Why John Wayne was jealous of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Spartacus’: “I thought, the hell with it”
Big-budget historical epics set in the ancient past weren’t the kind of movies anyone associated with John Wayne. Ironically, he only made one such film, it’s undoubtedly the worst of his entire career, and it may have even killed him.
‘The Duke’ starred in a few period pieces, but they rarely went further back than the Civil War, apart from The Conqueror. The notion of an actor like Wayne, who had a very specific skill set and screen persona, taking over a role that had initially been written for and offered to Marlon Brando made it seem like a strange proposition from the outset.
On paper, the all-American icon playing Genghis Khan was a stupid idea. In practice, it was even worse. Instantly heralded as one of the worst films in Hollywood history, Wayne came to regret his decision to lobby for the part, and The Conqueror gained an infamous afterlife when the production’s decision to shoot downwind of a nuclear test site saw an alarming number of cast and crew members develop cancer.
He wasn’t jealous of Spartacus because it was significantly better, made six times more money at the box office, and won four Academy Awards, though. He wasn’t jealous because he’d turned down a role, because he hadn’t been offered one, with Wayne’s rejection of Dr Strangelove the closest he came to being part of a Stanley Kubrick production.
Instead, it was the cast. More specifically, the picture’s roster of distinguished British thespians. To put an even finer point on it, he wished he’d taken more cues from star and producer Kirk Douglas, which exacerbated matters when the two ‘Golden Age’ icons made several movies together but weren’t what anyone would call the best of friends, based on their diametrically opposed political beliefs.
As fate would have it, when ‘The Duke’ moved behind the scenes to produce, direct, and play the leading role in his passion project, The Alamo, it was released in the exact same month as Spartacus. He didn’t think his ensemble was rubbish, but he was struck with a hint of envy that Kubrick and Douglas had loaded up on thespians regarded among the best on either side of the Atlantic.
Laurence Harvey, who played William Barret Travis, was the only non-American to play a major role in The Alamo, and Wayne’s reasons were twofold. “One is, a lot of American actors don’t want to be directed by John Wayne,” he told Michael Munn. “The other reason is that Harvey is a hell of an actor.”
“We were bringing a touch of British class to the picture,” ‘The Duke’ explained. “This was an actor of the British stage, and I admire those kinds of actors. I was kind of jealous of Kirk when he announced he’d got Laurence Oliver, Peter Ustinov, and Charles Laughton for Spartacus. So when I couldn’t get a good American actor to play Travis, I thought, the hell with it, let’s go get some British class.”
As far as Wayne was concerned, Olivier, Ustinov, and Laughton “gave the best performances in Kirk’s film,” with Ustinov winning a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ Oscar. He was envious that Spartacus had been elevated by the stage legends, bringing their gravitas to the fore, and he wanted to see if the same trick would work for him and The Alamo. The film did get a supporting actor nod, but it was for Chill Wills, not Harvey, so it’s debatable if his plan to steal Kubrick and Douglas’ trick even worked to his satisfaction.
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