Spiegel’s beginnings are fuzzy. Born poor in what is now Poland, he traveled to Vienna, Berlin, Palestine and Canada by the time he was 30–doing what, it’s not always clear. Eventually, he wound up in Hollywood and landed a job at MGM. Chased out of America by immigration authorities, he returned to Europe, where he parlayed his new credentials into a production gig. By the time he returned to Hollywood at 37, Spiegel was a small but credible player. His Beverly Hills home, replete with girls and booze, was christened “Boys Town,” and became a favorite hangout of John Huston, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles and Otto Preminger. His New Year’s Eve parties were the social event of the year, and helped establish his reputation as a master arranger–essential for a producer.
But Spiegel was reckless with money. When Columbia Pictures executives balked at a $25,000 tab from the New York restaurant “21” for the “The African Queen” shoot–in London–Spiegel retorted, “You didn’t expect us to eat the food in England, did you? We had steaks flown in every day.” He was nearly deported by U.S. authorities more than once for his shady business practices. And in 1952, Spiegel was banned from all French casinos for cashing two bad checks in Deauville.
Spiegel applied his “wheeler-dealer” tactics, as Lauren Bacall called them, to making movies. He could put together a picture with almost no money down, and was the first producer to pay salaries out of profits. Spiegel made “The African Queen,” one friend said, “with spit.” He’d even fake heart attacks to get his way with stubborn directors.
In “Sam Spiegel,” Fraser-Cavassoni presents such lore with a lighthearted, “That’s Sam!” touch. She comes to the project with an admittedly biased point of view: Spiegel was a friend of her stepfather, the playwright Harold Pinter. She also worked as an assistant on Spiegel’s last production, “Betrayal,” based on a Pinter play.
Spiegel eventually alienated just about everyone. Huston and Lean banished him from their lives. He abandoned his first wife and daughter and cut loose his second after she cheated on him. (She responded by slashing his paintings, which included a handful of Picassos.) Though he remained married to his third wife for decades, they lived apart; at 66 he fathered a son with a 22-year-old.
After “Lawrence of Arabia” garnered Spiegel an unprecedented third best-picture Oscar (along with “On the Waterfront” and “River Kwai”), his career went into deep decline. He was 61, and as Fraser-Cavassoni writes, “he forgot the teamwork… and began to believe that he was the sole reason for [the films’] success.” He retreated to the south of France, entertaining in the old Boys Town manner, occasionally emerging to make negligible films such as “The Last Tycoon.” In the end, he succumbed to a real heart attack on New Year’s Eve at 84. True to form, Spiegel managed to produce the perfect ending.
