Philip Rubenstein
I’m Spartacus! The Making of an Epic
Philip Rubenstein - I’m Spartacus! The Making of an Epic
- So welcome everyone. Welcome back once again. Your midweek dose of Lockdown University. And today we’re talking about the making of the movie “Spartacus.” And I’m going to start with a quote. “I look back at ‘Spartacus’ today, more than 50 years after the fact, and I’m amazed that it ever happened at all. Everything was against us, the McCarthy era of politics, competition with another picture, everything.” And that’s Kirk Douglas, who was the star and the producer of “Spartacus” writing in 2012. And I mean, if anything, he’s underplaying the facts. When you read about the making of “Spartacus,” and when you delve into it, it’s just one calamity after another. And it feels like it should be one of those cautionary tales that is used in film schools to explain to all the students how never to make a movie. I mean, let’s start with all the firings, right? I mean, the odd firing on a movie set is not unusual, right? But this wasn’t the odd firing. The director, Anthony Mann, is fired after a week. The original screenwriter, Howard Fast, who wrote the novel on which the movie is based, they get rid of him even before the movie has started. And the first leading lady who plays Varinia, a German actress called Sabine Bethmann, she’s fired and then she’s later replaced by Jean Simmons. The producers also have to contend with a rival project to make a film called “Spartacus,” or rather a film called “The Gladiators” about Spartacus, because people are interested now in this story, United Artists have signed up none other than Yul Brynner to play the leading role, to be Spartacus. And for about three months, it’s touch and go as to whether or not the Kirk Douglas project is going to make it, or the United Artists project is going to make it.
And it’s only because Kirk Douglas signs up a screenwriter, and gets him to write the first draught in two weeks, which he can wave in front of United Artists, that he gets them to back down. The production went horrifically over time and over budget. I mean, it was meant to be a few months filming. That was all. And the cost was absolute maximum tops, $4 million. And in the end, it’s over two years in the making, and the cost, I mean, horrific overrun, it’s $13 million. That’s 4 million budget and 13 actual. You’ve also, I mean, if you’ve seen the movie, you know, relatively recently, you remember there’s a kind of a weird mishmash of accents and acting style. You know, you’ve got everything from the classic, classical Shakespearean of Lawrence Olivier to the Bronx courtesy of Tony Curtis. And then, I mean, then, right? You’ve got the personal conflicts. Kirk Douglas describes the making of the movie as “egos clashing like swords.” Olivier and Charles Laughton hated each other. There was a kind of an animal dislike between them. Kirk Douglas repeatedly clashes with his own director, and often on set in front of everyone. And the director and writer are perpetually at each other’s throats. Peter Ustinov, who’s one of the stars, he describes the set as akin to a Balkan government in the good old days. The movie is also, I mean, it’s plagued with accidents. First of all, you’ve got Woody, you’ve got, oops, let’s just get this up. You’ve got Woody Strode, who plays a gladiator. He plays Draba the gladiator. And there’s a big fight sequence that we’re going to see later with Kirk Douglas. And Woody Strode kicks Kirk Douglas so hard that he almost breaks his ribs. Now in this scene, this is a scene with Charles McGraw, and you can see, I mean, he’s playing Marcellus, who’s the cruel slave captain.
And when the revolt starts, Kirk Douglas turns on him and he forces his head, as you can see, into a vat of soup, except that while he’s actually doing this, he smashes Charles McGraw, the actor’s head, so hard on the side of the vat that he actually breaks his jaw. And McGraw is now out of action for weeks on end. Gene Simmons, who I just mentioned, she requires significant surgery halfway through shooting, So she’s bedridden for six weeks at a crucial time of filming, Kirk Douglas himself got so exhausted at one point that he gets the flu, and he’s also bedridden for 10 days. And it was said of the daily call shoot, that at times it resembled an accident list at an emergency ward in a hospital. And to top it all, you’ve got a number of people outside the production who were doing their very best to either destroy or, at best, belittle the film, even before it gets out of the gate. You’ve got, because the screenwriter is on the Hollywood blacklist, you’ve got a combination of the studio who are embarrassed, and trying to damp everything down. You’ve got the sensor who’s ordering multiple cuts, and you’ve got one of the most influential critics in Hollywood at the time who’s trying to effectively kill the project. So, this is not a happy start. So with all these feuds, and clashes, and accidents, and overruns, you know, I mean your basic production nightmare, the real question is, how did the film “Spartacus” all go so right? Because this is a picture that ended up winning four Oscars.
