After fighting off a rival production with Yul Brynner, Spartacus was a labour of love for Kirk Douglas that quickly became a nightmare.
During a shoot that went massively over time and budget, actor Tony Curtis is reputed to have told co-star Jean Simmons, “Who do I have to f*** to get off this film?”
Douglas himself was the driving force behind getting it made, fuelled by his disappointment at losing out to Charlton Heston on Ben-Hur.
Seeking a Roman epic of his own, he brought Howard Fast’s novel to Universal and was executive producer.
Douglas’ clashes with the writer were just the start of an explosive shoot, with the latter dismissing the actor as an “exhibitionist stuntman.”
Spartacus tells the iconic tale of the titular Roman slave who led a revolt against the Empire. Its most famous scene is the “I am Spartacus” moment where all his fellow captures revolutionaries refuse to reveal who he is and give themselves up instead. Douglas and Trumbo loved it but Kubrick, who frequently rewrote the screenwriter’s material each day, told them it was “a stupid idea.” The actor furiously railed at the director on set and got his way.
They would publicly clash even more violently over another climactic scene. It all started out innocently with a harmless, if extremely uncomfortable prank during the set-up for Spartacus’ crucifixion.
Simmons recalled: “I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible joke. As soon as he was safely installed the assistant director called lunch and left him up there. He could have had the lot of us fired, but he was very good about it. You have to have a sense of humour in this industry.”
However, Douglas found nothing remotely amusing after seeing what Kubrick had done with the footage. He later recalled that the director originally removed all close-ups of his long, painful and arduous work on the cross. Work that the actor was particularly proud of. The Spartacus star admitted that, in a towering rage, he picked up a folding chair from the set and threatened to strike Kubrick with it if he didn’t restore the close-ups. The finished film, of course, has many.
Just before his 100th birthday in December 2016, Douglas said: “He was a bastard! But he was a talented, talented guy. Difficult? He invented the word, but he was talented. So, we had lots of fights, but I always appreciated his talent.”
Although Kubrick’s unhappiness with his lack of preferred absolute control over the film prompted him to disown it, the movie became the biggest box office smash of 1960 in North America and eventually grossed $60 million.