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From Kirk Douglas, Hollywood royalty and bestselling writer of The Ragman’s Son and My Stroke of Good fortune, comes the candid tale of the making of Spartacus, the blockbuster movie that broke the blacklist


One of the sector’s such a lot iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has prominent himself as a manufacturer, philanthropist, and writer of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, greater than fifty years after the discharge of his enduring epic Spartacus, Douglas unearths the riveting drama in the back of the making of the mythical gladiator movie. Douglas started generating the movie in the course of the politically charged technology while Hollywood’s moguls refused to rent any individual accused of Communist sympathies. In a hazardous transfer, Douglas selected Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write down Spartacus. Trumbo used to be probably the most “Unfriendly Ten,” males who had long gone to prison slightly than testify ahead of the Area Un-American Actions Committee approximately their political affiliations. Douglas’s supply subject material used to be already a sizzling assets, as the unconventional Spartacus was written through Howard Speedy whilst he used to be in prison for defying HUAC.

 

With the monetary long run of his younger circle of relatives at stake, Douglas plunged right into a tumultuous manufacturing each on- and stale-monitor. As each manufacturer and superstar of the movie, he confronted explosive moments with younger director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a number one woman, and negotiations with massive personalities, together with Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. Writing from his middle and from his personal meticulously researched documents, Kirk Douglas, at 90-5, appears to be like again at his audacious selections. He made the most costly movie of its technology—however extra importantly, his ethical braveness in giving public credit score to Trumbo successfully ended the infamous Hollywood blacklist.

 

A grasp storyteller, Douglas paints a shiny and frequently funny portrait in I Am Spartacus! The guide is more suitable through newly came upon length images of the celebs and filmmakers each off and on the set.