And yes, it overspent 13 million, but it grossed $60 million, and it became the highest grossing movie of 1960. And even today, 70 years on, it’s still one of the great triumphs of cinema, and it has some of the most iconic cinematic scenes ever filmed. So, let’s pause and let’s start from the beginning. And for those of you who haven’t seen “Spartacus” for a while, let’s remind ourselves of the basic plot. And actually let’s do it through the prism of the historical Spartacus, because the film is based on a real historical figure, and a real historical slave revolt. That’s a depiction by the way, in the right hand corner, of Spartacus in stone by a French sculptor in the 18th century. Spartacus, we know, we don’t know that much about him, but we know from Plutarch and a couple of other Roman historians, he’s born around a hundred BCE, and he’s a Thracian. So you can see that Thrace is off to the right of our map, and to Thrace is in the Balkans, it in modern day terms, it’s Bulgaria, bits of Greece, and bits of Turkey. So that’s really where Thrace is. And the Romans invade Thrace, and Spartacus is enslaved by them. And he’s bought by a character called Batiatus, who runs a gladiator school, and trains him as a gladiator. We know that he’s one of a small number of leaders of a slave revolt in or around the year 70 BCE. And this revolt lasts a year, and it’s become known to classical historians as the Third Servile War. And Spartacus and his army, and his fellow leaders over the course of that year, inflict two crushing defeat on the might of Rome. First of all, they take an unfortified Roman camp by surprise, and attack it and destroy it. And second of all, they defeat them in battle. And it’s owing to these successes that more and more slaves start flocking to Spartacus and his forces, and start to swell their ranks to several thousand.
No one’s really sure, and certainly the historians aren’t really sure of Spartacus’s motives at this point. He may be trying to escape Rome just by taking his army up to the north, or he may be marching on Rome itself. I mean, that was certainly one of the fears of the Roman nobility, that this uprising was going to lead, possibly, to the upturning of the Roman Republic. And so in their fright, the Senate decides to charge Marcus Licinius Crassus, who’s the wealthiest man in Rome at this point, I mean, you’ll have heard the expression rich as Cressus, or richest Crassus. It’s the same guy, it’s the same Crassus. And he’s charged to end the rebellion. He’s put in charge of eight legions, which is 40,000 trained Roman soldiers. And he’s utterly ruthless. He reintroduces the idea of decimation. So that’s killing as a punishment, 1 in 10 of his own legions, for any any mutinous or disloyal act. And he forces Spartacus down south, and he forces him to go towards Brundisium, which is modern day Brindisi, which you can see on this map. And he splits Spartacus’s army, this is a year after the revolt has started, and Spartacus decides he has no alternative but to turn and fight. So he turns his army and the final battle is fought just below Naples in a place called Senerchia, and Crassus defeats the slaves. The real Spartacus dies in the battle, unlike in the movie. And there are 6,000 slave survivors who are captured by Crassus. And what does he do? With the Senate’s approval, he lines the Appian Way, So that’s the road that goes from Rome all the way down here to Capua, which is where the revolt started. It’s 120 miles. And he lines that road with 6,000 crucifixes, all of the 6,000 men are crucified along that way. I mean, you know, just imagine riding along that road for 120 miles, nothing but crucified bodies. I mean it, yes, it’s effective, but it’s horrific and utterly, utterly brutal. 2000 years, or so, pass. And during that time, Spartacus’s reputation, romantically as a kind of a rebel and a revolutionary leader is burnished in art and in sculpture, and to a small extent, in historical writing. And in 1951, the character shown here, the writer Howard Fast, decides he’s going to make Spartacus the next subject and title for his new novel.
Now Fast, who’s Fast? He’s Jewish, his parents were immigrants, grew up in New York, and he had a tough, tough childhood. His mother died when he was only nine years old, and then his father becomes unemployed. So he and his older brother just have to take odd jobs just to make ends meet for the family. He gets the reading bug, though, because one of his part-time jobs is in the New York Public Library, and that’s where he starts to write. So he’s writing from an early age. He joins the Communist Party in 1943. And it’s a decision he makes, he says, “As a response to the extreme poverty that he experienced as a child growing up in the New York of the 1920s.” In 1950, McCarthyism is growing, and the Red Scare is at its height, and he’s a victim. He’s called before the House Unamerican Activities Committee, HUAC, and his Communist party affiliation is revealed. And here he is in front of Joe McCarthy’s Senate committee, ‘cause he’s also being tried in front of this committee as well. So this is a short clip.
Myself on the Constitution obligates me to say a word or two about the origins of this. I am a student of American history and have been for many years-
[McCarthy] You’re ordered to answer the questions only. We’re not going to take a lecture from a man who refuses to state whether he’s a member of the Communist Party as of this moment. We’re not going to take a lecture from him on the Constitution of the United States. Let the record show that the witnesses raised his voice in contempt of the Committee of Congress.
