“When a free man dies, he loses the pleasure of life; a slave loses its pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That’s why he’s not afraid of it. That’s why we’ll win.”
—Kirk Douglas as Spartacus
Back up for air, this time to stay. It was very difficult writing about something that happened over half a century ago. You are amazed at how much you’ve forgotten and fascinated when you read the research and discover the thousands of details that go into the making of a motion picture. It’s an interesting process.
When I sat down to write this book, I watched Spartacus from beginning to end for the first time since 1960. I saw a young man up on the screen. I was a very different person fifty years ago. You can’t imagine the changes that occur in a human being as you get older. I was surprised by how headstrong I was back then, and yet that’s probably what helped me to make Spartacus.
People point to it as the moment the Hollywood blacklist was finally broken. But as I said at the beginning of this book, I didn’t set out to make a statement—I was just trying to make the best picture I could about a story that mattered to me. It still does.
What Spartacus really shattered was the “hypocrisy list.” Many blacklisted writers were working during that horrendous time; they just couldn’t tell anyone. They also had to accept wages that were a fraction of what they earned under their real names. Imagine what that does to a man, particularly a creative man. Dalton Trumbo said to me, “Kirk, thank you for giving me back my name.”
It shouldn’t have been mine to give—no one, certainly not the government, should have the power to deprive a man of his birthright. That was the hypocrisy of the blacklist. We all knew it was going on and most decent Americans knew it was wrong, but we pretended that it didn’t matter. You did what you had to do.
If Spartacus helped change that shameful practice—where indifference became a substitute for integrity—I am proud of that. Others, particularly Eddie Lewis and Otto Preminger, deserve great credit too—they fought for what they knew was right, even when it wasn’t popular.
Most of the cast of Spartacus is now gone. That’s hard for me to write about.
Yet our personal and professional lives were all profoundly affected by the three years it took for Spartacus to reach the screen.
Old marriages ended and new ones began. Shortly after the film’s release, Laurence Olivier’s twenty-year marriage to Vivien Leigh mercifully came to an end. A few months later, Larry and Joan Plowright eloped to Connecticut. They had three children and remained happily married until his death in 1989.
In 1991, we discovered that the deleted “snails and oysters” scene was still in the Universal vault. The problem was that the audio track was unusable. Tony Curtis came in and redubbed his Antoninus lines, more than thirty years after they were originally recorded. With graciousness and inspiration, Joan Plowright suggested that Anthony Hopkins might be called upon to redo her late husband’s lines, as Hopkins did a superb impression of Olivier. So now, when Crassus asks Antoninus if “taste is not the same as appetite,” the speaking voice you hear belongs to Sir Anthony Hopkins. He did an uncanny job. Listen carefully to Olivier in the other scenes—I’ll bet you can’t tell the difference.
In 1960, Jean Simmons filed for divorce from Stewart Granger. Within months she, too, remarried—this time to writer/director Richard Brooks, who directed her that same year in Elmer Gantry. My darling Jean passed away last year, still as lovely and elegant as the day we met.
Charles Laughton never sued me, and we became friendly again over our shared passion for art. He was brilliantly knowledgeable about painting and was always gracious in sharing his keen opinions with Anne and me. When Charles was diagnosed with cancer in 1962, I wrote to him in the hospital. It touched me to learn that he kept that letter among his personal papers, which were donated to UCLA.
Our dear friends Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh divorced in 1962. I was best man at Tony’s wedding to a young German actress named Christine. The marriage didn’t last, but our friendship did. I was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral in 2010. I miss him still.
John Gavin left acting permanently in 1981, when President Reagan appointed him as United States ambassador to Mexico. Anne and I went out with him and his lovely wife, Connie Towers, just a few weeks ago. At eighty, John is still as strong and handsome as he was when he played the young Caesar. There’s been only one noticeable change in his appearance since Spartacus. He noted it wryly over dinner—“Kirk, your hair turned white. Mine turned loose.”
Spartacus was not nominated for a Best Picture Oscar—maybe the voters were more conservative than the general public—but Oscar night was still amusing, especially when Russell Metty won for Best Cinematography. After having essentially been told by Stanley to sit down and shut up for more than a year, he got to give an acceptance speech for his fine “work.” I don’t remember if he thanked Stanley.
