Sword and Sandal

by Roland Graeme

  While we waited to be summoned to the studio, we did some more sightseeing. And we found a gym. It was a grimy, unpretentious grunt-and-sweat iron pit, where hardcore bodybuilders trained. In other words, it was perfectly suited to our needs. We worked out hard to get ourselves in optimum condition for the film shoot.

  The Italians tend not to do things in a hurry. After several days’ delay, we were each given a copy of the script. These were mimeographed copies of a typescript, neatly bound between stiff cardboard covers.

  The script was, of course, in Italian. It was typed triple spaced. On our copies, the extra spaces were used for an English translation of the stage directions and the dialogue—a bit stiff and literal in places, but adequate—and for a phonetic rendition of the Italian, typed in all caps.

  “We’re going to have to learn this crap?” Eric asked. “I mean—memorize it?”

  “Of course,” I said. “What’d you expect?”

  “I don’t know. I thought they were going to add our voices in later, or something.”

  “They are going to dub our voices in, during post production. That means a couple of Italian actors will be doing our talking for us, on the actual soundtrack. But we’re still going to have to stand there and say something while the cameras are rolling, so our mouths move halfway convincingly. We’re going to have to speak the lines in the script—or at least a reasonable facsimile therefore.”

  “Shit. This looks like it’s going to be a hell of a lot more work than I thought it’d be.”

  “I’ll help you with the Italian lingo. That’s probably one of the reasons they hired me, after all.”

  “You’re going to have your work cut out for you.”

  This turned out to be no exaggeration.

  That night, I sat up in bed and read through the script, while Eric, in the bed next to mine, slept in blissful oblivion.

  I’d done my homework. Back in New Jersey, when I’d found out that we’d be filming a story based on the writings of the Roman historian Livy, I went to the public library and checked out the appropriate volume of the Loeb’s classic library series. The small, pocket-sized hardbound book had the original Latin text on the left-hand pages, and an English translation on the right.

  The story of Titus Manlius took place during the Roman Republic, and is recounted by Livy in Book Eight of his History of Rome. An army of Gauls had invaded Roman territory. The Romans marched out into the countryside to repel them, and the two opposing forces found themselves on the opposite sides of a river, with a bridge between them.

  There were numerous skirmishes during which both sides tried to gain possession of this bridge; but the armies seemed evenly matched, and neither prevailed. Then “a Gaul of extraordinary size,” as Livy described him, strode out onto the empty bridge and suggested that the matter should be decided by single combat.

  The young Roman soldiers were ashamed to decline this challenge, but none of them was especially keen to face such a formidable opponent. The exception was one Titus Manlius, who, with his commander’s permission, accepted the challenge. Interestingly, Livy was specific about certain details—for example, that the young man’s friends armed him, at his request, with a shield borrowed from a foot soldier, and with what Livy described as “a Spanish sword,” short and pointed, a stabbing rather than a slashing weapon. Livy also stated that the Gaul taunted Titus Manlius by sticking out his tongue at him! Not very good sportsmanship.

  The two men fought on the bridge, “looking more like gladiators than soldiers,” as Livy put it, “and by no means equally matched, to judge from their outward appearances.” To make a long story short, Titus Manlius, the underdog, defended himself ably against the huge Gaul’s assault, and he waited for his opportunity. Then he got in close to his opponent and stabbed him twice, with fatal effect.

  It was the custom then for a victor in battle to despoil a fallen enemy by stripping him of his armor, weapons, and other accoutrements. But Titus Manlius confined himself to taking the bloodstained gold torque from around the dead Gaul’s neck, and putting it around his own neck, as a symbol of his victory. The Gauls were chagrined by the death of their champion, and they retreated. The Romans hailed Titus Manlius, and, inspired by the torque he’d taken as his prize, they awarded him with the nickname “Torquatus,” which he and his descendants adopted as a sort of second surname.

  Years later, Torquatus—as I’ll call him from now on, to avoid confusion—was a mature man, with a grown son who was (somewhat confusingly) also named Titus Manlius. The Romans found themselves at war again, this time with their neighbors, the Latins. Torquatus had risen to the rank of consul and was one of the commanders of the Roman army.

