The Oscar-winning actor who got blacklisted for exposing an embezzlement scandal
As much as we’d like to think that anyone who wins an Oscar is a fantastic person fully dedicated to the acting craft, that simply isn’t true. A quick glance at the list of winners will reveal a litany of liars, cheaters, abusers, and criminals. Some of them, however, were made to suffer simply because they tried to do the right thing.
Younger movie fans will know Cliff Robertson as the wise Uncle Ben from Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man’ series. In his youth, he’d made a name for himself with a number of acclaimed performances, including in the 1968 sci-fi drama Charly. For his role as the lead character, a mentally disabled man transformed into a genius by a revolutionary procedure, he was awarded the ‘Best Actor’ prize at the Oscars. He should have gone on to become one of the biggest stars in the world, but, just a decade later, he was persona non grata.
The story of Robertson’s downfall begins with a man called David Begelman. He was the head of Columbia studios in the 1970s and one of the most respected men in the business. He’d helped turn the struggling studio around and had even served as a producer on a number of major projects, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Robertson had done a lot of work for Columbia and would have known Begelman well, but their relationship changed forever when he received a letter one day.
Robertson had learned from the IRS that he had apparently been paid $10,000 by Columbia for working on one of their movies. The problem was, he hadn’t. When Begelman tried to blame this mistake on a young intern, the actor dug a little deeper. He discovered that Begelman had been one to cash the cheque as part of a larger embezzlement scheme to the tune of $65,000. Incensed at this blatant thievery, Robertson went to the police. This is where he went wrong.
Columbia wanted to handle the situation quietly. Instead, Robertson and his wife Dina Merrill spoke openly about the scandal, leading to increasing pressure on the studio. Begelman was eventually fired and later fined for his misdeeds, but it was the acclaimed actor who received the biggest blacklash. Columbia put him on their blacklist, refusing to work with him in any capacity. He struggled to find significant work of any kind over the next few years.
The scandal and its fallout had a major effect across all of Hollywood. Kirk Douglas wrote in his autobiography (via Greg Joseph on Medium), “This is the town where Cliff Robertson exposed David Begelman as a forger and a thief, with the net result that Begelman got a standing ovation at a Hollywood restaurant, while Robertson was blacklisted for four years. On the bad days, you think of what Tallulah Bankhead said: ‘Who do I have to fuck to get out of this business?’”
The so-called ‘Oscars curse’ is meant to apply to actors who fell off the radar after winning the top prize. Robertson, though, he was cursed with something else entirely – morals.
