Sam Spiegel : The Incredible Life and Times of Hollywood's Most Iconoclastic Producer, the Miracle Worker Who Went from Penniless Refugee to Showbiz Legend, and Made Possible the African Queen, on the Waterfront, the Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence

by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni

• ISBN13: 9780684836195
• ISBN10: 068483619X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

The incredible life and times of Hollywood's most iconoclastic producer, the miracle worker who went from penniless refugee to show biz legend, and made possible The African Queen, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, not to speak of many more, including movies as distinct as Suddenly, Last Summer; Nicholas and Alexandra; The Last Tycoon; and Betrayal; all of them sharing the unique vision that earned Spiegel twenty-five Oscars: star-filled, bigger-than-life, conceived on a vast scale, intensely dramatic, and overwhelmingly ambitious. In this rich and brilliant biography, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, who had the advantage of knowing and working for Spiegel, brings into sharp focus a Hollywood legend who was at once crafty, unscrupulous, mendacious, and equally capable of great charm and petty meanness, who was sentimental and ruthless, a shrewd judge of talent, a gambler on a colossal scale, a man of almost unique artistic vision and courage who was, in the final analysis, that most elusive and rare of movie producers, a genius. The story of a how a Jewish refugee without a penny to his name managed to produce several of the greatest films of all time is alone worth telling, but Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni has done more; she has drawn the definitive portrait of the man himself -- the elusive, witty, cynical adventurer who, like so many refugees, was able to live, succeed, and raise money everywhere, but who was at home nowhere. Spiegel surrounded himself with luxury and beautiful women but remained a loner despite his countless friends. Spiegel was mysterious about his origins, prompting Arthur Miller to refer to him as "The Great Gatsby." In reality, he was born of middle-class Jewish parents in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Raised in Jaroslav, in western Galicia, Spiegel left home in his late teens and quickly became a hero of the Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement. Step by step, with immense research and a vast number of interviews, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni recreates the world of Sam Spiegel's childhood and youth, separating often self-serving fiction from fact. She follows Spiegel's dramatic flight from the Nazis in Berlin, a prison sentence in London, problems with the police in Paris and Mexico City, and finally his arrival in Los Angeles. In America his career languished for a time, though he acquired a reputation for being a supreme "fixer," a brilliant luftmensh on the fringes of Hollywood power, the ultimate party-giver who knew everybody's secrets and was always quick to charm women and take advantage of men. Billy Wilder called him "a modern day Robin Hood, who steals from the rich and steals from the poor." With a brilliant sense of time and place and a deep understanding of Spiegel's complex personality, Fraser-Cavassoni traces his disasters, successes, romances, friendships, and tangled finances in a narrative that is rich with colorful Spiegel stories, scandals, and bon mots. The cast of characters in Spiegel's life includes Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Robert De Niro, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Katharine Hepburn, John Huston, Elia Kazan, David Lean, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Mike Nichols, Harold Pinter, Otto Preminger, Elizabeth Taylor, Gore Vidal, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Darryl F. Zanuck, bevies of beautiful women, three wives, countless members of high society, and, most important, Sam Spiegel himself -- the last of the great independent film producers who, in the swashbuckling tradition of David O. Selznick and Sam Goldwyn, operated alone, aimed high, and believed, above all, in their own star. More than a major book about the movie business, Sam Spiegel is an intricate and engrossing biography, comparable in its richness, depth, and attention to detail to A. Scott Berg's acclaimed biography of Samuel Goldwyn. It is a marvelous, once-in-a-lifetime reading experience and an astonishing debut for Natasha

