After David Lean turned down an offer to direct, "Spartacus" was to be directed by Anthony Mann, then best known for his Westerns such as "Winchester '73" and "The Naked Spur". Douglas fired Mann at the end of the first week of shooting, in which the opening sequence in the quarry had been filmed. "He seemed scared of the scope of the picture," wrote Douglas in his autobiography; yet a year later Mann would embark on another epic of similar size, "El Cid". The dismissal (or resignation) of Mann is mysterious since the opening sequences, filmed at Death Valley, California, set the style for the rest of the film. Large parts of the film were shot at Wildwood Regional Park in Thousand Oaks, California. Parts were also filmed at nearby California Lutheran University, where an army can be seen storming off Mount Clef Ridge.