Men poured out from the villages and the forests and the countryside to join him. Spartacus! The name itself became the stuff of legends. And the man who inspired them, who first made them believe in the possibility of reclaiming their freedom, was their leader, Spartacus. And men don’t seek a cowardly escape to the shadows – they claim their true and rightful freedom. With a growing sense of their self-worth, they realised they were men after all. Theirs became not merely a desperate fight to stay alive, nor even a frantic dash to the shores of Brandisium and thence to safety. But gradually, as their numbers swelled, so too did their ambitions. In the beginning they were little more than cornered rats, outcasts with a price on their heads. A master storyteller, Douglas paints a vivid and often humorous portrait in I Am Spartacus! The book is enhanced by newly discovered period photography of the stars and filmmakers both on and off the set.The rebellion of slaves had started out small, a ragtag group of bandits really, as they scrambled furtively from place to place under cover of darkness. He made the most expensive film of its era-but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to Trumbo effectively ended the notorious Hollywood blacklist. Writing from his heart and from his own meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at ninety-five, looks back at his audacious decisions. As both producer and star of the film, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant personalities, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. With the financial future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into a tumultuous production both on- and off-screen. Douglas's source material was already a hot property, as the novel Spartacus was written by Howard Fast while he was in jail for defying HUAC. Trumbo was one of the "Unfriendly Ten," men who had gone to prison rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political affiliations. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write Spartacus. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood's moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies.
Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir.
From Kirk Douglas, Hollywood royalty and bestselling author of The Ragman's Son and My Stroke of Luck, comes the candid story of the making of Spartacus, the blockbuster film that broke the blacklist
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