Opinion He was Spartacus

Like his most iconic character, Kirk Douglas refused to bow down to bigotry and exploitation in Hollywood

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Slapping sedition charges on people for staging a play that allegedly insulted the prime minister, raising slogans and statements shows a deliberate misinterpretation of the law with the intent to curb dissent.

February 7, 2020 02:05 AM IST First published on: Feb 7, 2020 at 02:05 AM IST

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Douglas was born Issur Danielovich Demsky to Jewish immigrants from Russia in New York state in 1916.

In 1960, “being woke” was just a grammatical error and in Hollywood, standing up against the powers-that-be — solidarity — required more than just a tweet. That year, Spartacus was released and gave credit to Dalton Trumbo as a scriptwriter. The film was based on a novel by Howard Fast, another “communist sympathiser”. It was also arguably the most iconic character played by Kirk Douglas, who died at 103 earlier this week. Douglas also produced the film and insisted on defying the McCarthy-era “blacklist”, the hunt in the US for the urban Naxal equivalents of that time.

Douglas was born Issur Danielovich Demsky to Jewish immigrants from Russia in New York state in 1916. His was a poor family, living in working class neighbourhoods and could perhaps explain his aversion to the studio system of the time, which was exploitative and demeaning to the people who actually made films. He was determined not to put up with anti-semitism and bigotry and eventually formed his own production company. From the 1940s onwards, Douglas was a staple leading man but he also explored negative characters. Both types of roles reflected some of his own characteristics — he was ruthless, ambitious as well as able to thumb his nose at authority. Douglas also wrote films, as well as novels and memoirs. In his later years, he even worked with his son, actor Michael Douglas.

Despite being nominated multiple times, the only Oscar Kirk Douglas won was for lifetime achievement. And with his body of work, he certainly deserved it. He also donated millions to charitable causes. Douglas was a proud artist — and a political one. And the first facet of his personality fed into the second. The eponymous character he played in Spartacus — a performer who refused to live without dignity or stand by as a state treated some people as less than others — epitomised in many ways the actor himself.