In 1958 and 1960 – Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis acted together in two very successful epic historical films – that still today stand the test of time.
They both achieved the height of their popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s.
The Vikings
The Vikings is a 1958 epic historical fiction swashbuckling film directed by Richard Fleischer. It stars Kirk Douglas. It is based on the 1951 novel The Viking by Edison Marshall, which in turn is based on material from the sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok and his sons.
Other starring roles were taken by then husband-and-wife Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh as well as Ernest Borgnine. The film made notable use of natural locations in Norway.
Getting Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis on the same bill was a triumph. The Vikings achieved it by letting each of them think he was going to be playing the lead, but really it’s the relationship between their characters that gives the film its power.
Add Janet Leigh as the object of their mutual desire and you have a dream cast.
Douglas plays Einar, a Viking prince. Curtis plays Eric, a young slave whose only connection to his unknown family is an amulet he wears. When English nobleman Egbert (James Donald) seeks sanctuary in Einar’s court, he recognises Eric’s amulet and realises that the youth is in fact a potential heir to the English crown, and Einar’s half brother. Keen to use him for his own purposes, he keeps this secret but begins to move against the English king, Aella (Frank Thring), engineering a raid in which Aella’s daughter, Morgana (Leigh) is taken prisoner. Einar quickly becomes obsessed by this exotic beauty who won’t succumb to his advances, and when Eric steps in to defend her – falling in love with her himself – the stage is set for fraternal as well as international conflict, the tragedy being that the half brothers, both loyal to the concept of family, don’t realise their connection until too late.
Although based on Edison Marshall’s novel of (almost) the same title, which itself drew on period writings the saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and the Tale Of Ragnar’s Sons, the film underwent a lot of story development before it reached the screen and the result is a narrative with enough depth and complexity to make it feel like a recreation of well known recent events.
The Vikings also benefits from cinematography by the great Jack Cardiff, making it one of the most impressive colour works of the period.
All this is held together by Richard Fleischer, a director whose diversity of output and flexibility of style have perhaps contributed to him missing out on the recognition enjoyed by many of his peers despite some very impressive work. Here he takes a simpler approach than in many of his other films, knowing when to stand back and let his talented cast and crew do their thing, but his skill is clearly visible in the apparently effortless way the action scenes fit together and in the stunning final shots.
An enjoyable adventure film that benefits from first class work all round, The Vikings is a must for film historians and a pleasure for the rest of us.
Spartacus
A full sixty decades after its debut, Spartacus is no longer a mere movie. Instead, the strange, flawed, enthralling sword-and-sandal epic long ago entered that thorny realm where unclassifiable cinematic touchstones reside. Directed by a 32-year-old with only four feature films under his belt, produced by and starring mid-century superstar Kirk Douglas and featuring a galaxy of acting luminaries, the 1960 blockbuster has been exalted, imitated and parodied; honoured, derided and dissected; and after all these years, it still achieves what most three-hour, big-budget historical dramas can only dream of: it’s entertaining as hell.
Spartacus remains one the most successful mixtures of action-flick and high-minded drama ever attempted.
The 1960 American epic historical drama film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, written by Dalton Trumbo, and based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Howard Fast, is inspired by the life story of Spartacus, the leader of a slave revolt in the Roman Empire. It stars Kirk Douglas in the title role, Laurence Olivier as Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, Peter Ustinov as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus, John Gavin as Julius Caesar, Jean Simmons as Varinia, Charles Laughton as Sempronius Gracchus, and Tony Curtis as Antoninus.
Douglas’ company Bryna Productions produced the film. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted at the time as one of the Hollywood 10. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus, and President-elect John F. Kennedy crossed American Legion picket lines to view the film, helping to end blacklisting.
The film won four Academy Awards and became the biggest moneymaker in Universal Studios’ history, until it was surpassed by Airport (1970).
Production
The development of Spartacus was partly instigated by Kirk Douglas’s failure to win the title role in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur. Douglas read Howard Fast’s novel, Spartacus, which had a related theme – an individual who challenges the might of the Roman Empire – and Douglas was impressed enough to purchase an option on the book from Fast with his own financing. Universal Studios eventually agreed to finance the film after Douglas persuaded Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov to act in it.
At the same time Yul Brynner was planning his own Spartacus film for United Artists. With Dalton Trumbo’s screenplay being completed in two weeks, Universal and Douglas won the “Spartacus” race.