So that was Howard Fast we saw and heard, and the voice of Joe McCarthy as well. And as a result of those hearings where he refuses to disclose any names, I mean, he’s asked to name, he’s asked to name names associated with a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War. I mean, one of the contributors to this charity is Eleanor Roosevelt. And he refuses. So he’s given a three month prison sentence for contempt. And this is where Howard Fast starts to write his novel “Spartacus.” The novel takes the historical story, and it introduces, as you would expect of a novelization, it introduces a few additional characters for colour. So we have some fellow gladiators who befriend Spartacus, one of whom is a Jew called David. We also have Varinia. And Varinia is a female slave who’s kept by Batiatus, and she becomes the love interest in the story. So, Spartacus and her fall in love. For Howard Fast, who’s still a communist by the way, this is a novel about how oppression and slavery strip away human dignity until the only thing you can do is rise up. You have nothing to lose other than rise up against your oppressors. And oppression, as he sees, is always held together and supported by a political system. So Spartacus, for him, is standing there as a symbol of how humanity has to fight against any system that oppresses its population. He’s got the novel, he’s done and dusted. He’s ready for publication by 1951, but he’s blacklisted by every major publishing house. Remember, the blacklist is nationwide. The blacklist isn’t just Hollywood. The blacklist has infected the whole cultural system in the US by this time. So no publisher is going to touch this book. He’s forced to publish the novel himself, and then something unexpected happens. He’s clearly tapped into a nerve, because he starts to shift tens of thousands of copies. And this, he’s fulfilling the orders all from his basement.
So “Spartacus” the novel suddenly, is a bestseller. Well, this is where Kirk Douglas enters the story, because it’s now 1958, so it’s a few years later. And Kirk Douglas and his partner Eddie Lewis, have a production company called Bryna. And now Bryna is the name that Kirk Douglas has given to it, and he is named it after his mother’s original Russian name. Kirk Douglas has recently produced and starred in “Paths of Glory,” 1957. A brilliant film, by the way, if you haven’t seen it. Brilliant film. But not a commercial success. And he’s also just finished “The Vikings,” which is not as good a film, but a much, much bigger commercial success. So he’s now looking for his next project. And epics, particularly Roman epics, are very much in vogue. “Ben-Hur” is the latest, “Ben-Hur” is currently in the making while he’s doing his thinking. And Eddie Lewis, his partner, reads the Howard Fast novel, and he says to Douglas, I think this could make a good movie. So they buy an option from Howard Fast, and Howard Fast says, “I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I’m only going to give it to you for a hundred dollars. I don’t want more than a hundred dollars, but I’ve got a condition, which is that I have to write the screenplay.” They’re not very happy about this, because most novelists haven’t got a clue how to write a screenplay. And sure enough, Howard Fast turns in the screenplay, and by all accounts it’s absolutely die. It’s unusable. So now, Douglas and Lewis have two problems. The first problem is that they have a terrible screenplay, and they’ve been waiting for it. The second problem is that because Howard Fast has his name on it, Howard has his name on the novel, no major studio is going to touch this project. Finally, with nowhere else to turn, Kirk Douglas phones his agent Lou Wasserman, and Wasserman mysteriously manages to get them a deal at Universal. Now, Universal Studio, by this time, its star is falling. It’s in a pretty sorry state.
And it has a reputation as a third rate studio that makes third rate movies. It’s a place you only go when you are desperate. And they are desperate. And it’s only a year later that the mystery is solved, because they discover how Wasserman actually got the deal. It turns out, Wasserman a year later buys the studio, and he buys it for a song. And he had used the movie as leverage in his negotiation. So that’s how they managed to get the movie made at Universal. So now they have a studio, and they have a modest budget, but that’s all they have. So this is where we start to see Kirk Douglas’s talent, not just as an actor, but also as a producer. He needs to create a head of steam behind this movie. And there’s nothing like signing big name actors to do that. So he turns to Britain, and his number one job is to land these three actors. And he manages to get Peter Ustinov to play Batiatus, the the sleazy slave owner and head of the Gladiatorial School. Charles Laughton to play Senator Gracchus, who’s the sly, pragmatic senator, who’s the chief antagonist to Crassus. And finally Lawrence Olivier to play Crassus himself, the wealthy, the wealthy nobleman, who has great designs to be the next dictator of Rome, and to abolish the republic. And he seems to get them by a combination of flattery and hyping up, possibly over-hyping up, each of their roles. From day one it’s obvious that there’s trouble between Charles Laughton and Lawrence Olivier. There’s a personal animus there that predates this movie, but it’s going to infect the movie every time they’re on set together. This is Peter Ustinov, who is going to provide his take on what happens on the first day that all the cast are together. And this is a treat. This is a reminder of what a superb storyteller he is, and what a great mimic he is as well. So let’s see it.
- I remember that we also all appeared in Hollywood at different times, and I suspected we all had slightly different scripts, which rather favoured our parts. And since Lawrence Olivier got there about a week before anybody else, he had Kirk Douglas’s ear. And when we did the first reading of this, it didn’t quite resemble what we’d received in the post and agreed to. And I remember that first reading with enormous clarity, because I was dressed in a relaxed manner that you find me in today, except I’ve moved for the times, I think. And Charles Laughton was in a dressing gown with his hair in curlers. And Olivier was dressed normally with a sports jacket. Kirk Douglas was dressed as a slave and covered with dirt and grime. He’d already been leaping from things. And John Gavin was dressed in the full regalia of an important Roman chief of the period. We started the reading, and it was quite different. It started out with Olivier in this version. And he put on a pair of glasses, very relaxed, and started reading the script. Oh great lord. Oh, I don’t know what, you will hail a great one then. And it was like a litany in church, I couldn’t hear what he was saying. And I saw Laughton’s face out of the corner of my eye going, then Laughton came in, made his entrance and said. hail great gods of Rome. And again, it was practically inaudible. And I thought to myself, if the race is going to be run at this speed, I’m not going to start sprinting. It’s ridiculous. So my entrance came, I said, haha, my slaves be willing to know this. And I- And again, I joined the general litany. It was only John Gavin who has the sensibility of an actor, and was later your ambassador in Mexico, who seemed to be impervious to this general atmosphere of murmuring.
