I Am Spartacus! Read online

  “He’s right,” Eddie said angrily. “Tony should have asked us before he took Peter out to Dalton’s house. That wasn’t smart. Ever since he got here Peter’s been so far up Tony’s ass he could draw a map of his colon.”

  “Well, he did draw a sketch when was he was at Dalton’s house,” I said, laughing. “He showed it to Olivier this morning. Larry described it to me—it’s a picture of Laughton with a dagger in his back. Peter told him, ‘This is what I’m going to do to Charles.’ Larry thought it was hysterical.”

  “So Olivier and Laughton really don’t get along at all?” asked Eddie, concerned at the prospect of these two titanic talents going to war with each other on the set of Spartacus.

  I got up to leave. “Olivier thinks Laughton is jealous of him. Larry actually likes Charles, but Charles is a perpetual victim. He thinks everyone is always out to make him look bad. And Peter is playing the diplomat between them.”

  “Yeah,” said Eddie, darkly. “The diplomat with the dagger. What are your plans this weekend?”

  I looked back at Eddie, grinning. “What the hell do you think? Now I have to take Larry over to meet Trumbo too. He doesn’t want Peter to be the only one in the cast with a direct line to ‘Sam Jackson.’”

  On Sunday afternoon, I picked up Olivier. He was staying in Hollywood with Roger Furse, the British production and costume designer who, on Larry’s recommendation, we’d hired for Spartacus. Roger and his wife, Inez, were providing Larry with the emotional support he needed. Larry and Vivien were heading toward their inevitable breakup. Larry’s melancholy was palpable. If anything, he appeared even more distracted than he was when we were making The Devil’s Disciple over the summer. And that had been a relatively brief shoot.

  I smiled at him as he got into my car. Each of us was wearing sunglasses against the harsh glare of the Southern California sky. “Well, Larry, at least it’s a helluva lot warmer here than London,” I said.

  “I got a letter from Joan in yesterday’s post. She tells me it’s been raining regularly there, although as yet there has been no snow.”

  Shortly before leaving England, Larry began a romance with a young British actress, Joan Plowright. Over lunch, Larry told me he’d been teaching himself to type so that he could write to her every day.

  “How’s the typing coming?” I asked, as I navigated onto the freeway.

  “Splendidly,” he replied, though his tone belied the word. “A, S, D, F, G . . .”

  “L, K, J, H,” I replied, finishing the typing lesson mantra that I’d learned long ago back in Amsterdam. I looked over at Larry, grinning.

  “If this acting thing doesn’t work out for us, perhaps we can fall back on our secretarial skills.” Larry smiled wanly as he said this. He was still tremendously distracted, thinking of home and the complicated life he’d left on hold.

  I was beginning to worry about Larry’s ability to focus on Spartacus—a six-month commitment that would keep him apart from his new love, while still legally bound to Vivien. Consummate professional that he was, Larry successfully concealed his troubles from everybody at work. He tried to maintain a brave face with me too, but his eyes revealed a sadness that he probably preferred to hide.

  I was really hoping that an enjoyable afternoon spent with “Sam Jackson” would provide Larry with a much-needed distraction from his personal problems. Dalton, true to Trumbo form, didn’t disappoint.

  “Come in, gentlemen! Come in!” As if he were the maître d’ of the Brown Derby, our host ushered us in to his small, book-lined living room with a sweeping gesture.

  As we sat down, Dalton began bustling around behind the bar. His glass of bourbon was already half empty. I glanced at my watch—2:00 p.m. This was going to be a very lively Sunday.

  “What will you have to drink? Larry? Kirk?”

  “Vodka on the rocks,” I said.

  “Sam, if that’s bourbon you’re drinking, I’ll have a bit of that,” said Larry.

  “It is, and you will have more than a bit. By the way, my friends call me ‘Dalton’ or ‘Trumbo.’ Either will do better than ‘Sam,’” he said, winking as he poured.

  “Thank you very much, Dalton,” grinned Larry, accepting a huge tumbler of bourbon.

