I Am Spartacus! Read online

  I AM

  SPARTACUS!

  MAKING A FILM, BREAKING THE BLACKLIST

  KIRK DOUGLAS

  FOREWORD

  THERE’S ONE CONSTANT THAT YOU can find to define a person’s character.

  It’s not how you perform when things are easy; it’s how you handle yourself when it’s tough.

  Everyone can be fearless and forthright when the stakes are low . . . but when it’s your livelihood or even your life on the line, or your family’s or your friends’ . . . that’s when you understand the kind of mettle you’re made of.

  Kirk Douglas’ mettle is made of pretty stern stuff. Unlike so many characters we see in movies, he didn’t necessarily start out championing a cause. His path to glory rests more at the feet of characters like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. He hadn’t sought out the fight . . . it found him . . . and like Atticus, he did what he knew he had to . . . what was right.

  It’s hard to imagine now what the weight of McCarthyism meant to so many. It’s difficult to picture loyal Americans pulled before Senate subcommittees and being asked to name their friends’ names or go to jail. Being tried in public without the ability to face the charges brought against you . . . a lot of very good people buckled under that weight.

  The ones who didn’t suffered, long after McCarthy was holding hearings . . . for that matter long after he was even alive.

  Dalton Trumbo was one of the most respected writers in Hollywood . . . and continued to write under pen names for years after going to jail for refusing to incriminate his coworkers.

  In December 2011, his name was placed where it always should have been . . . as a credited writer on the film Roman Holiday.

  But long before December 2011, Kirk Douglas stepped out of the dark and, as the producer and star of Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, gave Dalton Trumbo screen credit for the first time since he was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

  I guess it sounds small now. A screenwriter getting credit for a film he actually wrote . . . but in the history books, it’s marked as the moment that the Hollywood blacklist ended.

  Kirk Douglas is many things. A movie star. An actor. A producer. But he is, first and foremost, a man of extraordinary character. The kind that’s formed when the stakes are high. The kind we always look for at our darkest hour.

  GEORGE CLOONEY

  INTRODUCTION

  What you learn about yourself with the passing of time can’t be taught. It can only be experienced. You can never “know then what you know now.”

  When I look back at Spartacus today—more than fifty years after the fact—I’m amazed that it ever happened at all. Everything was against us—the McCarthy-era politics, competition with another picture, everything.

  I am 95 years old. When I was born, Woodrow Wilson was in the White House. I’ve lived through sixteen presidents, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and a score of political crises from Teapot Dome to Watergate to Bill Clinton’s impeachment for being publicly serviced in the White House.

  As I write these words, America is more deeply divided than at any point in my lifetime. From its inception, our country has experienced many divisive periods. Of course, the most serious division occurred with the Civil War. More than half a million people were killed and it almost brought about the dissolution of the United States. Yet somehow we’ve always survived.

  What I want to tell you about in this book is what it was like to make the film Spartacus during another divisive period in our nation’s history. The ‘50s were a time of fear and paranoia. The Communists were the enemy then. Terrorists are the enemy now. The names change, yet the fear remains. That fear is still inflamed by politicians and exploited by the media. They profit by keeping us afraid.

  The first president I ever voted for was Franklin Roosevelt. He said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

  I am not a political activist. When I produced Spartacus in 1959, I was trying to make the best movie I could make, not a political statement. I brought together a cast of some of the finest actors ever to appear on-screen: Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons, and Tony Curtis. I hired a talented young director I knew. At the time, he was still largely unknown to the general public. His name was Stanley Kubrick.

  Let others judge the movie. I believe it stands on its own merits. I am proud of it.

  When I talk to my grandchildren about the making of Spartacus, it seems to them like a fantastic tale from a faraway time—the 1950s. They’re right. It was a long time ago. Yet in a world where one man in Tunisia can set off events that topple the government of Egypt, the story of Spartacus is as important today as it was fifty years ago—and two thousand years ago.

  A revolutionary spirit is circling the globe. Is it contagious? We are surprised when we see leaderless crowds of people gathering in American cities, speaking with one voice, challenging the power structure that seems impregnable. That was what Spartacus did. And tens of thousands lent their voices to his. Together, they were all Spartacus.

  I was a young man when I made this film. I’ve often said that if I had been a little bit older, I might never have taken it on at all. I certainly don’t think that I would have hired Dalton Trumbo to write it under his own name. He was a lightning rod for the country’s divisiveness. After almost a year in jail for his political views, he was still on the studios’ blacklist—the “Do Not Hire” rule that had been in place for more than a decade.

  Some people these days still try to justify the blacklist. They say it was necessary to protect America. They say that the only people who were hurt by it were our enemies.

  They are lying. Innocent men, women, and children saw their lives ruined by this national disgrace.

  I know. I was there. I watched it happen.

  Now I will tell you about it. And about Spartacus—the movie we made in the midst of all that madness.

  KIRK DOUGLAS

  JANUARY 1, 2012

  Bettmann/CORBIS

  Dalton Trumbo was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood when he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947.

