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Monday September 29, 2014 03:00 PM EDT

DO NOT PUB Kirk Douglas Dies

by Stephen M. Silverman

Kirk Douglas, one of the few genuine box-office names to emerge just as TV was overtaking American culture in the years right after World War II, died TK TK TK. He was 97 (DOB 12/9/1916) and had been in good health despite having suffered a debilitating 1996 stroke that rendered his speech difficult.

In some 75 movies – including seven costarring his friend, Burt Lancaster, as well as 1951's highly regarded Ace in the Hole (a stinging early portrait of the media from director Billy Wilder), the 1952 Hollywood exposé The Bad and the Beautiful and the 1956 Vincent Van Gogh biopic Lust for Life – Kirk Douglas was a superstar even before the term was coined. He also possessed the on-screen intensity and the off-screen ego to go with it.

But as overpowering and sometimes difficult as he might have been, Douglas was also a man of heartfelt conviction, hiring blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo – and giving him full screen credit – to write the 1960 epic Spartacus, in which Douglas starred and served as executive producer.

Humble Beginnings

As told in his 1988 autobiography, The Ragpicker's Son, Kirk Douglas – the name he legally adopted while a college student acting in summer stock – was born poor, as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, the son of an illiterate immigrant Russian-Jewish junkman.

The boy, called Izzy, had some 40 jobs growing up in Amsterdam, N.Y., including newsboy, before acting in high school plays sent him on the course that would eventually make him a household name. He studied at Manhattan's American Academy of Dramatic Arts alongside classmate Lauren Bacall, who later helped get him a screen test that led to his first movie role, opposite Barbara Stanwyck, in 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

Another Academy classmate was Diana Dill, to whom Douglas would be married from 1943 until their 1951 divorce. She is the mother of two of Douglas's sons, Michael, born in 1944, and Joel, born in 1947. They both survive their father, as does son Peter Douglas, born in 1955. Peter's mother is Kirk's second wife, Anne (the two married in 1954), who also survives him.

Family Matters

Heading a Hollywood family, though, was often as difficult as being in one. As Michael has said on several occasions, including during his 1987 Best Actor Oscar acceptance speech for Wall Street, growing up under so large a shadow as Kirk Douglas's was not always easy.

The Douglas Family, in 2000 (from left): Kirk, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Anne and Michael

Dave Allocca / DMI / Time Life Pictures / Getty

In 1979, Michael told PEOPLE, "Kirk Douglas was certainly a hard act to follow. I mean, there he was hanging from the cross in Spartacus, walking across the ranks of oars in The Vikings ..." Added Kirk: "I think having a famous father was a pain in the ass for him."

But as the years progressed, so did their relationship, even as the family faced such as adversities as the death of youngest Kirk's son (and Michael's brother) Erik at age 46 in 2004, and the five-year prison sentence of Michael's son Cameron, in 2010, for drug dealing. That same year, Michael was also diagnosed with throat cancer.

But there were many good times, too, including Kirk's joy at welcoming Michael's second wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones into the family, in a lavish 2000 wedding – and the birth of Michael and Catherine's first child (they have two), son Dylan, born Aug. 8, 2000.

"You know, Dylan has a dimple bigger than mine," the proud grandpa told PEOPLE. "[But] I think he looks more like Catherine. Catherine with a dimple. Not bad!"