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With Trumbo doing a great job, the sham didn’t sit well with Douglas or Lewis. Three years later, one of his aliases won for “The Brave One.” Douglas decided his producing partner Edward Lewis would be Trumbo’s latest front as he worked on “Spartacus.” His “front” had won an Academy Award for “Roman Holiday” in 1953. A member of the Hollywood Ten whose imprisonment had kicked off the blacklist era, Trumbo was accustomed to writing in secret.
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Some blacklisted writers, though, could find work using a pseudonym or a “front,” a person who falsely claimed to be the author of a script.Īs a producer, Douglas played the game, hiring Trumbo under the table to work on a script for a different movie. Those who said they had or were suspected of communist ties also faced the prospect of being denied a job. Besides the usual headaches of moviemaking, such as hiring a cast and keeping an eye on the bottom line, he had to deal with a problem unique to the era: the blacklist.įor more than a decade, film studios wouldn’t openly employ anyone who was uncooperative with the congressional hunt for communist influence in Hollywood. In the driver’s seat was Douglas, the film’s top producer as well as its star.
#I am spartacus movie
The movie remains a standout among swords-and-sandals epics, a rare action film that tells an exciting but personal story amid historical sweep. In a brisk and entertaining memoir, actor Kirk Douglas revisits the unusual intersection of personalities, politics and perfidy that swirled around the creation of a Hollywood classic.įans of “Spartacus,” directed by Stanley Kubrick from a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, will revel in the details of how Howard Fast’s novel struggled to reach moviegoers in 1960.