And suddenly said, oh great gods that here declare. And he was off on his own, rather, I thought. This went on getting more and more awkward as we began to realise the script was rather different to what we had been led to expect, until Loughton suddenly stopped dead, and said, I don’t understand this scene. And one smelled trouble. There was a look of complicity between Kirk and Lawrence Olivier, and Lawrence Olivier said, well, I thought, it’s my idea, dear boy, this scene. I thought I would represent the future. John Gavin the present. And you, Charles, the past. Charles, I think deliberately misunderstanding, said, why do I represent the present? No, no, dear boy, you represent the past. It’s Gavin who represents the present, and I represent the future.
- It’s the great Peter Ustinov on show. What’s interesting, by the way, about this, you know, mutual dislike between between Olivier and Laughton, is how it also presents in their very different acting styles. And if you, again, you know, if you’ve seen the film recently, or if you’re going to see the film, just look out for this. I mean, Olivier, you know, is always, you know, clear, crisp, meticulous, you know, you feel this is a professional who is word perfect because he’s so well rehearsed. Whereas Laughton is casual, relaxed, informal, uses facial expressions far more. And it feels like he’s saying it for the first time. Very different, very different styles. So he’s got some acting heft in place, has Kirk Douglas. And he’s got, he now needs to get a screenwriter, a new screenwriter. And because Howard Fast has been given his cards, and Howard Fast has realised he’s not up to the task. And the screenwriter he chooses and he approaches is a blacklisted screenwriter. And it’s none other than Dalton Trumbo. So, Dalton Trumbo back in 1947, he’d been, until the HUAC and McCarthy hearings, he’d been the highest paid Hollywood screenwriter. But now he’s one of the so-called Hollywood 10 who have been tried by the House Unamerican Activities Committee for their supposed connections to communism. And after refusing to turn on their friends and name names, they’re all sent to prison. Trumbo comes out of prison, short sentence in 1950, and he’s immediately blacklisted everywhere. So that means no one can hire him. But there is a workaround, which is that you write under a pen name. It allows you to work, but you don’t get any screen credit, and you’re also massively underpaid as well. During this period, Trumbo actually writes two Oscar winning scripts, one for “Roman Holiday” in 1953, and the other for “The Brave One” in '56. But of course, in both cases, the work had to be attributed to someone else, 'cause no one could know that it was a blacklisted writer who’d put those scripts together.
So when Dalton Trumbo is appointed as the screenwriter on “Spartacus,” it has to be kept a secret. He uses the name Sam Jackson, and the meetings are always in a private home, at his home, or Kirk Douglas’s home. And it’s essential above all that universal, the studio, doesn’t find out about Sam Jackson’s true identity because they would’ve cancelled the project immediately. This is Dalton Trumbo, it’s a few years later, but this is how he always wrote, and this is how he wrote the screenplay for “Spartacus.” He’d be in the bath, you can see he’s balancing his typewriter. Well, I mean, here he is writing, but usually he’d balance his typewriter on a wooden tray across the bathtub. And he’s always smoking. And you can see he’s got a mug in front of him. Don’t let that mug fool you. That’s neat bourbon in there. And he would rattle the keys with a furious intensity, and could churn words out at a lightning pace. So, now the cast is coming together, and there’s a writer on board. So now, Kirk Douglas needs a director. The original director was Anthony Mann. Anthony Mann is a accomplished director, mainly known at the time for his westerns. He shoots the film’s opening scene, which we’re going to see a little bit later. We’re going to see it. Very effective, it’s shot in Death Valley. But Kirk Douglas is not happy with Anthony Mann. He’s the studio’s choice, and he’s not Kirk Douglas’s choice. And Douglas doesn’t think he’s up to it. So Kirk Douglas, after one week, fires Anthony Mann. And instead he hires a hotshot young director, only 30 years old, who he’s worked with before, called Stanley Kubrick. It’s time, I think, for a game. Now, we’re about to have a little introduction to Stanley Kubrick, and we’re going to see a number of quick fire clips, all Kubrick films, over the course of about 50 seconds. So you have to be on your game. The challenge is this, how many of these movies can you name? Okay? And I have to say, this is not going to be easy, because these clips are going to come thick and fast. So you really need to pay attention. Okay? So we’re going to ask Big Jack to introduce, and then we’re going to go straight into the clips. Okay? Here goes.
Everybody pretty much acknowledges he’s the man. And I still feel that underrates him.