  Three years later, he was on his way to federal prison for contempt of Congress.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “In every city and province, lists of the

  disloyal have been compiled.”

  —Laurence Olivier as Marcus Crassus

  IN THE CAUCUS ROOM OF the old House Office Building, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was gaveled to order by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, Republican of New Jersey. It was Tuesday, October 28, 1947. Ten men, motion picture writers and directors, had been called before the Committee to testify about their current and prior political affiliations.

  Nine of them were screenwriters: Dalton Trumbo, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr., Lester Cole, Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, John Howard Lawson, Samuel Ornitz, and Adrian Scott. One was a director—Edward Dmytryk.

  These men—the so-called “Unfriendly Ten”—viewed the HUAC investigation itself as an un-American violation of their First Amendment rights of free speech and free association, and they intended to say so publicly.

  The first witness on that cold October day was Dalton Trumbo. He raised his right hand and was asked if he would swear “to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”

  Trumbo replied, “I do.” Yet it quickly became apparent to fair-minded Americans that the only “truth” desired by the Committee (which included an unknown freshman congressman named Richard M. Nixon) was anything—whether true or not—that confirmed their predetermined verdict of these ten men: guilty.

  Seated directly behind Trumbo in the crowded chamber were me
mbers of the Committee for the First Amendment, a Hollywood group created to provide support for the subpoenaed witnesses.

  The delegation of film stars that flew to Washington, D.C., on a private plane provided by Howard Hughes, included Humphrey Bogart and his young wife, Lauren Bacall, as well as Gene Kelly, Danny Kaye, John Garfield, and John Huston.

  I knew Lauren Bacall from New York. I first met her on a cold winter day in 1940 when we were both struggling students at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was only sixteen years old, just entering the Academy. I was a senior, an “older man” of twenty-three. She was Betty Joan Perske back then. She’s still Betty to me now.

  Bacall, with a take-no-prisoners honesty that defines her to this day, bluntly described in her autobiography what she saw playing out in front of her in that room:

  When witnesses such as . . . Dalton Trumbo . . . were asked “Are you a member of the Communist Party?” and refused to answer, they were exercising their rights as defined in the Bill of Rights. They wouldn’t answer whether they were members of the Screen Writers’ Guild either. Political affiliation was not the business of the Committee . . . and Thomas was gavel happy. I couldn’t believe what was going on—that jerk sitting up there with his title had the power to put these men in jail!

  J. Parnell Thomas threw down the gauntlet to every witness who came before his committee, thundering:

  The Chairman: Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?!

  Mr. Trumbo: I believe I have the right to be confronted with any evidence which supports this question.

  What the arrogant Chairman hadn’t expected was a witness as verbally agile and combative as Dalton Trumbo:

  The Chairman: Oh. Well you would?

  Mr. Trumbo: Yes.

  The Chairman: Well you will, pretty soon. [Pounding gavel] The witness is excused. Impossible!

  Mr. Trumbo: This is the beginning . . .

  The Chairman: [Pounding gavel] Just a minute!

  Mr. Trumbo: . . . of an American concentration camp for writers!

  The Chairman: This is typical Communist tactics! This is typical Communist tactics! [Pounding gavel]

  That officious bastard Thomas whacked his gavel and Dalton Trumbo was dragged away.

  But those hearings were no joke. Dalton Trumbo and the other Unfriendly Ten literally lost their freedom. They would all be sent to jail for contempt of Congress.

  At this point in my life, I was still an up-and-coming young actor. Along with millions of Americans, I listened to highlights of the hearings on the radio. Still a new medium, television didn’t cover them. Just a month earlier, I had actually bought my first small set to watch the World Series, the first time it was ever broadcast on TV. Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers were playing the New York Yankees. Even on my tiny screen, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the grace and talent of this game-changing Negro rookie.

  Two years later, Jackie Robinson was also called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to testify about his association with controversial singer Paul Robeson. Of course, he had none. The only connection they had was that they were both black, which was enough for J. Parnell Thomas. It was the era of guilt by association.

  I wasn’t subpoenaed as a witness, or asked to join with Bacall, Bogart, and the others, because I wasn’t a big enough “name” to matter to the newspapers.

  At the time, I’d still only made one picture—The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

  My memory of that time has a different title: The Strange Life of Kirk Douglas. Fresh off the train from New York, I arrived in Hollywood in 1945 with very little awareness of the political controversies that were just starting to affect the movie business. I knew nothing about the first round of HUAC hearings held during the war, while I was overseas in the navy. Nor was I aware that both Robert Rossen, the screenwriter of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, as well as Lewis Milestone, its director, held strong political views that would later get them both in trouble.

  Hell, at this point, all I knew was that I was coming out to Hollywood to star in a movie. This is how little anyone told me before I left New York: I thought I’d been cast as the romantic lead in the picture, opposite Barbara Stanwyck.

