One of them would be this talented gentleman.
Kirk Douglas, Peter Ustinov
Peter Ustinov played slave trader and gladiator owner Lentulus Batiatus in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus. He was also the uncredited writer of the interchanges between Batiatus and Roman Senator Sempronius Gracchus (Charles Laughton). Ustinov explained how this came to be:
[The cast] all appeared in Hollywood at different times, and I suspected we all had slightly different scripts which rather favored our parts. And since Laurence Olivier got there a week before anybody else, he had Kirk Douglas’s ear. … When we did the first reading, it didn’t quite resemble what we’d received in the post and agreed to. …
We started the reading, and it was like a litany in church, I couldn’t understand what Olivier was saying, then Laughton came in and was practically inaudible. And I thought to myself, “If the race is going to be run at this speed, I’m not going to start sprinting.” And I joined the general litany. …
This went on, getting getting more and more awkward as we began to realize the script was rather different than what we’d been led to expect, until Laughton suddenly stopped dead and said, “I don’t understand this scene.”
And one smelled trouble.
There was a look of complicitly between Kirk and Laurence Olivier. … And Olivier finally said, “Would it help if I read it to you?” and Laughton said “yes.” And Olivier read the scene. The quality of the silence was such that he didn’t have the courage to finish it. … And Laughton said, biding his time, “Yess. I thought for a moment, a little while back, that I might eventually understand it. Now, I’m afraid, I’m COMPLETELY lost.”
And we abandoned the reading. … And that was largely why Laughton became extremely difficult and wouldn’t do what he was given. … That was when I was called in by the powers that be and asked to write the scenes for Laughton and myself, which I was glad to do.
Peter Ustinov was in his thirties when he co-starred in Spartacus. He’d been writing successful plays since he was a teenager, written or co-written successful movies, and was fluent in six languages. So it was hardly a stretch for him to rewrite chunks of Dalton Trumbo’s dialogue. (He was also one of the great raconteurs of all time, but I digress.)
Ustinov was fond of original director Anthony Mann, who was responsible for the opening mining sequence. Mann was highly collaborative, and allowed Peter U. to have major input. (From reports, this was one of the reasons Kirk Douglas fired Mann two weeks into production, though Ustinov believed the biggest motivating factor was Douglas’s desire to have Stanley Kubrick at the helm.)
Principal photography on “Spartacus” ran intermittently from January 1959 to March 1960. Kubrick clashed repeatedly with producer Douglas over Trumbo’s script and various sequences, in particular the “I am Spartacus” scenes which Kubrick declared to be “stupid”. He also had strong disagreements with director of photography Russell Metty, and took over much of the cinematography. But Kubrick left Ustinov and Laughton to themselves, and shot their dialogue scenes as the two had rehearsed them.
Production of the Roman epic lasted long enough for Peter Ustinov to joke that when his young daughter was asked what her father did for a living, she answered: “Spartacus” (and indeed, Mr. Ustinov returned to California multiple times for retakes and pickups). The feature was finally released in October 1960, and went on to earn $60 million ($1.2 billion in 2026 dollars) against a $12 million budget. Ustinov won the Oscar for “Best Supporting Actor” at the 1961 Academy Award ceremony.
Peter Ustinov, Eva Marie Saint, Oscar Night 1961
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