240 thoughts on “Kirk Douglas Movies”

1. 1 Critics in the 1950s described Kirk as an actor who could provide “strong, meaty performances” and it is true that whilst Tracy and Henry Fonda were noted for their underplaying Kirk was truly one of those kings of emphasis as his performances in Lust for Life and even westerns like Gunfight at OK Corral and Last Train from Gun Hill amply demonstrate. Fascinating actor! Cumpulsive viewing for all acting classes should be the scene in Last Train from Gun Hill where as marshal Matt Morgan Kirk has come to town to arrest the son of Tony Quinn who ‘owns. the town and Matt tells the sheriff (in Quinn’s pocket) that he will shoot him if he gets in the way.

   VIDEO COMMENTS
   (1) Great posters for Indian Fighter, Devil’s Disciple, Last Train from Gun
   Hill, the Vikings, Lust for Life and Out of the Past – and many more!
   (2) Disappointments: that Two Weeks in another Town was not
   included and that A letter to Three Wives WAS as it was not really a Kirk Douglas film (3) I appreciated the finer detail that went into the video such as giving aka for both Out of the Past and Ace in the Hole. I actually preferred the former’s aka Build my Gallows High.
   (3) You and Bruce are back to agreeing about 3 out of the Top 5. He
   has Paths of Glory first whereas you have Spartacus. The latter was of course one of the all-time great spectacle movies but, sorry, this time I have to go with the Maestro Steve as Paths of Glory was one of the most riveting and intelligent war movies that I have ever seen. Anyway overall a fine 9.3 for a well arranged and presented video. Your pictorials have certainly truly captured the spirit of a wide variety of genres. Most appreciated.

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   1. Hey Bob, seems we posted on Kirk’s page at the same time. 🙂

      Thanks as always for the review, rating, observation and trivia. I always seem to leave out your favorites, I’m not doing it on purpose! 🙂

      Two Weeks in another Town should have been on there. Must have been an oversight, or maybe I tried to squeeze in The Heroes of Telemark at the start of the video and something had to be jettisoned, apologies. I’ve heard that Douglas and Harris were not exactly the best of pals on that shoot.

      As for Paths of Glory, yes I do confess to a bit of tampering there, Spartacus is Kirk’s most iconic role there was no way it wouldn’t have hit the top on my video. I do mention at the bottom of each video page that my own personal score might be included occasionally. It could have been worse Bob, Saturn 3 might have been sitting at the top. I am a sci-fi fan don’t forget. [wink]

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      1. HI STEVE

         1 “Crossed in the post was never a more appropriate phrase”!

         2 As for Harris the only pal he ever seemed to have was Mitchum. I gather that when Richard and Mr M made Mutiny on the Bounty together in the early 60s it was irresistible force meeting immovable object stuff.

         3 I gather that the authors of my book have written to John to say that excluding Bing was an oversight! Anyway thanks for your feedback

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         1. 🙂 Hey Bob….Good stuff….Check out the Marx Brothers need table…..that we added in last night…as well as the complete updated page.

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      2. Every once in a while I will get the “You are posting too quickly message”…that means two people in different parts of the world are hitting the submit button at the same time. Paths of Glory is a classic…and actually my favorite Kubrick movie…sorry 2001.

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   2. Hey Bob….thanks for sharing your Kirk movie thoughts on his 100th birthday. I like the movies you singled as well…..although I have not seen Last Train From Gun Hill…..besides Gunfight and Lust for Life….my other 3 in my Top 5 Douglas movies would be Paths of Glory, There Was A Crooked Man and War Wagon. Thanks for the video comments on Steve’s video.

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2. Hi Bruce et al.,

   Just posting here to send out my best wishes to this most incredible entertainer.

   Tomorrow, as you all know, it will have been 100 hundred years.

   In 1916 it took two hands to hold a phone…. And you had to go to the general store to use it. Today it takes two thumbs to tweet.

   Happy 100th Mr Douglas, thank you for all the great moments!

   Marcel

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   1. Hey Marcel…yep Kirk Douglas will be 100 in just a few hours….we will using his page as our Post of the Day. Happy Birthday Mr. Douglas!

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3. You’re a night crawler, Colonel. A peddler. You sell information. Are you sufficiently up on your Bible to know who Judas was?
   I suggest you read that letter, sir. It’s from the President.
   I asked you a question.
   Are you ordering me to answer, sir?
   I am.
   Yes, I know who Judas was. He was a man I worked for and admired…. until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform.

