Friday, November 18, 2011

Listy things -- Kirk Douglas

My favorite Kirk Douglas films:

1. 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
2. Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
3. The Vikings (1958)
4. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
5. Tough Guys (1986)
6. Seven Days in May (1964)
7. Paths of Glory (1957)
8. Out of the Past (1947)
9. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
10. Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Kirk Douglas is one of those actors I tend to take for granted and forget how much I really love him. He stars in my favorite movie of all-time, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Vikings is, if not in my top 10, then my top 15 movies. If you had asked me who my favorite actor was when I was a kid, I would have told you it was Kirk Douglas.

I have to rank Lonely Are the Brave at the top because I absolutely love him in that movie (might actually be my favorite Kirk Douglas performance), but as I've said before, I have a hard time actually watching the film. I have two tough-to-watch films on this list. Lonely and Paths of Glory. Those go along with The Ox-Bow Incident, on my list of very painful movies to watch, but all three are also so good.

And why is Tough Guys not out on DVD??? I love this movie. I went and saw it a bunch of times in the theater when it came out, and I'm not sure I've seen it since! I think I saw it on video once, but that's it. This was such a good, underrated movie. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and Eli Wallach were so great in this movie. Man, I'd dearly love to see it again.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kirk Douglas at a book signing, oh man, twenty years ago now (where is the time going??). When I told him 20,000 was my favorite movie, he sang part of "A Whale of a Tale" for me. It's one of my fondest memories.


(Tomorrow... Ralph Meeker)

2 comments:

Irene Palfy said...

Blimey! He did sing for you?? Wow.. What a beautiful memory to have!

Hamlette (Rachel) said...

It's very unfair how many of these movies I haven't seen yet. Must rectify that.

He's in my favorite movie of all time too, The Man from Snowy River. How about that?