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FILM · 1956

Lust for Life

19 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026

19 Interesting Facts About Lust for Life

Interesting Facts (13)

  1. #001

    Most of the locations used for filming were real places Vincent van Gogh visited during his life.

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  2. #002

    MGM originally bought the film as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy.

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  3. #003

    Although many sources claim Anthony Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for a brief 8-minute role in the film, his performance actually runs 22 minutes and 40 seconds.

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  4. #004

    Director Vincente Minnelli had part of the area spray-painted yellow to bring it closer to Vincent van Gogh's painting.

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  5. #005

    The color process used for the film (Ansco Color, though labeled Metrocolor in its credits) was not suitable for long-term color preservation. As a result, reissue prints lost the extraordinary brightness and range of the film's original images and began to turn beet red. Fortunately, the original colors have now been properly restored in the DVD release. MGM of course made three black-and-white color separations from the monopack negative. Because the black-and-white images, which supply the color values relative to one another, do not fade, it was relatively easy to restore the film's color to its original brilliance; the only problem was the differing shrinkage rates among the three black-and-white separations.

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  6. #006

    Because Van Gogh's parents, Kirk Douglas's real children, believed he had actually harmed himself, Michael Douglas and his brother Joel, who were very young at the time, ran out of the theater screaming during the scene in which he cuts off his own ear.

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  7. #007

    There is no evidence that 'Wheatfield with Crows' is Van Gogh's last painting. Some suggest it was 'Tree Roots' or 'Daubigny's Garden'.

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  8. #008

    On December 17, 1955, during Perry Como's NBC series, Como (who began as a barber) cut the beard Kirk Douglas had grown for this picture, live on television.

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  9. #009

    Some parts of the film were shot in Auvers-sur-Oise, where Vincent van Gogh lived and died. Kirk Douglas had his hair specially cut in the artist's style and dyed a similar reddish tone. This was enough to convince some of the town's elderly residents that Van Gogh had returned.

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  10. #010

    Kirk Douglas was generally considered too old for the early scenes, in which his character is supposed to be in his twenties.

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  11. #011

    Kirk Douglas based his performance in part on a fellow student at St Lawrence College named Robert George Irwin. Irwin later became known as a sculptor, but he was a recurring mental hospital patient and killed three people in Turtle Bay, New York, over the 1937 Easter weekend.

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  12. #012

    Kirk's son Micheal was to play a passionate, manic-depressive artist (a musician) released from a mental hospital in the 2007 film King of California. Everyone agrees Micheal resembles his father, but some of his looks and mannerisms in the 2007 film are especially and distinctly reminiscent of his father's 1956 role as Vincent.

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  13. #013

    The film was widely regarded as inferior to Moulin Rouge (1952).

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Production Story (3)

  1. #014

    Director Vincente Minnelli opposed the use of CinemaScope as the film's aspect ratio, believing it was inconsistent with the intimate story he wanted to tell as well as with the many Van Gogh works depicted at times, including the recreations of locations shown in Van Gogh's paintings (for example, a cafe, a billiard hall or Van Gogh's bedroom in Arles). Minnelli lost the battle with the studio, but he did manage to use Ansco Color as the film stock rather than the more saturated Technicolor, believing it would better capture the dark moods of Van Gogh's life. By the time shooting began in 1955, however, Ansco Color had already been discontinued, and Minnelli had to make do with the remaining stock to make the film and then arrange special processes to develop it.

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  2. #015

    Kirk Douglas wanted to play Vincent van Gogh in this film but nearly turned down the opportunity after learning that the studio insisted he sign a loyalty oath. Douglas, who had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, was both furious and insulted, since his loyalty to the United States was being questioned and he was strongly opposed to the idea that he would cooperate with Hollywood's blacklist. John Houseman calmly asked him whether he wanted the role, and after some thought Douglas decided to cooperate in this instance, which later fueled his desire to defy the blacklist with the production of Spartacus (1960).

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  3. #016

    Irving Stone's novel was first published in 1946, and MGM bought the film rights that year. The purchase came with one condition: the film had to be made within ten years, or the rights would revert to the author. MGM took so long to decide whether to make the film (producer John Houseman believed what finally spurred them on was the big box-office success of Moulin Rouge (1952) with José Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec) that it had to be made virtually against the clock. The completed film was nonetheless in theaters before the end of 1956.

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Characters & Cast (1)

  1. #017

    David Wayne, Arthur Kennedy and John Gregson were considered for the role of Theo van Gogh. James Donald, who played the role, was cast only a few days before shooting began.

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Deeper Meaning (1)

  1. #018

    This was Vincente Minnelli's long-cherished project at MGM, because Van Gogh's life encompassed all of the director's passions and beliefs, especially his commitment to artistic creation at any cost and his use of color as a metaphor for language. MGM was resistant, believing the film's box-office prospects were low, but Minnelli seized the opportunity by agreeing to direct two musical transfers from Broadway to Hollywood for the Arthur Freed Unit; their commercial appeal was expected to offset the losses anticipated on Lust for Life (1956) (in the great studio days, losses on a few prestige projects were tolerated if they were not too high and did not prevent the studio from meeting its overall profit target for 1956). In fact, most of Vincente Minnelli's films fall into this category, since they generally brought MGM a great deal of prestige while incidentally delivering box-office returns). Minnelli's heart, however, was in none of these musical ventures, and both Brigadoon (1954) and Kismet (1955) turned out to be artistic and commercial disappointments - but too late, because by the time the returns came in, Lust for Life (1956) was already in production.

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Career & Awards (1)

  1. #019

    Kirk Douglas is one of two actors nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for playing Vincent van Gogh in a film. The second is Willem Dafoe for At Eternity's Gate (2018).

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Sources & editorial notes

Reference databases

  • IMDb IMDb title page (trivia)

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