Funeral for Kirk Douglas, 103, takes place in LA as Hollywood royalty join son Michael and Catherine Zeta-Jones
MICHAEL Douglas led mourners at the funeral of his movie legend father Kirk Douglas today. Daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones joined hubby Michael Douglas in LA for the service alongside hordes of Hollywood A-listers. Family members and friends including Steven Spielberg attended Westwood Memorial to say their final farewell to the Spartacus icon after his tragic death […]
MICHAEL Douglas led mourners at the funeral of his movie legend father Kirk Douglas today.
Daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones joined hubby Michael Douglas in LA for the service alongside hordes of Hollywood A-listers.
Family members and friends including Steven Spielberg attended Westwood Memorial to say their final farewell to the Spartacus icon after his tragic death at 103.
The actor, who was one of the biggest stars of the silver screen during Hollywood’s heyday, passed away surrounded by his wife and three sons.
His death was announced by Michael, who wrote: “It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103.
“To the world, he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to.
“But to me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine, a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great-grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband.”
Douglas was one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age and had a total of 92 acting credits – including in 75 movies – under his belt.
Michael’s post sparked a flood of tributes from the world of show-business – including his movie star daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta Jones, 50.
The Welsh actress, who married Michael in 2000, paid tribute to “my darling Kirk”.
Alongside a black-and-white picture showing her kissing him on the cheek, Zeta Jones wrote: “I shall love you for the rest of my life. I miss you already. Sleep tight…”
Kirk’s grandson Cameron was also seen on Wednesday evening leaving the Beverly Hills home where his legendary grandfather had passed away hours earlier.
Joel Douglas, Kirk’s son, also left the home on Wednesday evening as emotional fans gathered at Kirk’s star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame to leave floral tributes.
Kirk was born Issur Danielovitch in New York, and his dad was a rag-and-bone man of Russian-Jewish ancestry.
He put a fledgling Broadway career on hold to enlist in the US Navy in 1941 but after World War Two he went on to star in more than 90 films over seven decades.
Famously, he once earned £38,000 for saying the only English word — “coffee” — at the end of a 1980s Japanese TV advert.
In the 1950s and 1960s he was part of a small group of artists who helped to break the Hollywood blacklist.
It saw the denial of employment to actors, screenwriters, directors, musicians, and others who were believed to be communist sympathizers.
But Kirk shunned the so-called “Red Scare” by hiring Dalton Trumbo -one of the “Hollywood Ten” who were suspected of harbouring pro-Soviet sympathies – to write Spartacus.
Off-screen, he served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter in 1981.
The actor was finally awarded an honorary Oscar for 50 years in the industry in 1996.
Kirk had spent the last few decades of his life refocusing his attention on spirituality and Judaism after he was a lucky survivor of a helicopter crash in 1991 and then later a stroke in 1996.
He married his first wife Diana in 1943 and the pair welcomed two sons, actor Michael Douglas and producer Joel Douglas.
They divorced in 1951 and he married Anne Buydens in 1954 after they met on the set of Lust For Life.
Kirk and Anne had two sons, Peter, a producer, and Eric, an actor who sadly died on July 6, 2004, from an overdose.
Douglas received his first Academy Award nomination in 1949 for Champion and was nominated again in 1952 for The Bad And The Beautiful and 1956 in Lust For Life.
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But it was in 1960 that he took on his most iconic role in the Hollywood classic Spartacus, where he played the gladiator leader.
Kirk was the star and executive producer – while the film was directed by legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.
The phrase “I’m Spartacus!” has gone on to become a cultural reference point, and was used over and over in the decades since in other films, television programs, and adverts.