Filming
After David Lean turned down an offer to direct, Spartacus was to be directed by Anthony Mann. However, Douglas fired Mann at the end of the first week of shooting, in which the opening sequence in the quarry had been filmed. Yet a year later Mann would embark on another epic of similar size, El Cid.
Thirty-year-old Stanley Kubrick was hired to take over. He had already directed four feature films. Spartacus was a bigger project by far, with a budget of $12 million and a cast of 10,500.
Kubrick had wanted to shoot the picture in Rome with cheap extras and resources, but Edward Muhl, president of Universal Pictures, wanted to make an example of the film and prove that a successful epic could be made in Hollywood itself. A compromise was reached by filming the intimate scenes in Hollywood, and the battle scenes, at Kubrick’s request, in Spain.
The battle scenes were filmed on a vast plain outside Madrid. Eight thousand trained soldiers from the Spanish infantry were used to double as the Roman army. Kubrick directed the armies from the top of specially constructed towers. However, he eventually had to cut all but one of the gory battle scenes, due to negative audience reactions at preview screenings.
Music
The original score for Spartacus was composed and conducted by six-time Academy Award nominee Alex North. It was nominated by the American Film Institute for their list of greatest film scores.
After extensive research of music of that period, North gathered a collection of antique instruments that, while not authentically Roman, provided a strong dramatic effect. One theme is used to represent both slavery and freedom, but is given different values in different scenes, so that it sounds like different themes. The love theme for Spartacus and Varinia is the most accessible theme in the film, and there is a harsh trumpet figure for Crassus.
“I’m Spartacus!”
In the climactic scene, recaptured slaves are asked to identify Spartacus in exchange for leniency; instead, each slave proclaims himself to be Spartacus, thus sharing his fate. Several subsequent films, television shows and advertisements have referenced or parodied the iconic scene.
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz; 1925 – 2010) was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades but who achieved the height of his popularity in the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.
Although his early film roles mainly took advantage of his good looks, by the latter half of the 1950s he had demonstrated range and depth in numerous dramatic and comedy roles. In his earliest parts he acted in a string of mediocre films, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports films and a musical.
He achieved his first serious recognition as a dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with co-star Burt Lancaster. The following year he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in The Defiant Ones (1958) alongside Sidney Poitier. Curtis then gave what could arguably be called his best performance: three interrelated roles in the comedy Some Like it Hot (1959). The American Film Institute survey voted it the funniest American film ever made.
That was followed by Blake Edwards’s Operation Petticoat (1959) with Cary Grant. In 1960, Curtis played a supporting role in Spartacus, which became another major hit for him.
His stardom and film career declined considerably after 1960. His most significant dramatic part came in 1968 when he starred in the true-life drama The Boston Strangler, which some consider his last major film role. He later starred alongside Roger Moore in the ITC TV series The Persuaders!, with Curtis playing American millionaire Danny Wilde. The series ran twenty-four episodes.
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; 1916 – 2020) was an American retired actor, producer, director and author.
After an impoverished childhood with immigrant parents and six sisters, he made his film debut in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Douglas soon developed into a leading box-office star throughout the 1950s, known for serious dramas, including westerns and war movies. During his career, he appeared in more than 90 movies. Douglas is known for his explosive acting style, which he displayed as a criminal defence attorney in Town Without Pity (1961).
Douglas became an international star through positive reception for his leading role as an unscrupulous boxing hero in Champion (1949), which brought him his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Other early films include Young Man with a Horn (1950), playing opposite Lauren Bacall and Doris Day, Ace in the Hole (1951), and Detective Story (1951), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama. He received a second Oscar nomination for his dramatic role in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), opposite Lana Turner, and his third nomination for portraying Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), which landed him a second Golden Globe nomination.
In 1955, he established Bryna Productions, which began producing films as varied as Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960). In those two films he collaborated with the then-relatively-unknown director Stanley Kubrick, taking lead roles in both films. Douglas has been praised for helping to break the Hollywood blacklist by having Dalton Trumbo write Spartacus with an official on-screen credit. He produced and starred in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), and Seven Days in May (1964), opposite Burt Lancaster, with whom he made seven films. In 1963, he starred in the Broadway play One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a story that he purchased and later gave to his son Michael Douglas, who turned it into an Oscar winning film with Jack Nicholson.
As an actor and philanthropist, Douglas has received three Academy Award nominations, an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As an author, he has written ten novels and memoirs. He is No. 17 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest male screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema.
Source: en.wikipedia.org, www.empireonline.com and www.eyeforfilm.co.ukMovie Icons
