KIRK DOUGLAS MOVIES
                                                      Part 2


As promised, here are more really good Kirk Douglas movies, celebrating the macho star who left us at 103. 
I’ll begin this one with perhaps his most famous role. Douglas was all guts and glory as the slave revolt leader, Spartacus (1960). Though the film collected four Oscars, including Peter Ustinov’s supporting role, Douglas was not nominated. The script was written by Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted at the time. Douglas announced that Trumbo was the author, and when President Kennedy crossed a picket line to see the movie, blacklisting was finished forever. A legendary plot device occurs when the Roman soldiers seeking Spartacus ask a group of revolters which of them is Spartacus and they all reply, “I am Spartacus”. 
A very early Kirk Douglas outing was in the splendid noir film, Out Of The Past (1947). Douglas does a servicable job as an extremely shady tycoon. But the movie belongs to Robert Mitchum, whose hooded eyes and gravelly voice seemed custom-made for noir movies. Jane Greer is just fine as the naive local girl in over her head. 
The usual suspects come in and go out of NYC’s 21st precinct in Detective Story (1951). Kirk Douglas is detective James McLeod, an honest cop trying to do a good job. Eleanor Parker is on board as his faithful wife and William Bendix is good as a fellow cop. The plot is extremely convoluted with many characters, but it’s pretty good if you can stick with it. 
The Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) has become an American legend. Kirk Douglas is the famous Doc Holliday (actually he was a real dentist) and his smiling, semi-threatening persona is quite entertaining. Burt Lancaster appears as the equally famous Wyatt Earp, sheriff of Tombstone, Arizona Territory. On October 26, 1881, the actual event took place and lasted all of 30 seconds. Earp and Holliday took on and killed the remnants of the Clanton gang. The back story and events after the shoot-out are manufactured by novelist Leon Uris in a nicely integrated screenplay.  
        Paths Of Glory (1957) is an excellent anti-war movie. Kirk Douglas plays Col. Dax and Adolphe Menjou is French General Broulard. Broulard orders a foolhardy suicidal attack on a German fortification. General Mireau (George Macready) realizes the mission is fated to fail at great cost, but sniffs that a promotion might hang in the balance and orders the attack to proceed. Dax does his best to lead the attack, but it is doomed and there are a lot of casualties with nothing accomplished. When the second wave of French soldiers are ordered to attack, they refuse. Three of them are later court-martialed. Dax gallantly defends them, but it is a hopeless effort in a kangaroo court and all three men are convicted and executed. Then some good stuff happens.

Kirk Douglas can also be seen to good effect in A Letter To Three Wives (1949), Seven Days in May (1964) and The Man From Snowy River (1982).
All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults.