There is a particular kind of gravity required to survive Hollywood, and an even rarer kind needed to build a life that spans over a century.

Kirk Douglas had both. Long before he was the cleft-chinned icon of the silver screen, he was Issur Danielovitch, born to illiterate Russian-Jewish immigrants in Amsterdam, New York. His childhood was stripped of romance, defined by the biting cold of upstate winters and the literal grit of his father’s trade.