  When I got off the train in Los Angeles, I was promptly informed by the studio rep that Mr. Van Heflin would be playing that part, not me. I had been cast in the third lead. All across the country, I’d been studying for the wrong part.

  On my first day of shooting, Paramount sent a limousine to pick me up and bring me to the set. I was flabbergasted. That was a big thrill for me. But when the driver pulled up to those big gates on Melrose Avenue, I was stunned to see angry picketers outside.

  It was only at that moment that I learned there was a labor strike going on at the studio. This was the latest (and it would turn out to be the last) in a series of strikes involving the major studios and the left-wing Conference of Studio Unions. The unions asked the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) to support the strike. But SAG, led by its president, George Murphy, and executive committee members Ronald Reagan and George Montgomery, refused to cooperate. They encouraged actors to cross the picket lines.

  No one had bothered to tell me about any of this before I got out there. It wasn’t until later that I learned what the strike was even about—protecting benefits for the set dressers.

  One of those picketing outside Paramount was Robert Rossen. The driver pointed him out to me—“That’s Bob Rossen, the writer.”

  I looked down at the script sitting next to me on the seat—Rossen’s name was on the cover. The first time I ever laid eyes on him, he was carrying a protest sign.

  Inside the studio, I got the next shock. My director, Lewis “Milly” Milestone, wasn’t even on the set. As a show of support for the strikers, he was spending the day in Oblath’s restaurant across the street. A substitute “director” would handle that day’s shooting.

  The first motion picture of my career and the director was literally out to lunch. Welcome to Hollywood, Kirk.

  Things were so intense that the producer, Hal Wallis, decided I should sleep at the studio, rather than risk being locked out. I slept in my dressing room for the next several nights, until the strike was resolved.

  All politics aside, my life would have been much healthier if that director, Lewis Milestone, had never come back. He was a nice guy, but he believed that actors should always do exactly what they were told.

  “So, Kirk, in this scene, I think that you should be smoking a cigarette.”

  “But, Mr. Milestone, I don’t smoke.”

  “That’s okay, kid, you’ll learn.”

  I shut up and did what I was told. Right after we finished the scene, I raced to my dressing room and threw up. Unfortunately, that was the only time I got sick from smoking. Milestone was right, I did learn. Two packs a day for forty years. Thanks, Milly.

  The film turned out all right, although Miss Stanwyck ignored me for the first two weeks of shooting. I got good notices as the third lead, and she eventually told me I’d done a good job. I told her that her compliment came “too late.” I was a cocky kid.

  Two years later, both Milestone and Rossen were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, at the same time that the Unfriendly Ten appeared. Lewis Milestone fled to Paris. Robert Rossen admitted his membership in the Communist Party.

  Both were blacklisted.

  I didn’t know it then, but my first movie was written by a card-carrying Communist. Looking back on it now, I couldn’t care less.

  I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I had arrived in Hollywood even five years earlier. Would I have been caught up in the middle of those fights? And if I had, would I have even had a career?

  Of course, many people in Hollywood cooperated fully with the HUAC investigations. Ronald Reagan was a friendly witness. So were other actors like Gary Cooper, Robert Montgomery, George Murphy, and Adolphe Menjou.

  Menjou told th
e Committee, “I am a witch hunter if the witches are Communists. I am a Red baiter. I would like to see them all back in Russia.”

  Funny thing about Adolphe Menjou: a decade later, when I hired him for a part in Paths of Glory, he was more than happy to take a paycheck from Bryna, my production company. I guess nobody told him that it was named after my Russian mother.

  The country was deeply frightened and divided, much as it is today. Anti-Semitism was still a big factor. The name “Kirk Douglas” got me work as an actor. The name I was born with—“Issur Danielovitch”—wouldn’t have gotten me through the door. Racial prejudice was still the accepted norm. Even though Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in baseball, President Truman’s decision to integrate the military was still a year away.

  But more than anything, it was the growing hysteria about Communism—the “Red Scare”—that shadowed life all across America. To many, it was seen as a real threat. Others believed it as just more fearmongering. But it was never far from our minds.

  The same year that I arrived in Hollywood—1945—Gerald L. K. Smith, the religious demagogue and founder of the America First Party, began publicly attacking the “alien-minded Russian Jews in Hollywood.”

  Cynically, Smith combined anti-Semitism with fear of Communism into one package. Anyone who was Jewish, anyone who was Russian, was a traitor.

  Did he mean me? I was a Jew of Russian heritage. My parents emigrated from Belarus. But they never saw themselves as anything but Americans. My mother, who could not read or write in English, taught me to love this country as much as she did. “America,” she would say, her voice filled with amazement. “Such a wonderful country!”

  I had enlisted in the navy after Pearl Harbor and served in the Pacific with pride. Now here was this vicious anti-Semite, Smith, essentially questioning my loyalty, as well as the patriotism of anyone in Hollywood who was of Jewish or Russian descent.

  One month after Dalton Trumbo (who, for the record, was not Jewish) appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee, a group of four dozen top motion picture executives and distributors met privately for two days at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.