Peter Ustinov did win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Spartacus. This was particularly funny to me, since for months he’d been regaling the Hollywood party circuit with this bon mot: “The problem in Spartacus is to be good without being too good.” The implication, of course, was that he couldn’t risk outshining the boss.
It didn’t bother me a bit, because I knew Peter couldn’t resist a witty line. And it was funny. I still laugh when I remember him today. Anne adored him too.
Lew Wasserman finally bought Universal Studios in 1962. He became my landlord and my boss, but he always remained my friend. His vision for a Universal City has been realized beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. People remember Lew as a mogul. I remember him as a mensch whose word was his bond.
Stanley Kubrick and I continued to have a complicated history over the next four decades. His bitterness over not having had total control over every frame of Spartacus plagued him throughout his life. When Stanley listed all the pictures he had directed, he always omitted Spartacus. It was the thorn in his side. He said things like “Spartacus had everything but a good story.” And “I don’t know what to say when someone tells me ‘Spartacus is my favorite movie.’”
Yet only a few years after we parted ways, I received a very thoughtful letter from him—out of the blue—offering several constructive suggestions for my production of Seven Days in May. I came across the letter recently in my files and it made me remember that despite his tremendous difficulty in empathizing with people, he was obsessed with perfection in storytelling—even someone else’s story. Stanley was an extraordinary talent, and I am grateful that our paths crossed.
There’s one more strange connection between Kubrick and me that I’ve never told anyone about before. When we were having problems on Spartacus, I once took him with me to one of my regular appointments with Dr. Herbert Kupper, my psychiatrist. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon to use your therapy visits to help work out specific problems—and Stanley and I had more than a few issues that could use a professional referee.
I can’t tell you that it helped our working relationship—but Dr. Kupper did make one suggestion to Stanley that had a tangible result in his life. He recommended a book—a 1926 German novella, Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler—that he thought would make a good movie. Forty years later, that book was the basis for Stanley’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut.
Of all the people I worked with on Spartacus, Dalton Trumbo was unique. He was more of a character than most of the actors I’ve known. He was a man who loved life. He loved living it, he loved describing it, he loved affecting it. Opinionated to a fault, yet never offended when challenged, he was that rare combination of self-confidence leavened with self-deprecation. To take your work seriously without taking yourself seriously is a rare gift—and Dalton had it in spades.
Two years later we worked together on Lonely Are the Brave—the best script I’ve ever read. It required no revisions. We shot it exactly as he wrote it, and I still believe the character of Jack Burns is the best role I’ve ever played.
My friend “Sam” taught me a lot about courage and grace. I hope this book will help Dalton Trumbo be remembered as the true American hero he was.
Our world, I am sad to say, still remains divided today over many of the same issues that we lived through during the Red Scare and the making of Spartacus. Fearmongers Gerald L. K. Smith and Hedda Hopper have been replaced by a new generation of demagogues like Rush Limbaugh. The fight for basic human freedom depicted in Spartacus is going on all over the globe from Syria to Iran.
I believe much of the divisiveness in the world has been caused by religion, even in the time of Spartacus when they worshipped many gods. What is the purpose of religion? After ninety-five years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that religion should be based on only one thing: helping your fellow man. If everybody followed that religion—helping his fellow man—armies would vanish overnight. Injustice, intolerance, and inhumanity would disappear. And blacklists would never be written. What a wonderful world that would be.
And what a wonderful world it sometimes is. I am thinking back to March 20, 1991—a very special night. The room was filled; the Screen Writers Guild was honoring me for breaking the blacklist. I went back to my table with the award and showed it to my beloved Anne.
Everybody gave me congratulations and we went home. As we were lying in bed, I nudged my wife—“Honey, wasn’t that a wonderful evening? Weren’t you proud to hear him say all those nice things about me breaking the blacklist?”
She didn’t answer.
I sat up in bed. “Honey, I really think I did something historic.”
Anne looked at me—“Yes, but what have you done lately?” Then she turned out the light. Even in the dark, I knew there was a big smile on her face.