what he believed in.
    Total respect from me.
  • Great actor. Very unpleasant man by all accounts.
    Except, it's not by ALL accounts is it? It's just the accounts you are looking to focus on for some reason. Odd behaviour.
  • @Yorkshireaddick is absolutely right to bring that up. It’s long been rumoured that Kirk was a very nasty piece of work in his heyday. Reading through this thread, I was a little surprised at how many people were celebrating him. I thought it was more widely known than that. 


    There’s a bizarre story where Robert Downey Jr confirmed it in an anonymous blog post too. 
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Roland Out Forever!