  The Roman council of war decided that the strictest enforcement of military discipline was required in this situation. This was because their enemies were the Latins—as Livy put it, a people who closely resembled the Romans “in language, manners, arms, and especially in their military organization.” In the past, the Romans and the Latins had been allies, who had fought side by side.

  Now, to avoid conflicts of interests, and “error and confusion,” strict orders were given that no Roman soldier was to leave his post to fight with the enemy without the permission of his superior officer, upon pain of death.

  Torquatus’ son, Titus Manlius, rode out with his men on a reconnaissance mission. They encountered a group of Latin horsemen led by Geminus Maecius, who knew Manlius. Geminus and Manlius taunted each other, and the Latin warrior challenged his Roman counterpart to single combat.

  “Either urged on by anger or feeling ashamed to decline the contest, or dragged on by the irresistible power of destiny, the high-spirited youth [Manlius] forgot the consul’s edict and the obedience die to a father and rushed headlong into a contest in which victory or defeat were alike fatal.”

  In short, Manlius killed Geminus, with a thrust from his spear. After despoiling the dead body, he returned to the Roman camp, where his fellow soldiers hailed him as a hero.

  But Torquatus’ reaction was quite different. Manlius had defied his orders. Torquatus had no choice except to set aside his personal feelings as a father, and inflict the deserved penalty. Furthermore, he said, if Manlius was indeed his son, then he would not shrink from accepting his punishment for his misconduct. Torquatus commanded that his son be bound to a stake and beheaded.

  This death sentence shocked and horrified the Roman soldiers, according to Livy. They cremated Manlius’ body “covered with his spoils.” But the severity of the punishment proved to be beneficial. The soldiers paid more attention to their duties, and they fought harder in battle.

  Thus the whole point of this story was that, to the Romans, a father had the power of life and death over his children, as indeed a military officer had over the men under his command. Also, that military discipline had to be maintained at any cost, and that the rights and even the life of the individual must always be sacrificed for the good of the majority, i.e., the state. It’s a stern, uncompromising outlook. They didn’t call these guys stoics for nothing!

  On the plane, I’d summarized the original story, for Eric’s benefit. When I was finished, he shook his head.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “Which are the good guys, and which are the bad guys?”

  “The good guys are always the Romans, of course. The bad guys are the Gauls, at first, and then, later on, the Latins.”

  “I still don’t get it. One of these dudes has his own son killed. Because he killed one of their enemies! What’s so great about that?”

  “They believed in putting their country above themselves.”

  “They were idiots.” But then a thought occurred to Eric, and he brightened up. “Hey, wait a minute. I’m going to play the son, right? The guy who gets his head chopped off? Does that mean I get killed? Do you think there’ll be a big death scene—you know, with fake blood and everything? How cool!” He settled back in his seat and sighed. “Otherwise, the whole thing sounds lik
e it’s going to be a bit of a bummer.”

  I couldn’t entirely disagree with Eric. As told by Livy, this story was a bit of a bummer.

  In adapting it for a movie, though, the scriptwriters faced two obvious problems. They had to invent some sort of a love interest, to vary the otherwise all-male proceedings. And they had to come up with a happy ending, which was even more of a challenge. To Eric’s considerable disappointment, he didn’t get to expire in a big death scene, cool or otherwise.

  The script began with a sort of prologue, depicting the elder Manlius’ combat with the Gaul, in which he earned the name Torquatus. The main action took place twenty years later. By then, Torquatus had fathered two sons, Manlius Junior—that was Eric’s role—and his kid brother, who was an invention of the scriptwriter and who was named Gaius. Gaius was going to be my part. I was relieved to see that it was comparatively short and uncomplicated. Gaius more or less hero worshipped his brother, which was understandable, and he wanted to emulate him in all things, especially his prowess in battle.

  The love interest was created by inventing a girl named Claudia. In the script, Manlius and Geminus were old friends, who now found themselves fighting on opposite sides in this war. They were also both rivals for Claudia’s affection, and she couldn’t make up her mind which of them she preferred.

