I Am Spartacus! Read online

  Still, I liked the guy. Even if he did exploit my kids.

  I never let politics get in the way of a friendship. John Wayne and I couldn’t have been more different politically. He was a die-hard Republican. I’ve always been a strong Democrat—but I don’t hate Republicans. I’ve never been a Communist, but I don’t hate them either. I think that’s what America is about.

  When John Wayne died, his son called and told me, “My father really loved you.” I was very moved.

  Our own son, Peter Douglas, was born on November 23, 1955. His father was deeply immersed in playing the part of Van Gogh. Peter’s middle name could only be Vincent.

  Over the next year, two unrelated events occurred that would have a lasting impact on my life and career. At the time, I had no clue about their significance to me.

  The first happened in faraway Russia, land of my forebears.

  Joseph Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for a dozen years. When he died in 1953, his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, began to explore the truth about Stalin’s reign of terror. In February of 1956, Khrushchev issued a secret document called “On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences.” It detailed Stalin’s tyrannical behavior, including his systematic persecution of Russia’s Jews.

  Howard Fast, recipient of the 1953 Stalin Peace Prize, was horrified by these revelations. To the delight of American right-wingers, he openly broke with the Communist Party. I didn’t know it then, but Fast’s highly visible rehabilitation as a “good American” now meant that our paths would cross in a meaningful way. But not quite yet.

  The second event that changed my life took place much closer to home than Moscow. Sometime in the summer of 1956, Anne and I saw a movie. It was a little black-and-white film, obviously made on a small budget. It starred Sterling Hayden and was the story of a man who robs a racetrack. What was startling about it was the way it was shot. You felt like you were right there, in the middle of the action.

  I watched the credits carefully. “Written and Directed by Stanley Kubrick.”

  I wanted to meet the guy. I called his agent, Ronnie Lubin.

  “Ronnie, tell me about Stanley Kubrick.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How old is this guy?”

  “He’s twenty-eight.”

  “Twenty-eight?”

  “Well, almost.”

  “He’s a talented kid. Have him come see me, Ronnie.”

  I hung up the phone and looked over at Eddie Lewis, who had been listening to my end of the conversation. Eddie had proven to be a big asset to Bryna. Of course, I put him on a salary right from the start. (Our running joke was, “If I don’t pay you, how can I fire you?”)

  “Eddie,” I said, “this may be the guy. Let’s see what else he’s got.”

  Our first meeting was cordial. Stanley’s demeanor was always calm, impassive. We were both Jews from New York, but this was no Walter Matthau. You could never call him warm.

  What I remember most about Kubrick was his eyes. He looked like a basset hound, with those big, sad pouches. What I didn’t understand at that first meeting was that his sleepy appearance belied a man who was always awake, always thinking.

  “So, what have you guys got going?” I asked. His business partner, Jimmy Harris, was also in the meeting.

  Stanley responded with a question of his own. “Have you ever read a book called Paths of Glory?”

  I shook my head.

  He handed me a script with that title. The cover was unusual. It was a photograph of a group of young men in the woods, dressed up in what appeared to be World War I military uniforms.

  “Are these French soldiers?” I asked.

  “They’re actors, dressed up to look like French soldiers,” replied Stanley. With a sly smile, he added, “I shot that photo.”

  I took it home and read it that night. It knocked me out.

  Stanley was my first call the next morning.

  “You wrote this?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he answered, calm as always. “With Jim Thompson and Calder Willingham.”

  “Stanley, I love this picture! We are going to make it! It will never make a nickel, but we have to make it!”

  And that was how Stanley Kubrick came into my life.

  Paths of Glory was set to shoot in the spring of 1957. My company and I had already committed to a big-budget epic called The Vikings, with Richard Fleischer directing. The plan was now to shoot them back-to-back at the same studio in Germany, thereby saving on cost.

  While Howard Fast was recanting and Stanley Kubrick was turning twenty-eight, Dalton Trumbo was about to earn another Oscar. Yet he still couldn’t claim it in his own name.

