The movie Stanley Kubrick rewrote and made much worse: “It was awful”
In the early years of his career, the meticulous Stanley Kubrick cut his teeth on a pair of violent film noirs: the independently made Killer’s Kiss and his Hollywood debut, The Killing. The latter was released in 1956, and even though it didn’t exactly light up the box office, it brought him to the attention of every major player in the business. He was soon working with one of the industry’s most prominent leading men on one of the greatest anti-war films ever made. However, it could have all been so different if a rewrite he did of that film’s script had been shot – because, by all accounts, he made it much, much worse.
After The Killing impressed its head of production, Kubrick was brought into MGM to choose his next movie from the studio’s pile of screenplays and books to potentially adapt. He settled on Paths of Glory, a 1935 novel by Humphrey Cobb that he recalled reading at the tender age of 14. A draft of the script adaptation had already been written by pulp author Jim Thompson, who had previously collaborated with Kubrick on The Killing. However, Kubrick wasn’t entirely satisfied, so he hired Calder Willingham, who would later write The Graduate, to create a new draft.
This was the screenplay draft that Kubrick sent to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea star Kirk Douglas after the A-lister enquired about working together. Douglas had been intrigued by The Killing, and he loved the Paths of Glory script, even though, as he told HuffPost in 2014, he “knew it would never be a commercial success.” At that point in his career, though, Douglas just wanted to do work he was inspired by and proud of, so he secured $1million in financing from United Artists.
The film soon began shooting in Bavaria, Germany, but to Douglas’ shock, when he arrived at the Schleissheim Palace near Munich, he discovered that Kubrick had made sweeping changes to the script. At this early stage of his career, you see, Kubrick was already beginning to demonstrate signs of the fastidiously controlling nature that he’d later become known for. In this case, it manifested in a desire to make unnecessary alterations to the screenplay.
In truth, though, the changes Kubrick was attempting to push through would have neutered the entire message of the film. At this time, he wasn’t far enough into his career to get away with making alterations that would have resulted in a more esoteric movie. Instead, he had the same thought as Douglas and began panicking that the movie would be another box office disaster – so he gave it a happy ending. “When I arrived, Stanley had completely rewritten the script,” Douglas confirmed. “It was awful. He wanted to make it more commercial.”
Luckily for Douglas, his production company Bryna was co-producing the movie, so he was able to put his foot down and insist that the ending be reverted to the downbeat denouement that was in the novel and original script. He truly didn’t care if the movie made money or not – all he wanted was to make the script he’d loved so much and had convinced himself would be an important anti-war statement. “I was right,” Douglas smiled. “It didn’t make money, but it was a critical success.”
In the end, Kubrick’s Paths of Glory was saved from Kubrick himself by Douglas, and even though the star found the director to be “supremely talented but extremely difficult,” he signed up to work with him again three years later on Spartacus. That beloved classic finally brought Kubrick the box-office success he had been craving – and had almost ruined Paths of Glory in pursuit of.