Okay. So, short and impactful. I wonder how many each of you got. I would say, I mean, I’ve gone through this a few times, as you can imagine, and I had to look a few up. So, I don’t think I did very well, actually, first time around at all. If you’ve got five or more, you should give yourself a pat on the back, 'cause you’ve done very well. If you’ve got seven or eight or more, I mean, give yourself a standing ovation, 'cause that’s really impressive. So all together we saw 12 clips. So let me just show you what they were. This is not in the order that they were shown. This is in chronological order of the year in which they were made. So starts with “Killer’s Kiss” '55, “The Killing” '56, and “Paths of Glory” 1957 before “Spartacus.” So, what is immediately striking about this list of early films is that the ones before Spartacus, they’re all small budget films, and none of them are commercial hits. In other words, Stanley Kubrick at this point is still establishing himself. Douglas knew Kubrick because they worked together on “Paths of Glory” in 1957. So Kirk Douglas feels comfortable, this is a talented kid who we can work well with, in brackets control, okay? For his part, Stanley Kubrick has just been working ever since “Paths of Glory,” on a whole series of projects that have failed, or just haven’t materialised. So, when Kirk Douglas approaches him, he accepts the offer to work on “Spartacus,” not because he has any love of the project, but simply because he needs work. And from the day he takes over, Stanley Kubrick has to have things his way. And even though, I mean, let’s, you know, here’s an example, right? He has a great cinematographer in Russell Metty, Russ Metty. A great cinematographer who he is gifted by Kirk Douglas. But he’s determined to do it all himself, right? He does his own cinematography.
And when Metty then complains to Kubrick that Kubrick is taking over his job, Kubrick shouts at him, “Sit in your chair and shut up.” Okay? That’s the measure of the man. Unsurprisingly, most of the crew take a pretty quick dislike to Stanley Kubrick. And behind his back, he becomes known by the crew as Stanley Hubris. But you know what? And this is the thing about Kubrick. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him. He’s impervious to it. All he cares about is making the movie he wants to make. Let’s give you a sense of what Kubrick does on set, okay? And how brilliant he is, and how annoying he must be to work with, right? Now, have a look at this, okay? A puzzling scene if ever you’ve seen one, a whole bunch of people lying on the floor, many of them blood spattered, and most of them with numbers next to them. So this is Kubrick filming the aftermath of an enormous battle. And you have here 300 or so extras who were all dressed in scratchy brown or blue costumes. They’re scattered, as you can see, over a grassy slope, and it’s a scorching sun. And they’re all holding these large cards with a number on it. And they’ve been there for hours. And as you can imagine, no one’s very happy. Kubrick has placed these signs among the so-called corpses after the battle. Kubrick is, you can’t see Kubrick. Kubrick is sitting in a gantry, right? 20 feet up with a megaphone. And he is shouting instructions to everyone, you there, number 296, move over and look more dead. And it’s only when he’s ready to shoot after several hours, that he’ll finally order the crew to take away the numbers. So that’s the measure of Kubrick, and that’s what working with Kubrick is like on set. The collaboration between Kubrick and Douglas is fruitful, but it’s hugely volatile. Part of the problem is the unusual lines of authority, 'cause of course, you know, the lines of authority between a director and a star are normally fairly clear.
But in this case, Douglas is not just the star, he’s also the producer. Stanley Kubrick wants to put his own stamp on the style of this film. But Kirk Douglas keeps pulling him back, 'cause Kirk Douglas wants a classic Hollywood Roman epic. Kubrick complains constantly that the character of Spartacus has no compelling faults or quirks. But Kirk Douglas can’t see the problem, because it’s his character. And they argue about everything, particularly the production. Stanley Kubrick, just, he’s a perfectionist. He wants to do take, after take, after take. And Douglas would say, “Come on Stan, let’s go faster. You don’t need a shot like that. We’ve got it already. Come on.” And Kubrick would reply, “This is the way I want it.” And Douglas would fume at the delays. And as far as he saw it, it was his business reputation that was on the line here. Kubrick always felt that it was his only film that he couldn’t fully control. Listen in this audio clip to how he talks about the film.
[Stanley] Yes, my narrative criticisms, which were at first so enthusiastically received, began to grow pale as time went on due to the counter pressures of the writer, Dalton Trumbo, and Kirk’s producer Eddie Lewis, L E W I S, who did not see eye to eye to me, with me on the story. Between the shooting and the editing of “Spartacus,” two children were born to me, to Christiane. Anya and Vivian. I was on the picture almost two years. Children’s names Vivian Vanessa, age five. Anya Renata, age six. Katherine Susanna, Katherine spelled K and an E at the end, age 11. Only about eight weeks was spent in Spain doing the battles and the big march-bys. The whole picture was done on a back lot at Universal.
[Interviewer] Did you get any sense of intellectual satisfaction out of “Spartacus” at all?
[Stanley] No. But it was, you know, again, an opportunity to work. And it was interesting to, from a purely, as an exercise, you know, to try to do scenes that you thought weren’t very good and to try to make them interesting. I thought the first 45 minutes of the film of the life and the Gladiatorial school, which was simple, turned out quite well, as far as I’m concerned. But then the rest of the story from the slave rebellion on to the end, I thought seemed a bit silly.
