NPR

Opinion: Kirk Douglas's Passion Project After Spartacus

Actor Kirk Douglas died at the age of 103 this week. NPR's Scott Simon remembers the movie that Douglas made after his pivotal role in Spartacus.
US actor Kirk Douglas salutes the crowd at the 68th Annual Academy Awards after he received an Oscar for life time achievement.

After Kirk Douglas produced and starred in in 1960, which won four Oscars and was the biggest moneymaker of the year, he could probably get Hollywood to finance almost any film he wanted to make. Another epic, like ? An adventure, like ? A scorching? What chose to do was a small-scale film, black and white, not wide-screen technicolor, drawn from Edward Abbey's novel, .

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