   (from one of my favorite Kirk and Burt movies)

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   1. “Yes, I know who Judas was. He was a man I worked for and admired until he disgraced the four stars on his uniform”. ….those quotes would be from Seven Days In May. Thanks for the trivia question Steve.

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      1. 1 Like that of Mitchum/Brando Kirk’s box office performance reminds me of the little girl in the nursery line who “When she was good she was very, very good but when she was bad she was horrid.” He was a big box office success especially in the 50s and overall he had 16 movies that broke through the Cogerson 100 million barrier among which were monster hits like 20 Thousand Leagues and Spartacus.

         2 However before you get halfway down his box office scale even the respectable grossers start to fade rapidly and of the 71 films listed above 37 have an adjusted gross of less that 60 million each and 29 of those 37 were made after Spartacus (1960). 16 of his final films each generated an adjusted lowly gross of under 25 million.

         3 Again though inspired by the success of Burt Lancaster as a producer Kirk formed Bryna Productions which made 25 films between 1955 and 1986 and Kirk starred in the majority of them including Spartacus and The Vikings. Handily we have been given figures for 17 of them in the table above and the extracted overall adjusted domestic gross for those 17 is $1.52 billion averaging out at approx $90 million which I consider good for an Independent company.

         4 In 1965 Bryna joined forces with John Wayne’s Batjac Company to make Cast a Giant Shadow which starred Kirk and had the Duke, Yul Brynner and Old Blue Eyes in cameos. Kirk, again like Brando, named his company after his mother whose Christian name was Bryna.

         5 My favourite Douglas films are Bad and the Beautiful,Two Weeks in Another Town, Man without a Star, The Racers and especially Last Train from Gun Hill that one too being a Bryna production..

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         1. Hi Roy, I don’t think I’ve seen The Racers, is that the one with Clark Gable? [cue Roy fuming] Interesting bit of info you’ve posted. Is the rumor true that Kirk Douglas wished he was Burt Lancaster? Lancaster might have been better looking and more virile but Douglas was the better actor IMO.

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            1. HI STEVE

               1 Yes -according to one of Kirk’s biographer s “All his career he wanted to be Burt Lancaster”

               2 Also according to Burt they were never as close off screen as people were led to believe and Burt also claimed that Kirk put about the myth of their friendship to gain publicity and that he Burt never really had much time for the publicity

               3 In a TV interview that I saw Kirk complained that when Burt became housebound with strokes he tried several times to visit Burt but was refused access, and in that interview Kirk seemed to blame Burt’s wife. However in view of what I have said in para 2 above I often wondered if actuality it was BURT who was keeping Kirk at arm’s length. However I loved them both and they have always been up there with my screen heroes.

               4 The Racers (1955) was also known as Such Men are Dangerous.

               BOB

            2. Hey Steve…I have to admit…I am not even aware of The Racers…I know I have included it on his page….but I have never read anything about that movie…..but it is now on my list of movies to watch.

         2. Hey Bob.
            1. The update really helped Kirk….using my old equation Kirk only had 6 movies reach that level…just from a numbers standpoint…16 seems more accurate than 6…especially for an AFI Screen Legend.
            2. I agree it goes downhill very quickly.
            3. My theory of repetition went ringing off the hook with this comment….right before reading this comment…I was researching Betty Hutton…one of the few movies I can not find box office on is Spring Reunion….on a deeper search I saw Bryna Productions…my first thought..was Bryna….never heard of it….and I gave up the search….and went to these comments….and here is your comment that not only mentions Bryna Productions but provide some great stats on it as well.
            4. I have only seen 2 of your favorite Douglas movies…Bad and the Beautiful and Last Train…I will have to check the other ones out.
            Thanks for shining a light on Bryna Productions….it was greatly appreciated.

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            1. BRUCE

               1 Most of the 9 Bryna films not on your Kirk Douglas list will be ‘arty’ low grossers for which you probably have not provided figures to the best of my knowledge. Spring Reunion starring Betty Hutton and Dana Andrews is among them as is Rock Hudson’s Seconds [1966] for which you have given us a figure. Wikipedia provides a comprehensive list of the Bryna movies and its subsidary Joel Productions under the heading Bryna Productions.

               2 I would be really keen to see a Betty Hutton page so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that you can give us one when you’ve time.

               3 The beauty of you stats tables with your sorter buttons is that we are able to quickly identify the varying patterns in the box office careers of the different stars. Doris Day and Betty Grable for example have no real blockbusters to their credit but few disastrous flops either. In short they were among the most consistent of stars at the box office.