So yeah, it’s interesting listening to him. You know, he focuses on detail like spellings, and ages, you know, you have to get these right. But he’s clearly got no love for this film. This is a wonderful letter that Kirk Douglas writes to Stanley Kubrick right at the end of production. It’s very late on in, and Douglas has left, he’s left the set, and he is now working on the set of another movie that he’s starring in called “Strangers When We Meet,” it’s a pretty forgettable film. You can see there’s a reference there to Kim, Kim being Kim Novak, who he’s playing against. And the tone, you know, it’s fairly lighthearted, but underlying it, you can read between the lines. Kirk Douglas is nervous. He’s not on set. How’s it going? What’s going on, Stanley? He’s asking him, you know? No news is good news, or so I hope. I trust everything is going smoothly. There’s anything I can do from this end, let me know. You know, there’s a kind of a slight desperation there. But Kirk Douglas being Kirk Douglas, you know, there’s this wonderful touch at the end as you can see, you know, his name is typed Kirk Douglas. And he signs it Spartacus, you know, isn’t that wonderful? This letter was shown in an exhibition in London six years ago, and it was fan, you know, and we all trooped off to see it. It was fantastic to see this letter. So what is it that makes this picture unusual? Well, one of the things that I find really fascinating is that it’s a Roman epic shot in 1959, and it’s not a Christian redemption story. And this is really unusual, would you believe? Have a look at these movie posters. These are all movies made in the 1950s, and they’re all Roman epics, and they all pit the might and cruelty of the Roman Empire against the goodness and moral superiority of Christianity. So here’s “Quo Vadis” from 1951, set in the reign of Nero, where the main theme is Rome’s persecution of the early Christians.
And then we have “The Robe,” where Richard Burton is a Roman Tribune who wins Christ’s robe in a dice game, sees the error of his ways, and becomes a Christian. And “Demetrius and the Gladiators” is just the sequel to it. And it’s more of the same, made a year later. And finally, 1959, we have the epic of “Ben Hur,” Charlton Heston, where Judah Ben-Hur, Jewish prince, witnesses the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And he becomes a Christian at the end. So, you know, I mean, let’s just remember again, you know, these are the years when America’s red scare and the Cold War, fear of the Cold War, are at their very height. And it’s no coincidence that Christianity triumphs in these movies against the godlessness of an evil empire. The opening, sorry, the Roman epic is so tied up in these years with Christianity that a film that’s about Rome, but not about Christianity, actually has to announce the fact. So this is how “Spartacus” opens. The first words that the narrator says is, “This isn’t about Christianity.”
[Narrator] In the last century before the birth of the new faith called Christianity, which was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about a new society, the Roman Republic stood at the very centre of the civilised world. Of all things fairest, sang the poet, first among cities, and home of the gods is Golden Rome. Yet even at the zenith of her pride and power, the republic lay fatally stricken with a disease called human slavery.
I’m going to, I’m just going to stop there, just because I’m just conscious of time. But you get the point. You know, it’s saying this isn’t going to be about Christianity. This is one of those that, it’s shot before Christ. It’s going to be about something else. So we know what it’s not about. So what is it about? Here’s a strange question. Is “Spartacus” a Jewish picture? Now, the obvious answer is no, of course it’s not, the word Jew or Jewish doesn’t feature anywhere. It’s not mentioned once. But, I have to say for a film that’s not about Jews, or Judaism, or Jewishness, it sure has a lot of Jews who are involved in its making and shaping. We have, you know, Stanley Kubrick, the director. We have Eddie Lewis down here, who is Kirk Douglas’s co-producer in Bryna. We have Howard Fast, who’s the writer. We have Lou Wasserman, who was the agent and now owns the studio. And below him we have Irving Lerner, who’s the editor of the movie. Then at the bottom we have Alex North, who is the composer, composes the music, Alex North, born Isadore Soyfa. And among his other great credits is that he wrote the music for the song Unchained Melody. And then we have the actors. We have Bernard Schwartz at the top, also known by his movie name Tony Curtis. We have Herbert Long below him. And then here at the bottom we have the actor who’s playing David, but you never find out he’s Jewish. Whose name is Harold J. Stone, born Harold Hochstein.
And of course, the star and director Kirk Douglas, born Issur Danielovitch. So, with such a strong Jewish presence, this isn’t a Jewish film, it doesn’t set out to be a Jewish film, it doesn’t talk about Jewish issues, but it just, it can’t help being Jewish. Right? 50 years after “Spartacus” was released, Kirk Douglas publishes his book about the making of the film. And this is what he writes. “Here were thousands and thousands of slaves carrying rocks, beaten, starved, crushed, dying. I identify with them, as it says in the Torah, slaves were we unto Egypt. I come from a race of slaves. That would’ve been my family. That would’ve been me.” So here’s Kirk Douglas looking back on the slaves as the Israelites, and presumably on his own character as a Moses-like liberator, who leads the slaves out of captivity and into a promised land that he will never see. “Spartacus” is a film about freedom, but it’s a very Jewish version of freedom. Freedom is not just an escape from slavery. Freedom must mean something. And what can be more Jewish than using freedom to learn and to gain an education? When the Israelites are freed from Egypt, they receive the Torah, the foundation document of Jewish learning and Jewish knowledge. And when Spartacus is free, what does freedom mean to him? Let’s hear what he says.