Author Biography

Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni is currently the European Editor for Harper's Bazaar.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
1901-1939
Childhood	p. 11
Palestine	p. 21
San Francisco	p. 27
Berlin	p. 33
Vienna	p. 41
London	p. 47
Paris/Mexico	p. 53
1939-1954
Hollywood	p. 61
Tales of Manhattan	p. 69
North Crescent Drive	p. 79
The Stranger	p. 89
The Second Mrs. Spiegel and Horizon Pictures	p. 97
The Prowler and When I Grow Up	p. 111
The African Queen	p. 121
Melba	p. 137
On the Waterfront	p. 147
1955-1985
The Third Mrs. Spiegel and The Strange One	p. 165
The Bridge on the River Kwai	p. 177
Suddenly, Last Summer	p. 201
Lawrence of Arabia-Part I	p. 215
Lawrence of Arabia-Part II	p. 239
The Spiegel Lifestyle	p. 253
The Chase, The Happening, The Night of the Generals, and The Swimmer	p. 267
Nicholas and Alexandra	p. 289
The Last Tycoon	p. 305
Betrayal	p. 327
The Final Years	p. 339
Epilogue	p. 347
Author's Note	p. 351
A Condensed Filmography	p. 359
Notes	p. 369
Selected Bibliography	p. 435
Index	p. 443
Photo Credits	p. 465
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction The Academy Awards, March 26, 1958. There was a hush in the auditorium as Gary Cooper struggled with the envelope. Cooper paused, broke into one of his shy, charismatic smiles and announced: "Sam Spiegel for The Bridge on the River Kwai." A loud round of applause broke out in the RKO Pantages Theatre, while certain heads turned toward the film producer.Once again, three years after gaining his first Oscar as the producer of On the Waterfront, Spiegel had won for best picture. A further five years on, he would repeat his Academy Award experience with Lawrence of Arabia. All three triumphs were financed by Columbia, and led to Spiegel becoming the studio's uncrowned prince. "Uncrowned because it would have been too expensive if he was crowned," said the producer Charles Schneer.Spiegel had a face that stood out in a crowd. "In profile, he looked like a Roman emperor," said director Fred Zinnemann. His black hair was oiled and swept back behind large ears, showing a high forehead and a forceful, prominent nose. The eyebrows, more arched to the right than the left, indicated a mixture of wisdom and humor, while a sparse line of eyelashes, curled and pushed back to his heavy lids, betrayed a certain old-world vanity and charm. Yet his dark brown eyes, which usually twinkled, were still that night.He knew better than to make an awkward rush for the stage. Like a portly eagle preparing for flight, Spiegel murmured something to his beautiful, much younger wife, and rose sedately. Immaculately dressed, with a white handkerchief in his tuxedo pocket, Spiegel's physique was hardly breathtaking; the fifty-seven-year-old stood at five foot nine, weighed over two hundred pounds, and was rotund with short, skinny legs, yet he was noted for his "nutty elegance."As he walked to the stage, while the orchestra played the picture's "Colonel Bogey" theme music, a friend in the crowd caught him unaware, and he smiled. He nervously licked his top lip. Spiegel was tense, but the moment Cooper presented him with the gilded statue, his face creased into its familiar dimples and smile. His joy -- like a schoolboy being awarded the most important sports day prize -- was overwhelming."The soundstages of Hollywood have been extended in recent years to the farthest corners of the world," Spiegel began. "No land is inviolate to the glare of our camera. Yet it is fitting and proper that people the world over are waiting for a decision which only you in this community are able to render..."As his resonant voice continued, he pronounced every syllable, giving authority and pace to his words. The tradition in those days was that of one-line speeches during the awards ceremony, but, as always, Spiegel -- a rogue elephant -- set his own tone. Also, typically, the Eastern European producer was awash in intrigue, which that night concerned the authorship of his film's screenplay.Pierre Boulle, who had written The Bridge over the River Kwai, the novel on which the picture had been based, was credited, and earlier in the ceremony, when the film won for best screenplay, Kim Novak collected Boulle's award. Breathy and mermaidlike in a tight sequined dress, the actress said that her boss, the late Harry Cohn, was "very proud" of the film.In fact, the legendary studio head had not been. The picture was to put Columbia back in the black, but when first hearing of the project, Cohn had picked up the telephone and shouted, "How can you idiots in the New York office give a crook like Sam Spiegel two million dollars and let him go to some place like Ceylon?"Nevertheless, the burning question in many people's minds that night was, "How the hell could a Frenchman write this script?" A month before the Oscars, gossip columnists such as Hedda Hopper had bandied about the names of two blacklisted writers -- Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson. Was it just a coincidence that