Kirk Douglas as a high school senior.

In the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas (1916 – ) b. Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband as in, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946, and A Letter to Three Wives, 1949.  But his career exploded into mega-stardom when he played bitter, cynical heroes motivated by rage: Champion, 1949, Ace in the Hole, 1951, The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952, Paths of Glory, 1957, Spartacus, 1960, and his favorite film Lonely Are the Brave, 1962,

Douglas was never a conventional leading man. Though handsome as a fairy tale prince he wielded his masculine beauty like a weapon. There was none of the gruff charm that made Gable the King of Hollywood, nor was Douglas an elegant, urbane gentleman like William Powell.

He excelled at playing, in his own words, “sons of bitches.”

(more…)

Contact Music.com:

“I must write how I feel: A blistering argument is taking place about building a mosque near Ground Zero. My son Peter argues that a free country should allow the mosque to be built. I have argued that it could be painful to the families of the many victims who died there. But I am confused because I have had several Muslim friends for many years. They are kind, generous, caring people – I value their friendship.

“But, a part of me says, the people who brought about such horrific destruction on the World Trade Center were Muslims that attended a mosque and who believed that America should die. Of course, I wish more Muslims, like my friends, would speak out and condemn those actions. I am confused.” (more…)

Descending via u-haul from the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live in this one-story ghetto some call Los Angeles was supposed to be only a three-year crisis of middle age, not eight and counting. And so here we are and we do try to make the best of things with some of the unique events only a Hollywood can offer.

As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago my life peaked at the American Cinematheque after exchanging a few words with Pam Grier (male heterosexuals will want to click that link) before a big screen showing of “Foxy Brown.” To some, living with the knowledge that the best moment of your life has just passed and that you now have another forty years of all-downhill might be depressing … but not when you had zero expectations to begin with.

Prior to blushing and babbling before Ms. Grier, my life peaked in October of 2007 at a special screening of “Spartacus” in the Arclight Theatre’s world-famous Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Watching director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece on the big screen was one thing, having the film introduced by none other than its star — The Mighty Kirk Douglas — was quite another. (more…)

Well, the wait is over. Every year I was sure the Academy would get their act together and award this underrated and under-appreciated actress who possessed the most beautiful speaking voice to ever grace a motion picture with a long overdue honorary Academy Award, and every year the Academy never failed to disappoint.

And now it’s too late.

Twice nominated for an Oscar, Jean Simmons brought an exquisite mix of regal bearing, accessible warmth, feminine strength and womanly eroticism to such timeless classics as “Black Narcissus,” “Hamlet,” “Great Expectations,” “Guys and Dolls,” “The Big Country,” “Elmer Gantry,” and “Spartacus.” There were also too many superb but lesser-known gems on her resume to count, but you can start with “Until They Sail” with Paul Newman and “Angel Face” with Robert Mitchum. To set your DVR using her name is to discover a treasure-trove.

So powerful and bewitching was her screen presence that we completely understood and believed that larger-than-life men – Brando, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster — would fall head-over-heels for her because we fell right along with them.  (more…)

The United States Navy is in the news and on my mind lately. The events off the coast of Somalia are surely one very good reason for this. Heroism and service. Ordinary people under extraordinary circumstances. Another not nearly so dramatic, but nonetheless exciting reason, for me at least, involves the very recent honor I’ve had of contributing my prose to a citation to confer on Mr. George Herbert Walker Bush the degree of Doctor of Social Science, honoris causa.  His own history, his willingness to serve, to sacrifice and risk everything for a cause, for others, is something we should never underestimate. It’s something we, as Americans have always been good at.

It’s also something our movies used to portray well. We don’t get to see too many of these kinds of movies anymore. Nope, they don’t make them like they used to. That can be said of both the men and women of Bush 41’s generation, as well as the films of that era. But sometimes, in more recent times, we’re graced with shining examples of tarnished excellence, of battered beauty in our citizens and in our favorite art, the movies.    (more…)

There’s nothing better than a time travel flick that works, but it has to work – it has to hold together. The few months I spent doing script coverage some years ago, it felt like a time travel screenplay came my way at least once a week. But they never held together and died a horrible, twitching death somewhere before page 60.  These are difficult stories to construct, but when they hum they’re pure magic because the idea alone fires the imagination with possibilities and achieves a wish-fulfillment stature before the lights even dim.

The Time Machine (1960) – This movie kicks so much ass that there’s none left to kick, and just when you think you’ve found some left to kick, you quickly discover you were wrong and that you owe this movie an apology. What more could you ask for than Morlocks and Eloi and that way-cool mannequin that changes outfits as the days, years, and centuries pass? You got Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux and cannibalism and underground caves filled with big, weird, thumping machinery.  This is experience talking, so listen up: Every day of the week for months you could watch Rod Taylor crumble those books, toss Morlocks like rag dolls, and give those hippie Eloi all kinds of hell and it never gets old because nothing can stop this movie from being awesome. And if that isn’t enough, Mr. French is in it. (more…)