  By this time, Trumbo had moved his family back to the United States. They’d found a small house in the Los Angeles suburb of Highland Park, about twenty minutes east of Hollywood. He was still writing constantly, still using real people as “fronts” to sell his work. He invented enough pseudonyms to fill an address book. The different names helped Trumbo remember which of his many projects a producer might be calling him about. These noms de plume included “Marcel Klauber,” “Ben L. Perry,” and a married couple, “James and Dorothy Bonham.”

  The “Bonhams” were how Trumbo collected his money. Dozens of people endorsed checks over to “Jim” or “Dorothy” in order to preserve Dalton’s anonymity.

  Even though the now-disgraced Senator McCarthy drank himself to death by the end of 1957, these ridiculous deceptions were still necessary to protect people’s lives and livelihoods. What Brutus said of Caesar was also true of Joe McCarthy: “The evil that men do lives after them . . .”

  Inspired by his time in Mexico, Dalton Trumbo wrote a story, “The Boy and the Bull.” It became a feature film called The Brave One. The screen credit for Original Story was given to “Robert Rich,” Dalton’s latest alter ego.

  This proved particularly embarrassing to Hollywood when “Robert Rich” actually won the Academy Award. On the night that Roman Holiday took the prize, a real person—Ian McLellan Hunter—could go up and claim the statue (even though he felt terrible doing it). When The Brave One was named the winner, there was no Robert Rich in the house.

  On the night of the ceremony in 1957, I was thousands of miles away in Germany. We had just started shooting Paths of Glory. My performance in Lust for Life had earned me a Best Actor nomination. I was told I was the favorite to win.

  Not so. The photographers in my hotel lobby scattered quickly when word arrived that Yul Brynner had won for The King and I.

  I did, however, win something that night when, after all the hoopla was over, I got a knock on my hotel room door. When I answered, a man handed me a package. I opened it. There was an Oscar inside! Had the news somehow been wrong?

  Then I read the inscription, “To Daddy, who rates an Oscar with us always. Stolz and Peter.”

  “Stolz” was Anne. It’s what I call her, the German word for “proud.” She had worked through the night to make this happen—to make sure I knew how much I was appreciated by the people who truly mattered to me.

  I had just received an “Oscar” that I didn’t win. But Dalton Trumbo, watching on television, saw an award that he deserved, an award that he had won, go unclaimed. All because his name couldn’t be spoken out loud in public.

  That was finally going to change. I was about to meet a man named “Sam Jackson.”

  Charles White

  No publishing house would touch Howard Fast’s novel Spartacus because he was an avowed Communist. He published it himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You don’t want to know my name.

  I don’t want to know your name.”

  —Woody Strode as Draba

  I’VE ALWAYS HATED DESKS.

  They symbolize a stern authority figure judging me from on high. Sizing me up. Appraising me. Of course, I’m never good enough—“Sorry, Kirk, you’re not right for the part.”

  Whatever the source of my p
hobia, it’s stayed with me all my life. Today, whenever I go into the Bryna Company, I pull up a chair next to my assistant’s desk. She places my correspondence at the corner of her desk, which is my space.

  The big office down the hall, the one that does have a large desk in it, belongs to Anne, the president of Bryna. I love watching my wife sit behind it with confidence and command.

  In the early years of Bryna, I had a big desk. I thought that I needed to prove I was the boss, to show everybody I was in charge. In those days, Anne was still at home taking care of our small child. Peter was just two. And soon we had another one on the way. Anne wouldn’t be able to take over the reins of the company for a number of years. By the way, short of marrying her, making Anne president of my company is the smartest decision I’ve ever made.

  My forty-first birthday—Monday, December 9, 1957. I was whistling when I walked into Bryna that morning.

  “Happy birthday, Kirk!” came the greetings as I passed through the office. When I got to my desk, a few wrapped gifts were already waiting for me, along with an ornate, handwritten card from my mother.

