A “playful” photo op from the 1953 Venice Film Festival, just over 71 years ago. 37 year-old Kirk Douglas was bearded for the forthcoming filming of Ulysses (’54), a cheesy adaptation of Homer‘s “Odyssey” by way of pulp sword-and-sandal aesthetics, courtesy of producers Dino de Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti.

Woody Allen once nonsensically said he’d like to be reincarnated as Warren Beatty‘s fingertips. I would settle for being reincarnated, just as nonsensically, as Douglas’s felt-tip pen or, failing that, Douglas himself.