Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus couldn’t have been more controversial upon its release in 1960.

Title star Kirk Douglas took a massive risk in allowing blacklisted communist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, to pen the Oscar-winning Roman epic without having to use a friend’s name in place of his own.

The scribe had previously taken a clandestine approach to his work following his ostracisation from the film industry years earlier.

Nevertheless, Trumbo still managed to win…