Douglas defied ‘blacklist’ for work on his greatest role

Kirk Douglas made more than 80 films during a glittering career, but said one of his proudest roles was the one he played in helping to break the infamous Hollywood “blacklist”.

The maverick actor was both star and producer on the 1960 historical epic Spartacus, the film for which he remains best known.

During the early years of the Cold War, actors, writers, directors and musicians suspected of having communist sympathies were among those put on a Hollywood “blacklist” barring them from working in the entertainment industry.

It was in response to fears communists had infiltrated Hollywood. Despite the ban, Douglas and his production company secretly hired Dalton Trumbo to pen the script for Spartacus.

Trumbo, whose life was made into a 2015 biopic starring Bryan Cranston, was one of the Hollywood Ten – a group of producers, directors, and screenwriters who were jailed for refusing to co-operate with the House Un-american Activities Committee in 1947.

Upon his release, he continued to write either through a pseudonym or by having other writers act as a front for him.

Douglas decided to defy the blacklist for Spartacus. In his 2012 memoir, Douglas explained that originally producer Edward Lewis was used as a front for Trumbo.

Kirk Douglas was sometimes called the last great actor of Hollywood’s Golden Age, but he was more than that.

Douglas helped end the Mccarthyera blacklisting of “un-american” writers and actors when he credited Dalton Trumbo for his work on the film Spartacus, despite being told this would label him a “Commie-lover” and end his career. And in 2016, he warned against Donald Trump, saying the then presidential candidate’s talk of “screening tests” for migrants would not have been out of place in Nazi Germany.

On Wednesday, Mitt Romney displayed similar courage to Douglas’s decision over Spartacus, when he became the first senator in US history to vote for the impeachment of a president of his own party. Trump had “asked a foreign government [Ukraine] to investigate his political rival” and “withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so” in an “appalling abuse of public trust”, he said.

Douglas and Romney may have disagreed about politics, but by their actions both demonstrated a willingness to take a stand against prevailing and sinister tides.