During a show business career that stretched back to the mid-1940s, Kirk Douglas could be counted upon for projecting a certain indignant intelligence on the screen.

Whether playing a bilious newspaper reporter in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951), a rascally Revolutionary War heathen in The Devil’s Disciple (1959), or a prison inmate who takes pleasure in his own insubordination in There Was a Crooked Man … (1970), Douglas often chose roles that required equal parts brain and brawn. The actor died on Feb. 5 at the age of 103.