Michael Douglas — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Michael Kirk Douglas was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 25 September 1944, the elder son of the actor Kirk Douglas and Diana Dill, who came from Bermuda. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his father's parents.
Herschel "Harry" Danielovitch and Bryna "Bertha" Sanglel, both born in 1884, were Jewish emigrants from Chavusy, a town in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in Belarus. In Amsterdam, New York, where they settled, the family spoke Yiddish at home. Their only son, born Issur Danielovitch in December 1916 as the fourth of seven children, grew up as Izzy Demsky and took the name Kirk Douglas before entering the US Navy in the Second World War. Herschel died in 1954 and Bryna in 1958.
Michael's parents had met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and divorced in 1951. He took a degree in drama at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and became widely known on television in The Streets of San Francisco.
The project that made him a producer came from his father. Kirk Douglas's company, Bryna Productions, which bore his mother's first name, had bought the rights to Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962, and in 1963 Kirk played its lead on Broadway. In late 1971 he passed the rights to Michael, who produced the film with Saul Zaentz after several studios turned it down. Released in 1975, it won the Academy Award for Best Picture, Michael's first Oscar.
He went on to produce and star in The China Syndrome (1979) and Romancing the Stone (1984). In 1987 he appeared in Fatal Attraction and played Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, which brought him the Academy Award for Best Actor. His portrayal of Liberace in Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra (2013) won a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe. He received the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2004 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2009.
Kirk Douglas recorded the family's early years in Amsterdam in his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman's Son. He died in February 2020, aged 103.
"Paternal grandparents Herschel Danielovitch and Bryna Sanglel emigrated from Chavusy, Mogilev Governorate, to Amsterdam, New York, where Kirk Douglas was born in 1916."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Chavusy, Mogilev Governorate (now Belarus)
His father, Kirk Douglas, was born Issur Danielovitch in 1916 to Herschel Danielovitch and Bryna Sanglel, Jewish emigrants from Chavusy in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in Belarus.
Grandparents Herschel 'Harry' Danielovitch (1884-1954) and Bryna 'Bertha' Sanglel (1884-1958), Jewish emigrants from Chavusy in the Mogilev Governorate; the family spoke Yiddish at home in Amsterdam, New York.
.svg?width=900)
Chavusy, Mogilev Governorate (now Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.