  “To Spartacus!” shouted Trumbo, raising his drink high into the omnipresent cloud of cigarette smoke that hovered above him. We clinked glasses loudly and settled in for a long afternoon of hazy good fellowship.

  After much talk about our respective families, the conversation turned to the elephant who wasn’t in the room, Charles Laughton. He and his wife, Elsa Lanchester, were on a six-week holiday in Hawaii. Charles had stopped in briefly at the studio for his wardrobe fitting right before they departed.

  “I like Charles,” said Dalton, “though he prefers Shakespeare.”

  Larry and I roared.

  Larry said, “We’re both at Stratford this season. I’m doing Coriolanus and he’s doing Lear. He’s asked me to direct him.”

  “Really?” I was surprised.

  “Yes,” said Larry, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He sipped his drink. “I refused, largely because it would have meant taking the place of a friend who had already accepted the position. I think Charles was secretly hoping I would say no, so that he could take personal offense.”

  “Now that sounds like Laughton,” said Trumbo, pouring himself another drink. His third? I’d already lost count. “We discussed the script and it went rather poorly. His sighs and grunts and soft reproaches somewhat unhinge me at close quarters. I think I will try to keep a little real estate between us from now on.”

  Trumbo was as gifted a raconteur as he was a writer. I looked at Olivier, again red-faced with laughter at this spot-on description of Laughton. A quick thought flashed through my head: I hope Larry has this much fun for the run of the picture. He deserves it.

  Abruptly, Larry stopped laughing. Staring off into the middle distance, he said softly, “It’s queer. He’s envious of me, but I’m not his equal.”

  Dalton and I exchanged glances.

  “I’m nowhere near up to him intellectually. I never really feel on the same level as he.” He was musing aloud now, more to himself than to us.

  Larry fell silent for a moment, reflecting on the still-painful memory. Carefully, he roused himself to his feet. “Where’s the loo?”

  Dalton pointed down the hallway and Larry, somewhat unsteadily, ambled off.

  I walked over to the bar and poured myself another drink. “I told him on the way over here that we were seriously thinking of opening the picture in the desert, not in flashback from Crassus’ point of view. He took it rather well. I think he’s pleased with how you’ve beefed up his part.”

  “He may be pleased,” observed Dalton, drily, “but Charles and Peter will see it as a Kirk-Larry coup.”

  I heard Larry coming back down the hall. “That’s next month’s problem. Tony Mann can play goodwill ambassador once we start shooting. I’m retiring.”

  “You’re retiring?” Larry asked quizzically.

  “From sobriety,” I said, raising my glass toward Larry, as Dalton handed him a fresh bourbon.

  “Eddie Lewis certainly had me fooled about the authorship of your fine work,” said Larry, accepting the drink.

  “No worse than what your beloved Bard did to that poor bastard Bacon,” replied Trumbo.

  Olivier chuckled. “Touché,” he said. “Odd that you should mention the Bard. Only just now I was thinking about Shakespeare with regard to this fellow Crassus. You’ve written him brilliantly, Dalton. I just wonder . . .”

  Here we go, I thought.

  “I just wonder,” repeated Olivier, draining his glass, which Trumbo moved quickly to refill, “if you see him as a hero or a villain? Or, perhaps, both?”

  I answered for Dalton. “He sees himself as a hero, Larry. Crassus passionately loves Rome and is fighting to protect her from what he believes is a threat to her very existence. In his eyes, that makes him
heroic.”

  Larry considered this thoughtfully for a moment, and Dalton filled the silence by asking, “Who’s hungry? Cleo has dinner on the grill.” I looked again at my watch . . . six-thirty. My God, we had been talking for over four hours.

  We headed toward the rear of the house. The unmistakable aroma of sizzling steaks wafted toward us as we approached the backyard. Larry was walking arm in arm with Dalton, his new brother in bourbon.

  “Trumbo, indeed, I believe you are the Bard! I had been thinking of playing Crassus with just a touch of the flirting femininity of Richard III and, by God, that new homosexual scene of yours has inspired me! That’s exactly how I shall play him!”

  The scene Larry was talking about was a risky one. It involved his character attempting to seduce his “body slave,” played by Tony Curtis. We were going to have a tough time getting it by the censors, but I liked it.

