Sam Spiegel was born on November 11, 1901 in Jaroslau, Galicia, Austria-Hungary. He is known for his work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and On the Waterfront (1954). He was married to Betty Benson, Lynn Baggett and Rachel "Ray" Agranovich. He died on December 31, 1985 in St. Martin, Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK.
Hollywood has always been full of bartenders and waiters who want to be directors. Trouble is most of them have achieved their ambition.
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You make a star - you sometimes make a monster.
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We did not try to resolve the legend of of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). We tried to perpetuate it.
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I'll either become a very rich and famous man, or die like a dog in the gutter.
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I believe in mortality, but not in inflicting it on myself.
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Fact
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Walking along a Paris street, Spiegel was once kicked hard in the backside; without breaking his stride or turning round to identify his assailant, he exclaimed: "The check's in the post!".
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Gottfried Reinhardt referred to Spiegel as a "congenital crook." He was jailed for bouncing checks and deported in 1930. He had also been convicted of crimes in Britain and Mexico. Gottfried Reinhardt referred to him as a "congenital crook.".
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Was the epitome of the short, squat, tough, cigar-chewing producer. A ceaseless perfectionist and micro manager with a choleric temperament to match, he often clashed violently with writers and directors, including David Lean and Irwin Shaw.
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Son of a successful tobacco merchant.
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Studied at the University of Vienna. Fluent in at least six languages. Started in Hollywood as a story translator in 1947.
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Originally worked in films using the pseudonym "S.P. Eagle".
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Garson Kanin wrote that for a while, he was known as S.P. Eagle, and that in temperament, mien, method and looks, he certainly resembled a predatory bird.
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Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 752-753. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.
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His relationship with playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter was rooted in a father-son dynamic, according to biographer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni. Spiegel was quite taken with Pinter's genius, so much so it hurt the film adaptation of The Last Tycoon (1976), wrote "Tycoon" director Elia Kazan in his own autobiography, as Spiegel treated the screenplay as sacrosanct and wouldn't let Kazan change it to create more dramatic tension.
Was quite fond of Marlon Brando, who won his first Best Actor Oscar in the Spiegel-produced Best Picture winner On the Waterfront (1954). When casting Brando in The Chase (1966), Spiegel was worried that motorcycle enthusiast Brando would kill himself like James Dean had, in an accident. (Brando had had lacerated his knee while biking before filming began.) Spiegel constantly queried "Chase" director Arthur Penn as to whether Brando had brought his motorbike with him to the filming. When Brando got wind of this, he had his motorcycle brought over to the set to play a joke on Spiegel, who quickly arrived at the shooting to see that Brando didn't drive it. When Spiegel found out it was all a joke, the normally taciturn producer laughed heartily.
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Lived in Palestine as a young man in the 1920s. After marrying his first wife in Vienna, they lived in Jersusalem,
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According to his biographer Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, Spiegel used the casting couch quite liberally to dole out roles to actresses in his production of The Chase (1966). He had not been able to behave that way during the production of his two earlier Oscar-winning productions, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), as they had had virtually all-male casts.
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Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969
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Owned a large yacht in his later years. The yacht was based on the French Riviera.
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Fled Berlin upon the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.
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