  I sat down in my “big boss” chair. What a lucky guy. The Vikings was in postproduction and looking great. Arthur Krim, the president of United Artists, would be releasing it in the spring. They were pushing me hard for another big Bryna project, perhaps even another historical epic.

  I picked up the phone and called my mother in upstate New York to thank her for my card. She loved hearing my voice over the phone, but worried about how expensive the call was.

  “Hi, Ma!”

  “Issur, my birthday boy. Are you warm enough?”

  “Ma, it’s seventy degrees here. It’s not Albany. I’m in California.”

  No snow in the winter! It must have seemed like a miracle to her. She had never been to California. I could never get her on an airplane.

  “You look so thin in your last picture. I’ll send you some borscht.”

  “Ma, don’t send me borscht.”

  “You don’t like my borscht?”

  “Ma, there’s no market for fat actors.”

  As I was saying good-bye to my mother, I heard something land with a loud thud on my desk. I swiveled around in my chair, expecting another gift.

  Instead, it was a book.

  Eddie Lewis looked back as he walked out of the office. “Happy birthday, Kirk. There’s your next project.”

  I picked it up. Spartacus, by Howard Fast. Heavy. I opened it to the end—363 pages.

  I knew only some basic facts about the legend of Spartacus who lived before Christ was born and led a slave rebellion against the Roman Empire. I took the book home with me. It kept me up half the night, long after Anne had fallen asleep.

  In the morning, I asked Eddie what it would cost to option the book. I was sure it would be expensive—blacklist or not, Howard Fast’s novels had sold millions of copies—but I wanted it.

  “One hundred dollars,” he said, smiling slightly.

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No, I’m not,” he said, plainly serious now. “But there’s a catch. Fast wants to write the screenplay himself.”

  That could be a problem. Good authors are notoriously bad screenwriters. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis—all failed to master the craft. I didn’t know Howard Fast. Maybe he would be the exception. I’d heard him described as “brilliant.” Only later would I discover that the description originated with him.

  The token option was not the risk. It would cost many thousands more to use Fast as the writer. That was the real gamble. But United Artists was begging me for another big picture. They’d back my play.

  “Eddie, make the deal. We can spare the hundred dollars.” I was smug.

  As 1958 began, things looked really good for me.

  The Vikings would hit theaters in June as a big summer picture.

  I was set to star in two other movies, Last Train from Gun Hill, a John Sturges western costarring Tony Quinn, and The Devil’s Disciple, a Revolutionary War story for Burt Lancaster’s company. Burt and I would share billing with Sir Laurence Olivier.

  Kirk Douglas the actor was doing just fine.

  But Kirk Douglas the businessman had problems.

  My smug self-assurance that Arthur Krim and United Artists would “back my play” on Spartacus was instantly deflated when I received this surprising wire from Arthur on January 13:

  DEAR KIRK: “SPARTACUS” COVERS THE SAME STORY AS “THE GLADIATORS” BY KOESTLER. WE ARE ALREADY COMMITTED TO “THE GLADIATORS” WITH YUL BRYNNER TO BE DIRECTED BY MARTY RITT WHICH MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO INTEREST OURSELVES IN “SPARTACUS.” BEST—ARTHUR

  While I was still reeling from the Spartacus news, I went home that night to Anne. She was four months pregnant with our second child, but that hardly explained the growing tension between us.

  Anne was the most loving and loyal partner any man could be blessed to have. What she was not, however, was naive. She was tough and brutally honest about people, especially about one in particular: Sam Norton. She didn’t trust the way he handled my business affairs, even though he was also my best friend. I’d originally met him back in the hallways of Famous Artist Agency, when I was cooling my heels waiting for an audience with the big boss, Charlie Feldman. Sam was a junior guy in the agency, so he had time to shoot the breeze with a young actor. Like me, he was a physical guy—we had both done some wrestling. One day I pinned him to the floor of his office and our friendship was born.

  Ten years later, he had become like family to me. I trusted Sam like the brother I never had, like the father I could never count on.