  As we walked outside, I wondered what Dalton’s wife, Cleo, would think of Larry’s surprising declaration, but she didn’t even look up from the grill. By now she was inured to the steady stream of outrageous comments that were her husband’s stock-in-trade. Why should his friends be any different?

  “How do you boys like your steaks?”

  The remainder of the evening was a blur of good food and tales that grew taller with each passing drink. Finally, around nine-thirty, we poured ourselves back into the car. “Home, James!” Larry said grandly, now completely in his cups.

  Ten days later, our Spartacus army was finally on the march. The troop movements were massive. Planes, cars, buses, and trucks filled with actors, technicians, equipment handlers, and extras were dispatched in continuous waves to our base camp in Death Valley.

  At 7:15 a.m., on Monday, January 26, a black Lincoln town car pulled up in front of our new two-story, five-bedroom home at 707 North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. My bags had been packed for days. Anne was awake, as was our three-year-old, Peter. Eric, the baby, was asleep in his crib. I leaned in and kissed him. Peter clutched my ankles. “Daddy, stay!”

  I swept him up in my arms and hugged him. “Daddy has to go to work. I’ll be back soon.” Passing him to Anne, I kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll call you tonight, honey.”

  “Good luck, darling.” She was stoic. Anne understood this was only the first of many trips I’d be making for Spartacus. Neither of us would have guessed that before this film was finished, our now-seven-month-old baby would be talking in complete sentences.

  I arrived at the Furnace Inn Ranch, our location headquarters, shortly before noon. As I was checking in, I ran into Peter Ustinov and Tony Mann in the lobby. They were chatting and laughing together as I approached. Eddie was right; they’d already gotten real friendly. Maybe too friendly.

  Ustinov said, “I was just telling Tony about my encounter this morning with one of the local residents. She saw all the crew activity and came over to me with a quizzical expression on her face.”

  Peter, a superb mimic, immediately switched into a high-pitched woman’s voice.

  “Excuuuse me, Mr. Ustinov,” he said in an uncanny imitation of a female American tourist, “are you here making a motion picture?”

  “Yes, madam. Indeed we are.” This was said in his urbane British accent.

  “What is the name of this picture going to be?”

  “Spartacus.”

  “Spartacle? That’s a funny name for a major picture.”

  Tony Mann doubled over in laughter. He was completely enthralled by Ustinov. Over the next few weeks, I would discover how in thrall to him he was.

  The first week went very well. We shot the opening scene in the mine where Spartacus stops working to help a fellow slave who’s collapsed in the grueling heat. Treating him like a rabid dog, the Romans beat him savagely until he snaps—locking his jaw on a soldier’s ankle and only letting go after he is beaten into unconsciousness.

  The things I had to do to make a living.

  Tony seemed to have everything well in hand; the rushes looked good. We had some disagreement over how animalistic Spartacus should be in resisting the Romans, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary when starting a new picture. Universal wanted a director who could make this huge train run on time. It seemed they were right about Tony.

  Things were running smoothly.

  Then we moved to the gladiator school run by Peter Ustinov’s character, Lentulus Batiatus—and the wheels came off the train.

  Ustinov’s influence on the set was as outsized as his performance—a performance he was now improvising (if not improving) in almost every take. The problem wasn’t Peter. Every actor, myself included, instinctively tries to interpret a part to his best advantage. Sometimes that helps a picture. Sometimes it doesn’t. It’s the director’s job to know when and how to rein in that instinct.

  Peter told Eddie that he was “happy to help Tony into the saddle any time he was getting ready for a shot.” Of course he was. Tony was letting him run wild. The rushes from the second week couldn’t have been more different from the first. In the scene with the slave girls, Peter’s character throws them violently into their cell, then grabs one by the throat for having rebuffed his advances. Little of this was in the script. Worse, it was broad and over the top.

  It soon became clear that Tony Mann had no interest in taking the reins back from Peter. He seemed overwhelmed by the enormity of the entire picture.

  We had a problem. By the beginning of the third week, Universal knew it too. They were getting regular reports about Mann’s loss of control. We were running behind schedule, and the budget had now crept north of $6 million.