What are you thinking about?
I’m free. And what do I know? I don’t even know how to read.
You know things that can’t be taught.
I know nothing. Nothing. I want to know. I want to. I want to know.
Know what?
Everything. Why a star falls and a bird doesn’t. Where the sun goes at night. Why the moon changes shape. I want to know where the wind comes from.
Spartacus wants to know, he wants to know everything. He sees his freedom, in other words, as a passport to education. And can you get more Jewish than that? “Spartacus” was a big film for 1960, because it was written by a screenwriter who was blackmailed, sorry, who was blacklisted and imprisoned. And it was based on a novel by a writer who was also blacklisted and imprisoned. And these experiences are hardwired into the movie, and they give it a relevance and an immediacy, particularly must have done for the contemporary audience. Among other things, this is a film that warns against the seduction of society by tyranny and a tyrant. And the would be tyrant in the movie is the Crassus figure played by Lawrence Olivier. Listen to Crassus’s words as he tells Gracchus about how the new order of things is going to be once he crushes the rebellion.
Did you truly believe 500 years of Rome could so easily be delivered into the clutches of a mob? Already, the bodies of 6,000 crucified slaves line the Appian Way. Tomorrow, the last of their companions will fight to the death in the temple of my father’s as a sacrifice to them. As those slaves have died, so will your rebel if they falter one instant in loyalty to the new order of affairs. The enemies of the state are known. Arrests are in progress. The prisons begin to fill. In every city and province, lists of the disloyal have been compiled. Tomorrow they will learn the cost of their terrible folly. Their treason.
And where does my name appear on the list of disloyal enemies of the state?
[Crassus] First. Yet upon you, I have no desire for vengeance.
Listen to that language that Crassus was using. Loyalty to the new order, enemies of the state, lists of the disloyal. This is Dalton Trumbo’s not very subtle dig against the dangers of McCarthyism in America. And so now, we come to the film’s most famous sequence where the defeated slaves shout Spartacus in order to save their leader and claim, each of them, that they’re Spartacus. When this scene was proposed to Kubrick, he hated it. He called it, quote, a stupid idea. But Kirk Douglas insisted, and the scene stayed. And I would invite you to read this scene in a way that would’ve made sense to the people who actually were writing it, and producing it. Because in the HUAC hearings, the the McCarthy hearings, witnesses were pressured to name names, name names of communist sympathisers. And in most cases, the names were known. So the whole point of naming names was that it was a ritual degradation. It it was designed to break the spirit of the accused, and it was designed to deprive them of their human dignity. And the reason why this scene really, I think, is so powerful, is because it inverts that terrible ritual. Because by naming themselves as Spartacus, every slave who’s been defeated by Crassus’s army here asserts their dignity as a human being.
I bring a message from your master, Marcus Licinius Crassus, commander of Italy, by command of his most merciful excellency, your lives are to be spared. Slaves you were, and slaves you remain. But the terrible penalty of crucifixion has been set aside on the single condition that you identify the body or the living person of the slave called Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus.
[Slave] I am Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus.
I’m Spartacus.
“Spartacus” was one of a handful of films that finally put an end to the blacklist, once and for all. Kirk Douglas used his considerable clout in Hollywood to insist that Dalton Trumbo’s name be included on the movie credits. Towards the end of shooting the movie, Kirk Douglas invited his screenwriter onto the set to visit, and he left a pass for him at the gate of Universal Studios with the name Dalton Trumbo written on it. Trumbo walks onto the studio a lot, picks up the name, and walks over to Douglas and says, thank you Kirk for giving me my name back. Earlier in 1952, Stanley Kramer had done something similar. He’d also defied the blacklist when he gave a screenwriting credit on “High Noon” to his friend and the blacklisted writer Carl Foreman. But that was eight years earlier, and Hollywood wasn’t yet ready. When the film “Spartacus” was released, Hedda Hopper, the critic, and John Wayne denounced it as Marxist propaganda, anti-communist groups heckled and picketed a number of cinemas. But when the newly elected president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, crossed the picket line, it was game over. And the blacklist finally was at an end. Dalton Trumbo won the Oscar for best screenplay. And for the first time in 15 years, he was able to walk onto a stage and collect the award in his own name. Trumbo wrote an anguish letter to Kirk Douglas during the production, and he said that it was his vision to make what he called a large Spartacus, not a small Spartacus. His vision was to tell a story that had scale and significance. Large Spartacus was a slave revolt that shook the republic, that lasted a whole year, that involved a series of brilliant defeats inflicted on Rome that was only finally put down by the overwhelming might of the Roman armies against a single slave army. But if that’s all Spartacus was, this large Spartacus, we would’ve had, I think, a very good film, but not a great film.
