“Spartacus” Premiers in NYC – First Hollywood Film With Credit for Blacklisted Writer
The film Spartacus, produced by and starring actor Kirk Douglas, premiered on this day in New York City, with Dalton Trumbo credited as the screenwriter. It was the first Hollywood film since the Hollywood blacklist began in later 1947 to credit a blacklisted writer, director or producer.
Producer/star Douglas kept Tumbo’s role secret from all but a few people. Most important, Universal Pictures did not know until the very last minute. Douglas was afraid that if they found out early, they would withdraw their support and kill the picture. Trumbo wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym of “Sam Jackson.”
When Trumbo’s role was revealed, there were protests from the American Legion, the powerful Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper, and others, but they had little impact. Spartacus opened to much critical praise and box office success.
Just before the public opening, however, Universal studies exercised its contractual powers and heavily censored the film, making a total of 42 cuts. Directors in those years did not have control over the”final cut” of a films. The studio cut a now-famous bath scene that strongly suggested homosexuality. Perhaps most important, the studio cut early battle scenes in which the Spartacus-led army defeated the Roman army, leaving only the final battle scene in which the Roman army triumphs. Clearly, the studio was afraid of any message that a slave army or any proletarian force could triumph over government authority.
Blacklisted because of his refusal to answer questions about his political activities before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on October 28, 1947, Trumbo was a member of the famous Hollywood Ten who defied the committee. He then the played a major role in forcing the film industry to end the blacklist. On March 27, 1957 he embarrassed industry leaders when writing as “Robert Rich” he was awarded the Oscar for best screenplay for the film The Brave One. He and other blacklisted writers earned a living writing scripts under pseudonyms, although at salaries far below what they had earned before being blacklisted. The night of the Oscars, many if not most people in the film industry knew about practice of blacklisted writers working under pseudonyms.
Trumbo had been hired by producer/director Otto Preminger in March 1960 to write the script for the film Exodus. Spartacus, however, was completed and released before Exodus.
Read producer/actor Kirk Douglas’ personal account: I am Spartacus!: Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist (2012)
Learn more about Trumbo’s life and career: Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical (2015)
Read the fascinating book about HUAC, Hollywood and the blacklist: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)
Learn more: Michael Freedland, with Barbara Paskin, Witch-Hunt in Hollywood: McCarthyism’s War on Tinseltown (2009)
Read about The Brave One on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB.com):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049030/