Two prominent actors who came up around the same time that were out and proud Jews were Jeff Chandler and Kirk Douglas. Both made some films with Israeli backgrounds, both were committed Zionists. Though Jeff Chandler left us 51 years ago, if Kirk Douglas's health would permit I think he'd love to get another film under his belt about Israel and the Jewish experience.
Even with such an excellent work like Schindler's List out there, now acclaimed as the ultimate work of the Holocaust, Remembrance Of Love, the last film Kirk Douglas made with an Israeli setting tells the story of a survivor from his teen years of the Holocaust, recently a widower, and traveling with his journalist daughter Pam Dawber to attend a Holocaust survivor gathering. The gathering as depicted is almost like a veteran's encampment, but these people are from all walks of life, some not even Jewish, but all with that life defining experience of feeling pure evil up close and personal.
Douglas has a specific mission to find a long lost love and to find out what happened to friends and family from Poland so long ago. He meets up with Chana Eden and they have a reunion like none other. Eden is now married, but her husband understands what's between them, each thought the other was dead.
Part of the film shows the intricate workings of the vast files of the Holocaust Center in Jerusalem. Ironically the Nazis with their meticulous anal retentive records made it somewhat easier for people to find each other after the war. Once Kirk and Chana do find each other they can relive their lives that few people can ever imagine.
Playing himself, late of Hogan's Heroes is Robert Clary who was a French Jew and was sent to the camps in Poland and survived. He's not a celebrity, he's not Corporal LeBeau he's just one of the survivors and is never treated as anything special. In real life Clary does not perform any more, but lectures on the Holocaust.
Joining those other films; The Juggler, Cast A Giant Shadow, Raid On Entebbe, and now Remembrance Of Love, Kirk Douglas does his personal best in this personal film. God willing the 95 year old Kirk will give us another. If his health permitted, I know he would.