               4 Kirk and Bud on the other hand had the habit of producing world beaters like Godpop and Spartacus and then giving us a whole raft of stinkers some of which didn’t make or barely made double figures at the box office. Various sources say that Spartacus for example had a foreign gross equal to its domestic one which on the basis of your domestic quote would give it an adjusted worldwide figure of nearly $800 million which was very unusual for the 50s/60s.

               5 Hank Fonda too has a top heavy box office scale with monster hits at one end and a raft of abysmal flops at the other and nearly 28% of the 83 movies listed in his page grossed under 40 million dollars each.

               5 I like to analyse the patterns of stars’ careers and your sorter buttons and your ready reckoner are the key tools for me in that respect and of course you have almost invariably already done all the hard work that makes an analysis possible. So thanks again..

               BOB

            2. Hey Bob.
               1. Yes Spring Renunion was more than difficult to find a box office number…but by all accounts it was a box office disappointment. Seconds actually made Variety’s Top Grossers…..I will have to check out the others.
               2. Ms. Hutton has been completed.
               3. Using the sort button makes these table so much more fun……a trick I picked up a little while ago….is if you want to see just somebody’s 1950s movies…just type in “195” in the search box and they will all pop up.
               4. Using your comparison stats….that is what makes people like Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, and Tyrone Power so impressive….as almost all of their movies have good box office totals.
               5. Thanks for the kind words.
               🙂

4. Kirk Douglas is one of my all-time favourites.

   Great actor of course.
   But as everyone knows, he is the person who ended the Blacklist in Hollywood when he put Trumbo’s name in the opening credits.

   If Kirk did anything worthwhile as an INDIVIDUAL PERSON IN HOLLYWOOD – that is the one that MATTER S THE MOST.

   He is indeed a great actor.

   I have seen well over half.

   I love the Douglas family.

   I want Kirk to make his 100th birthday in December.

   Gunfight at the OK Corral is my favourite of that story.

   There is no Kirk film I do not love.

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   1. Hey Flora…thanks for checking out our update. I get a kick out of Kirk approaching 100…I was glad when Olivia de Havilland reached 100…. And looking forward to December when he does too. Yep….he comes off very well in Trumbo…which is good that he took that stand. Gunfight at the OK Coral is indeed one of my favorites too. 🙂
      P.S. I will edit some of your comment.

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      1. Sure.

         Will look for Steve’s youtube video on Mr. Peck.

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         1. Here you go Flora… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDHsG2OFH7s

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5. One of my favorites from classic Hollywood and still alive too! Kirk and Burt were two of my dad’s favorites and I remember watching those classic films with my parents on TV at peak viewing time, 7pm The Vikings on BBC1, aah memories. 🙂

   I’ve seen 40 of the 71 films on the chart and I have 41 of Kirk’s films in my collection so there is one here I might have missed.

   So many favorites – Spartacus, 20,000 Leagues, The Vikings, Gunfight at the OK Corral, Last Train from Gun Hill, Out of the Past, The Final Countdown, Seven Days in May, The War Wagon, Paths of Glory etc etc

   Films I’ve missed include his first movie – The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Letter to Three Wives and The Man from Snowy River.

   My top 10 video and your critics top 10 have nearly the same films, the big difference is yours includes Martha Ivers and mine has 20,000 Leagues. Good to see Spartacus topping the UMR and 20,000 Leagues was his biggest box office hit, Disney’s biggest hit until Mary Poppins?

   Good work as always Bruce. Let’s hope the next update is when we celebrate Kirk’s 100th birthday in December.

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   1. Hey Steve…..thanks for the return visit. Sounds like good memories of Little Stevie, your parents, Burt and Kirk. My mom has probably seen The Man a From Snowy River a 1000 times….and on a horrible VHS copy to boot. I bought her that movie on DVD…..yet she still watches that horrible VHS copy….it is blurry….has lines through lots of the movie and does that horrible….”oh no the tape is going to break” moments ….yet she still puts it in her VCR….which is rumored to be one the last working ones in Virginia…lol…sorry I went of on a rant.

      40 Kirk movies watched….that had me beat by 13… As I am at 27. Wow I have seen and liked all of the favorites you listed. I would recommend tracking down Martha Ivers…his first movie got the career off to a good start. Yep I noticed that our two critical lists were pretty close…which is good to see. Yep….I will have to do something for his 100th birthday. Thanks for the comment.

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