Kirk Douglas - I Am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist

THERES ONE CONSTANT THAT YOU can find to define a persons character.

Its not how you perform when things are easy; its how you handle yourself when its tough.

Everyone can be fearless and forthright when the stakes are low... but when its your livelihood or even your life on the line, or your familys or your friends... thats when you understand the kind of mettle youre made of.

Kirk Douglas mettle is made of pretty stern stuff. Unlike so many characters we see in movies, he didnt 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 hadnt sought out the fight... it found him... and like Atticus, he did what he knew he had to... what was right.

Its hard to imagine now what the weight of McCarthyism meant to so many. Its 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 didnt 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 Kubricks 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, its 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 thats formed when the stakes are high. The kind we always look for at our darkest hour.

GEORGE CLOONEY

What you learn about yourself with the passing of time cant be taught. It can only be experienced. You can never know then what you know now.

When I look back at Spartacus todaymore than fifty years after the factIm amazed that it ever happened at all. Everything was against usthe McCarthy-era politics, competition with another picture, everything.

I am 95 years old. When I was born, Woodrow Wilson was in the White House. Ive lived through sixteen presidents, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and a score of political crises from Teapot Dome to Watergate to Bill Clintons 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 weve 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 nations 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 timethe 1950s. Theyre 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 agoand 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. Ive often said that if I had been a little bit older, I might never have taken it on at all. I certainly dont think that I would have hired Dalton Trumbo to write it under his own name. He was a lightning rod for the countrys divisiveness. After almost a year in jail for his political views, he was still on the studios blacklistthe 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 Spartacusthe 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.

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 directorEdward Dmytryk.