  By Thursday, February 12, my “best friend,” Universal production chief Ed Muhl, was in a panic.

  “Kirk, you have to do something. This guy isn’t cutting it. We can’t afford to let this picture get away from us.”

  “Us? Us?! You guys were the ones who thought Tony was right for this picture. I never thought he was the right guy, but I went along with it. And now we can’t afford to let this picture get away from us?”

  “Now, Kirk . . .” Muhl began.

  “What do you want me to do, Ed?”

  There was a momentary silence. “You have to fire him.”

  Now I was silent. I knew he was right, but I’ve never enjoyed firing people. I’m no Donald Trump; I get no pleasure from it. And I liked Tony. He was a genuinely decent guy who was in over his head. That wasn’t a capital crime, but apparently I was expected to be his executioner.

  “Kirk, are you still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I said tersely. “We may have to shut down for a week or two until I can find another director, but I’ll do it.”

  There was relief in Muhl’s voice. “Thanks, Kirk. I really . . .”

  “But listen to me carefully, Ed. This time I’m picking the director. You got that? Whoever he is, he’s going to be my choice. Agreed?”

  More silence. Reluctantly, Muhl said, “Agreed.”

  That night, I got very little sleep. It was almost as if I was the condemned man waiting for the sun to come up. When it finally did, I took a long shower and tried to clear my head. After I toweled off, I threw on my robe and walked to the front door to grab the morning paper. On the porch next to it was an envelope containing that day’s script pages and the call sheet, the list of times we were due on the set. I glanced at the sheet: “Eleventh Day of Shooting—Friday, February 13, 1959.”

  Friday the thirteenth! Poor Tony.

  He took it better than I could have hoped. He actually seemed relieved. Tony didn’t say it, but I had the feeling he’d been looking for a graceful way out on his own. I told him that I owed him a movie and we’d honor his $75,000 contract in full. We agreed that his departure would be by mutual consent over “creative differences.” Standard Hollywood-speak for a no-fault divorce.

  Now, where in the hell was I going to find another director?

  Woody Strode as Draba moving in for the kill. Why is Stanley Kubrick sitting
between us?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “You may not be an animal, Spartacus . . . but this sorry show gives me very little hope that you’ll ever be a man.”

  —Charles McGraw as Marcellus

  “ARE YOU IN, STANLEY?”

  Marty Ritt glared at the big pile of cash in the pot. With a $500 buy-in and seven players, there was $3,500 on the green velvet poker table. After putting in his ante, Kubrick left the room to take a phone call—a long call. Now he was holding up the Friday night game.

  “Stanley! Get your ass back here. I’m down three grand,” said Ritt.

  The men sitting around the poker table looked up as the boyish director walked slowly back from the kitchen. He had a strange expression on his normally impassive face.

  “Who was it, Stan?” asked Jimmy Harris, Kubrick’s producing partner.

  “Kirk Douglas.”

  Ritt scowled. “What do you want with that sonofabitch? He cost me my last picture.”

  “He just fired Tony Mann,” said Kubrick, ignoring Ritt’s comment. “He wants me for Spartacus. Tomorrow.”

  “Jesus,” said Jimmy Harris, folding his cards. The poker game came to an abrupt end. “Are you sure you want to work with him again?”

  “Well, he’s better than Marlon. At least he makes up his mind,” replied Kubrick. After six months of trying to get a western called One-Eyed Jacks off the ground, the mercurial Brando let Kubrick go and decided to direct it himself. That meant Stanley was available to take over Spartacus.

  “What did you tell him?” asked Harris.

  “For a hundred and fifty grand? I said, ‘Get me the script.’ It’s being messengered over to my house right now.”

  “That sonofabitch,” said Ritt, putting away the poker chips. “First he costs me my picture and now I’m out another three grand. Good luck to you, Stanley. You’ll need it.”

  Later, one of the other players in the game relayed that whole exchange to me. I laughed because I’d had virtually the same conversation with Eddie Lewis after I told him I offered the job to Stanley. He thought I was crazy to work with him again.