His other early films include Out of the Past (1947); Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day; Ace in the Hole (1951); and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination.

Douglas continued acting into the 1980s, appearing in such films as Saturn 3 (1980), The Man from Snowy River (1980), Tough Guys (1986), a reunion with Lancaster, and in the television version of Inherit the Wind (1988) plus in an episode of Touched by an Angel in 2000, for which he received his third nomination for an Emmy Award.

In his radio work, he acted in network soap operas and saw those experiences as being especially valuable, as skill in using one's voice is important for aspiring actors; he regretted that later the same avenues became no longer available.

[27] Douglas had planned to remain a stage actor until his friend Lauren Bacall helped him get his first film role by recommending him to producer Hal B. Wallis, who was looking for a new male talent.

[34]In 1947, Douglas appeared in Out of the Past (UK: Build My Gallows High), playing a large supporting role in this classic noir thriller starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer.

[39] Early in his Hollywood career, Douglas demonstrated his independent streak and broke his studio contracts to gain total control over his projects, forming his own movie company, Bryna Productions (named after his mother) in September 1949.

Composer and pianist Hoagy Carmichael, a friend of the real Beiderbecke, played the sidekick, adding realism to the film and giving Douglas insight into the role.

[47] Spangler's girlfriends told police that she was three months pregnant when she disappeared,[48] and scholars such as Jon Lewis of Oregon State University have speculated that she may have been considering an illegal abortion.

In 1954 Douglas starred as the titular character in Ulysses, a film based on Homer's epic poem Odyssey, with Silvana Mangano as Penelope and Circe, and Anthony Quinn as Antinous.

"[68] Douglas played military men in numerous films, with varying nuance, including Top Secret Affair (1957), Town Without Pity (1961), The Hook (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Heroes of Telemark (1965), In Harm's Way (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), Is Paris Burning (1966), The Final Countdown (1980), and Saturn 3 (1980).

[73][74] Douglas was nominated for an Academy Award for the role, with his co-star Anthony Quinn winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Paul Gauguin, van Gogh's friend.

Her distrust of Norton grew, especially as he had been granted power of attorney, and she found that the pre-nuptial agreement meant that she and their children had no claim on Douglas's estate until they had been married for five years.

[79] Douglas returned from filming The Devils Disciple in England in late 1958, and was presented with the results of Price Waterhouse's audit which detailed that the 18 months he had recently spent overseas on the advice of Norton did not qualify for a tax-free income break, that the investments he had been advised to make in fact had been channeled through dummy companies owned by his agent.

Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), Victory at Entebbe (1976), and Tough Guys (1986), which fixed the notion of the pair as something of a team in the public imagination.

[87] In The Arrangement (1969), a drama directed by Elia Kazan and based upon his novel of the same title, Douglas starred as a tormented advertising executive, with Faye Dunaway as costar.

Dunaway believed many of the reviews were unfair, writing in her biography, "I can't understand it when people knock Kirk's performance, because I think he's terrific in the picture," adding that "he's as bright a person as I've met in the acting profession.

[95] In 1980, he starred in The Final Countdown,[96] playing the commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, which travels through time to the day before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

[103] On December 9, 2016, he celebrated his 100th birthday at the Beverly Hills Hotel, joined by several of his friends, including Don Rickles, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg, along with Douglas's wife Anne, his son Michael and his daughter-in-law Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Globally revered, he is now the last living screen legend of those who vaulted to stardom at the war's end, that special breed of movie idol instantly recognizable anywhere, whose luminous on-screen characters are forever memorable.

He prepared himself privately for each role he played, so that when the cameras were ready to roll he was suitably, and some would say egotistically and even selfishly, inspired to steal every scene in a manner comparable in modern times to Jack Nicholson's modus operandi.

"[56] Douglas's wife, Anne, similarly attributes the energy he devotes to acting to his tough childhood: He was reared by his mother and his sisters and as a schoolboy he had to work to help support the family.

According to his autobiography The Ragman's Son, he and Italian actress Pier Angeli were engaged in the early 1950s after meeting on the set of the film The Story of Three Loves (1953), but they never made it down the aisle.

[120] The next morning while driving in the car to Los Angeles, Douglas and his family heard on the radio the news that Todd's aircraft had crashed a few hours after takeoff, killing all on board.

[125] In an interview in 2000, he explained this transition:[126] Judaism and I parted ways a long time ago, when I was a poor kid growing up in Amsterdam, N.Y. Back then, I was pretty good in cheder, so the Jews of our community thought they would do a wonderful thing and collect enough money to send me to a yeshiva to become a rabbi.

[132] Since the early 1990s, Kirk and Anne Douglas donated up to $40 million to Harry's Haven, an Alzheimer's treatment facility in Woodland Hills, to care for patients at the Motion Picture Home.

[134] Douglas and his wife traveled to more than 40 countries, at their own expense, to act as goodwill ambassadors for the U.S. Information Agency, speaking to audiences about why democracy works and what freedom means.

He noted in his memoir, Let's Face It (2007), that he felt compelled to write to former president Jimmy Carter in 2006 to stress that "Israel is the only successful democracy in the Middle East ... [and] has had to endure many wars against overwhelming odds.

[139] In his autobiography, Douglas states that this decision was motivated by a meeting that Edward Lewis, Stanley Kubrick, and he had regarding whose names to list for the screenplay in the film credits, given Trumbo's shaky position with Hollywood executives.

"[189] Valenti remembers that after Douglas held up the Oscar, addressed his sons, and told his wife how much he loved her, everyone was astonished at his voice's improvement: The audience went wild with applause [and] erupted in affection ... rising to their feet to salute this last of the great movie legends, who had survived the threat of death and stared down the demons that had threatened to silence him.

Recipients of the award include Robert De Niro, Ed Harris, Harrison Ford, Michael Douglas, Hugh Jackman, and Judi Dench.