Spartacus (film) eclipse him. Gracchus, having seen Rome fall into tyranny, commits suicide. Before doing so, he bribes his friend Batiatus to rescue Spartacus's family from Crassus and carry them away to freedom. On the way out of Rome, the group passes under Spartacus's cross. Varinia is able to comfort him in his dying moments by showing him his little son, who will grow up free and knowing who his father was. The development of "Spartacus" was partly instigated by Kirk Douglas's failure to win the title role in William Wyler's "Ben-Hur". Douglas had worked with Wyler before on "Detective Story", and
Kirk Douglas his "richest, most impressive collaborations" with Douglas, and for Minnelli, no other actor portrayed his level of "cool": "A robust, athletic, sometimes explosive player, Douglas loved stagy rhetoric, and he did everything passionately." That level of passion in Douglas's persona was also used effectively by Minnelli in "The Bad and the Beautiful", four years earlier, for which Douglas was nominated for Best Actor, with the film winning five Oscars. In 1960 Douglas played the lead role in what many consider his career defining role of the Thracian slave rebel Spartacus with an all-star cast in "Spartacus" (1960). He was the