Posted on 12/11/2006 5:04:05 AM PST by Mel Gibson
LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- My name is Kirk Douglas. You may know me. If you don't ... Google me. I was a movie star and I'm Michael Douglas' dad, Catherine Zeta-Jones' father-in-law, and the grandparents of their two children. Today I celebrate my 90th birthday.
I have a message to convey to America's young people. A 90th birthday is special. In my case, this birthday is not only special but miraculous. I survived World War II, a helicopter crash, a stroke, and two new knees.
It's a tradition that when a "birthday boy" stands over his cake he makes a silent wish for his life and then blows out the candles. I have followed that tradition for 89 years but on my 90th birthday, I have decided to rebel. Instead of making a silent wish for myself, I want to make a LOUD wish for THE WORLD.
Let's face it: THE WORLD IS IN A MESS and you are inheriting it. Generation Y, you are on the cusp. You are the group facing many problems: abject poverty, global warming, genocide, AIDS, and suicide bombers to name a few. These problems exist, and the world is silent. We have done very little to solve these problems. Now, we leave it to you. You have to fix it because the situation is intolerable
(Excerpt) Read more at biz.yahoo.com ...
If he felt he had to get on a soapbox, he should have been more explicit about global ills and about the real and immediate threat to all of us which the terrorists pose. Like the Orientals say, "calling a thing by it s right name is the beginning of wisdom" At 90, he should know that too.
Fixed
I don't believe Douglas was in Harvey.
Douglas was NOT in Harvey and the actor's name is Jimmy Stewart. Wow lots of mistakes in one short sentence!!!!
I don't disagree with anything you've written...I would just like to question why you felt the need to say his "SECOND WIFE, FRENCH BORN...." He's been married to that second wife for 52 years. 40 years longer than he was married to his first wife, Michael's mother. Was your point that he's a Divorced man (Oh, the horrors) or that his wife is French? I'm confused.
Soylent Green?
I know that Kirk Douglas was a friend of the Reagans and used to go to their functions.
Kirk Douglas is a Democrat AND a Jew. I have always wondered why many American Hollywood Jews are Dims in a world where the Jewish state, Israel, needs every supporter it can get...and many times they DO NOT support Israel. Streisand is one most well known and vocal. She is a LIBERAL first, and Jewish second. It explaines a lot. Most of America detests the Hollywood types who use their movie fame for political reasons. I heard Mike Douglas say years ago, that was the kiss of death...to keep political views personal..and I think he pretty well does. To the contrary, his wife does not, and apparently Kirk doesn't either. Kirk's legacy of fine films is enough and those films are quite in vogue today!
I think its because he wrote the editorial to appeal to the Gen Yers, and they know who Catherine Zeta-Jones is. They are less likely to know who Michael Douglas is, and who his previous wife and children were. He simply used the easiest way for people to say, 'oh yeah, I know her'.
The majority of French today tend to be socialists, like Douglas. The "second wife" was to differentiate from his first marriage. For all I know, she may be a flaming conservative at odds politically all these years from her husband, but I really doubt it.
BTW, I'm of French descent on my father's side. My maiden name is that of a patron saint of France and a parish of Louisiana. Not that it makes me a saint.
Leni
I was too lackadaisical.
Leni
"Get you're stinking paws off of me , you damned dirty Romans!"
Fixed
I don't believe Douglas was in Harvey.
The Maytag Repairman, Jesse White.
At some point, all actors begin to believe their gushing reviews.
However one of my favorite memories is when Kirk Douglas dove off of the Golden Gate bridge in "Tarzan Goes to San Francisco".
Some people are as Naive at 90 as they were at 9.
Kirk's an egoist. Notice how rather than humbly calling himself an actor, he chose instead to refer to himself as a "MOVIE STAR" ?
Uh, no.
It's hard to say Paths of Glory is a greater movie than Spartacus, but it is at least equally great. I never forget the girl singing that haunting song at the end (Kubrick married her).
Yup
His movie "Spartacus" was based on a book by Howard Fast, whose Communist past got him blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. Dalton Trumbo, another blacklisted writer, worked on the script. Douglas was considered responsible for fighting to make sure Trumbo got screen credit under his own name.
Fast and Trumbo saw the Roman slave revolt as an allegory for Communist revolution: an inspiration for the revolt of the proletariat against their bourgeois "masters." That symbolism was mostly lost on American moviegoers, and probably Douglas too. He was likely doing the fashionable Hollywood "thing" that remains in vogue among not-very-bright members of the pampered acting class.
This letter written by William F. Buckley about Howard Fast is interesting IMO: Howard Fast
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