  He handled everything—all my personal accounts and investments, as well as the Bryna Company. He got a 10 percent commission on all my deals, and his law firm got big fees for handling my business. I got the peace of mind of never having to worry about money. When I needed anything, Sam sent it to me.

  Right from the day we were married, Anne had her doubts about Sam. Minutes before we exchanged vows, he put a prenuptial agreement in front of her and told her to sign it. I explained that Sam was just trying to protect me, but the high-handed way he’d done it had raised Anne’s suspicions from that day forward.

  Four years later, Anne was not only worried about me, she was concerned about the financial security of our growing family.

  “If something happens to you, what happens to us?”

  “Anne, for Chrissakes, I’ve told you a hundred times. Sam will take care of you. He’s made me a millionaire. Isn’t that enough?!”

  Anne looked at me impassively. Her voice was even, but firm. “Kirk, if you’re a millionaire, where is all the money? He says you have got so many investments—property, petroleum. Have you ever seen one oil well?”

  I stormed out of the room. More and more, that was the way these arguments ended. At a deeper level, she was also saying that she didn’t trust my judgment. That was hard for me to take.

  Back at the office, the news on Spartacus went from bad to worse. Marty Ritt, the director of The Gladiators, was furious that we were poaching on what he considered his historical turf. He told Eddie Lewis that they were way ahead of us with script, location scouting, and casting. Not only did they have Yul Brynner, they’d also signed Tony Quinn. I made a quick call to Tony and he confirmed this was true.

  Eddie Lewis and I discussed the possibility of combining the two projects. Marty Ritt would direct. Yul and I would costar. We floated the idea and Marty shot it down quickly: “No way. Yul won’t work with Kirk. He hates him.”

  Marty didn’t dare say this to me directly, because it wasn’t true. Yul and I went on to make two pictures together. And, when he and Frank Sinatra were on the outs, Yul came and stayed with me and Anne in Palm Springs. That sure is a funny way to “hate” a guy.

  Another surprise. We found out that United Artists had also trademarked several possible names for their Gladiators project, including Spartacus. Now we owned the rights t
o a book, but not the title!

  There’s always been a certain part of my personality that kicks in when people tell me I can’t do something. “You can’t make Spartacus.” “You can’t trust Sam Norton.”

  I’d had enough of being told “You can’t.”

  The last straw came with an ad in Daily Variety—a full-page picture of Yul Brynner looking ferocious in a rented Spartacus costume. “The Gladiators—next from United Artists!” was emblazoned across the photo.

  In that moment, I realized they were bluffing. They hadn’t shot a frame of film. The word around town was that The Gladiators had a budget of $5.5 million. My anger turned to determination.

  I called their bluff. I sent Arthur Krim another wire:

  ARTHUR: WE ARE SPENDING FIVE MILLION FIVE HUNDRED AND TWO DOLLARS ON SPARTACUS.

  YOUR MOVE, KIRK.

  I sent the smart-alecky wire, but I didn’t feel so brave. I’m a pretty good actor and I played the role of someone who was confident and sure. But underneath I was afraid and wondered what I was getting myself into.

  As I sit here today writing this, I realize I’ve grown more conservative with age. I don’t mean that in a political sense. I mean that I’m less impulsive now, less likely to take a foolhardy risk. When I was making Spartacus, I was young, reckless. I insisted that I do all my own stunts. Now I have two new knees and a bad back. Was it worth it? With age you think differently.

  Howard Fast began working on the script in New Jersey, and we went around Hollywood looking for a studio.

  We were running a race with The Gladiators. It felt like they had a chariot with a full team of horses, while I was chasing after them on foot, hoping to keep up.

  Everywhere I went, they had been there first. Paramount. MGM. Columbia. Two movies about Spartacus? Forget it. It seemed United Artists’ bluff had worked. The race was over and Yul Brynner’s picture had won.

  I went to see my new agent, Lew Wasserman. Lew was the head of MCA, the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood. Their client list read like a Who’s Who of Hollywood—Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, as well as newer stars like Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.