Kirk Douglas appreciation: 'I was not a tough guy. I just acted like one.'
The phrase "golden age Hollywood" describes different, overlapping phases across 125-odd years of film history, depending on who's doing the talking, or writing. Few agree on what years and which stars the golden age label signifies.
But death has a way of clarifying the debate.
Kirk Douglas died Wednesday at the age of 103. He was, pretty clearly, the last great male star of his generation.
But the loss of Douglas is larger than that. Now, only Olivia De Havilland remains as an undeniable link to a distant time and place - a reminder of what the shimmer of golden age stardom really looked like.
Like De Havilland, Douglas was born in 1916, the