And the reason the movie has lasted, and the reason it is a great film in my view, is that it has so many colours, so many moods, it can move from the tragic, to the comic, and back to the tragic again, effortlessly. It can be huge and dramatic, but it can also be small and intimate. And as interested in scale as Trumbo was, Kubrick looked for intimacy, the closeup, the taught expression on a face, nervous banter between friends who can never quite trust each other. And we’re going to have one final clip, and I realise we’re a little over time, so thank you for bearing with me. This is a scene near the start of the movie, right? And this is classic Kubrick, right? Spartacus and Draba, who’s played by Woody Strode, as I mentioned earlier, there are two gladiators who are forced to fight a duel to the death. And it’s just purely for the entertainment of a visiting nobility. What Kubrick does, is he shows the duel at close quarters. So we see how much is at stake here, that they’re going to kill each other, that only one of them is going to emerge out of this alive. But he also places another camera above the visitors so we can see them casually chatting while the fight is in flow. The camera here is a silent commentator on the nobility’s indifference here to human life. Have a look at this.
Your Thracian is doing pretty well.
How were you able to get my appointment without Crassus knowing?
I fought fire with oil. I purchased the Senate behind his back.
I still think the Tritan is going to win.
Hmm?
So I mean, this to my mind, is why this film is still so watchable after almost 75 years. It has layers, and layers, and it works on a human scale as well as a grand scale. Just before I stop, I want to give the very last words to the reviewer at the time in “Variety” magazine. And this is what “Variety” said about the achievement, Kubrick’s achievement. “Kubrick has out to milled the old master in spectacle without ever permitting the story or the people who are at the core of the drama to become lost in the shuffle. He demonstrates here a technical talent, and a comprehension of human values. Thank you. Okay. And let’s stop sharing. And should we have a look at questions and comments?
Q&A and Comments:
Q: So the first comment here is from Shelly Shapiro, or question, who asks, what do you mean by there being a censor?
A: So at the time, all movies in Hollywood were governed by what was known as the Hayes Code, which was introduced in the 1920s, named after William Hayes. And it meant that films couldn’t have any lewd scenes, any violence, any words like damn, anything that imputed poor morality, or was anti-religious. And from "Spartacus,” the censor demanded somewhere in the region of 85 cuts. It would be things like, for example, the loincloth doesn’t cover the body enough, or the word damn is used three times, or we don’t like any reference to nursemaiding. You know, it shouldn’t be shown. So that was the Hayes Code, and this film fell foul of it.
Q: Next question is from David Foind. What was the name of the producer or producers?
A: It was Bryna Productions, which was Kirk Douglas and his partner Eddie Lewis. Okay. Nancy Con says, Cressus was a king of Lydia, different from the Roman Crassus. Oops, my apologies.
Q: Okay. Did, oh, Shelly Shapiro asks a good one. Did Howard Fast ever get disillusioned by Stalin and communism?
A: Yes, he did. But my goodness, he took his time. It was in 1956. I mean, most American communists had pretty much fallen out of love with communism by 1940. Sorry, by 1939 when the Molotov pact was made, they were horrified that Stalin could get into bed with Hitler. But Howard Fast came to communism late in the day in, you know, '43. And so it was only in 1946 when, in 1956 when Khrushchev denounced Stalinism, and revealed the terrors that Stalin had inflicted, including his antisemitism, that Howard Fast finally woke up. Some comments here about, people love Peter Ustinov. Absolutely. There was so much, so many more clips, by the way. He was so funny. And that was just one of them.
Q: And Lawrence Ratner says, practically everyone involved in making this film was Jewish. How do you explain the absence of any Jewish references, despite Douglas’s Messianic concept of Spartacus and Fast’s themes?
A: Well, I mean, you know, it’s interesting that Dalton Trumbo had a big role for David the Jew, but Kubrick went cut, cut, cut, cut. And he didn’t like the way that Dalton Trumbo had done it. So it just wasn’t something that he wanted to emphasise.
Q: David Frein asks, what about the 10 Commandments at this time?
A: Yeah, sorry. I was purely talking about Roman epics in this context. And let’s see, we’ve got any more questions here.
Q: Was Dalton Trumbo the model for the Woody Allen film “The Front?”
A: I’m not sure if if he specifically was, I mean, the act of fronting was pretty widespread. And I’m not sure if it was Dalton Trumbo in particular. Someone else may have a view of that.
Okay. Betty Ann Sherman says Isador Dempsey, in other words, Kirk, grew up poor in my hometown. His dad was a ragman, drank a good bit, and his parents estranged. He worked for my dad as a young boy. How extraordinary. He had a paper route, and my grandmother often gave him breakfast. He worked to attend St. Lawrence University and did have a great desire to learn and succeed. He didn’t hide his Jewishness. And just after going to California was invited back to his hometown and declined an invitation to speak to country club that had once refused membership to Jews. That’s amazing. Thank you Betty Ann, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, that is absolutely priceless, and it’s one of the things that makes Lockdown so special.
So do you know what? I actually think we should end on that high point and can I thank everyone for joining today, and wish you well over the next days and weeks. Okay, good night everyone.