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Kirk Douglas was born in New York on December 9, 1916. He was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, to Russian Jews who had emigrated to New York, and he changed his name and began acting and later became a superstar. After some minor Broadway roles, he served in the Navy in WWII, and after the war, his first film was a leading role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in 1946. He followed that up with an important role in Out of the Past, the classic film noir, and then I Walk Alone, where he again had a supporting role, this time with Burt Lancaster, with whom he would appear many times. Champion (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1949 made him a major star, and for the next years he played lots of lead roles in important movies, often playing someone mentally unstable, as he had in Champion. In 1952 he made The Bad and The Beautiful (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film), Lust For Life (nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for this film) in 1956, and in 1957 he used his star power to see that Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory was made (he was the producer and star, and it likely would never been made but for Douglas, and it is to mind in the three or four finest movies ever made). He is well remembered for his starring role in Kubrick's Spartacus, as well as in Lonely are the Brave, and many others. As he grew older he took major supporting roles, opposite such stars as Lancaster (they made 7 movies together) and John Wayne. In 1963 he bought the rights to Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and he starred as McMurphy in a Broadway production. But he was heartbroken when he could not get a major studio to make a film version with him in the lead, and he gave the rights to his son Michael, who was finally able to get it filmed in 1975 (and while Nicholson was perfect, one can't help but wonder how the elder Douglas would have been!). Douglas is pretty indestructible! He survived a helicopter crash and a major stroke, and I saw him at a retrospective a couple of years ago, and he looked better than ever. But I was struck when I read his fine autobiography "The Ragman's Son" just how haunted he was, and how he never escaped his difficult childhood. All through my growing up I heard that Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster were best friends. Apparently this was not at all true, and they mostly only had a professional relationship, and even that was strained. Lancaster was quoted as saying "Kirk would be the first to admit that he's difficult to work with - and I would be the second"! Few actors have ever given us nearly as many wonderful performances as Kirk Douglas (and his film selection was second to none), and yet he never won an acting Academy Award, a sad commentary on the method by which the Oscars are chosen. Douglas passed away in 2020 at the age of 103. He was one of the very last of the great living Hollywood stars, and truly a legend!

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Kirk Douglas! Also note that although this still was "printed in Great Britain", it has full NSS information. We have been told by an expert that Columbia and MGM had a number of their color stills printed in Great Britain in the late 1950s and the early 1960s (the years vary between the two studios), no doubt because the English color printing was better than the U.S. color printing at this time. However, they were printed in Great Britain to be used in the U.S. (we have heard from many collectors who saw these color stills in U.S. theaters at the time these movies were released, but we have not heard from any English collectors who saw them used in England at that time). In the late 1960s and 1970s some studios started printing color stills like these in Italy, surely for the same reason (because Italian printers had better color printing during those years). But those stills printed in Italy were for use in the U.S., as these stills printed in Great Britain were for use in the U.S.

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last two all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning 211 more items (mostly 8x10 stills and repro 8x10s, but also 58 other items like playbills and more)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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