Sam Spiegel: The Incredible Life and Times of Hollywood’s Most Iconoclastic Producer, the Miracle Worker Who Went from Penniless Refugee to Showbiz Legend, and Made Possible The African Queen, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia: Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni
Editorial Reviews
Prior to this meticulously researched biography, legendary producer Sam Spiegel had loomed large in countless Hollywood memoirs, but was rarely the subject of close examination. Praiseworthy for negotiating a maze of apocryphal stories and unverified details, Sam Spiegel solves many of the mysteries resulting from the falsehoods of “Spiegelese,” for the renowned producer–whose crowning achievements included The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia–was perhaps the most inventive liar to gain prominence in Hollywood. With a refreshing absence of judgment, this unflinching study portrays Spiegel as a consummate manipulator, hedonist, philanderer, absentee father, sexaholic (a foot fetishist who favored young girls well into his ’70s), and globetrotting entertainer of the social elite, “incapable of guilt” and so charming that he could achieve miracles (and numerous faked heart attacks, to disarm his detractors) while producing some of the greatest films of Hollywood’s post-Golden era.
As a first-time biographer, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni (a French journalist who worked as an assistant on Spiegel’s final film, 1983’s Betrayal) fails to plumb the depths of Spiegel’s enigmatic character (so effectively hidden behind his luxurious lifestyle), offering little insight into Spiegel’s unique combination of intellect and roguish insincerity. She compensates with a journalist’s greatest assets: exacting research and seemingly limitless access to Spiegel’s surviving contemporaries, from the late Billy Wilder to On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan and many, many others. The result is a fair and balanced portrait of one of Hollywood’s classiest scoundrels, a master thief with impeccable taste and an uncanny instinct for cinematic prestige. –Jeff Shannon
From Publishers Weekly
Spiegel (1903-1985) won three Oscars for producing, as the subtitle coyly mentions, a series of memorable films; he is also the sole producer to win the best picture Oscar three times within eight years. The resourceful Spiegel arrived in the U.S. from Austria in 1927 as a bogus diplomat, bouncing checks and serving jail time. In Berlin, he worked with Universal Studios’ German film office. Fleeing Nazis, he moved on to London, Paris and Mexico, always encountering problems with the law. Back in the U.S. in 1939, he established himself in Hollywood with Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Stranger (1946). Accused of “sharklike behavior,” Spiegel was a hardened wheeler-dealer who “walked in without a penny and made himself into something.” By the end of his life, he’d banked millions, acquired a priceless art collection and entertained the century’s most glamorous figures. Fraser-Cavassoni writes for Harper’s Bazaar’s French edition and worked on Spiegel’s final film, Betrayal (1983). To separate facts from apocryphal accounts, she conducted some 200 interviews over seven years. Although she often questions Spiegel’s exaggerated anecdotes, Fraser-Cavassoni views Spiegel as “the last of the great showmen,” possessed by a “demonlike pursuit for quality.” Working from Spiegel’s private and professional papers, she also explored dozens of archives, reflected in more than 90 pages of notes, a filmography and bibliography. The result is a fantastic biography on the rise of one of Hollywood’s most flamboyant personalities. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.