  After Manlius killed Geminus, Claudia was grief stricken, and decided that she wanted Manlius dead. Here’s where the script took a fairly drastic departure from Livy’s account. The augers warned Torquatus that the gods didn’t necessarily want Manlius killed, so he was merely confined to prison for the time being, until the gods could be a little more specific about their wishes. Gaius begged his father to pardon his brother, but to no avail. Claudia, on the other hand, urged Torquatus to go ahead with the execution.

  Torquatus, torn between his love for his son and his duty as a Roman military commander, contemplated suicide, so that his own death might help to expiate the disgrace brought about by his son’s disobedience.

  But for a motion picture, there had to be a happy ending. As a result, in the script, the younger Manlius wasn’t executed, after all. The rank and file of the army revolted, protesting his death sentence and demanding that he be spared. Torquatus, of course, was furious at this further display of (mass) disobedience. He also felt shamed, to the extent that he was now more eager than ever to commit suicide, rather than live on in disgrace. Suddenly, just as a violent rebellion was about to break out in the camp and Torquatus was getting ready to fall on his sword, the god Mars, no less (played by another bodybuilder, of course) descended to earth to make a personal appearance. Mars decreed that he was impressed by the courage and fortitude displayed by all parties involved. The younger Manlius’ life was to be spared, and he must marry Claudia—to produce more brave warriors for Rome.

  Torquatus may not have liked this denouement, but he was forced to lump it. As for Manlius—he may have survived, and he even got the girl; but it was easy to imagine how his marriage to Claudia might have its rocky moments. (“Remember when you wanted my Dad to cut off my head, because I killed your Latin boyfriend, honey? Wasn’t that a scream?”)

  We were lucky the film’s production wasn’t haunted by the irate ghost of Livy.

  I learned that we’d be working with Alain Camargue, who’d be playing Torquatus. I was impressed, and excited. Eric was neither. He didn’t know who Alain Camargue was.

  I enlightened him. Camargue was a real actor. He was a Frenchman, a member of the Comédie-Française, who did a lot of stage work in France, and who also made films—mostly in France, Italy, and Spain. I’d seen a couple of these, in a theater back home that specialized in foreign films, and I’d been particularly impressed by one set in Marseilles. It was a sort of French film noir, in which Camargue had played a tough gangster. He was a handsome man, and although he wasn’t quite a bodybuilder, he had a fine, athletic physique. As an actor, he was very intense.

  I was nervous about meeting him, but the moment we were introduced, I was disarmed. Alain was laid-back, warm, and very funny. He spoke fluent, lightly accented English. It was hard for me to reconcile this calm, regular guy with the dynamic personality I’d seen on the screen.

  Over coffee, we chatted. Alain wanted to know all about me—where I was from, what it was like growing up in a small town in America, how I liked living in New York, and how I’d happened to land this job.

  “This is your first film, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes.” I didn’t mention my previous experiences in porn.

  “There’s nothing to it,” Alain assured me. “You’ll do fine. This isn’t Racine or Shakespeare, after all. You look right for the part. Basically, all you’re going to have to do is look young and innocent, and act brave and impulsive. And don’t worry about Ludovico.” I was impressed by the fact that Alain referred to the director by his first name. “I’ve worked with him before. As you say in English—his bark is worse than his bite. Once you learn to bark back at him, he’ll begin to respect you.”

  I couldn’t imagine myself barking at a director, or indeed being anything except respectful and submissive toward him. Was I ever naïve!

  We reported for work.

  People like to sneer at the pervasive inefficiency of the typical Italian bureaucracy, invoking that old cliché about how Mussolini at least made the trains run on time. But the Italian film industry at that time may have been the exception that proved the rule. It struck me as exceptionally well organized. The people who had put this project together may have procrastinated, before the actual production began. But once we started shooting, they wasted little time.

  The big film studio, located in the suburbs of Rome, was in some ways a throwback to the great Hollywood studios of the 1930s and 40s. It was essentially a factory, set up to turn out a product as efficiently as possible.

  Most of the action in Tito Manlio took place outdoors. Eventually, we would go on location, out into the countryside. We started shooting, however, in interiors. Only a few of these sets were new, constructed especially for this project. The rest were recycled from previous productions. The carpenters, painters, and decorators were adept at disguising this fact. They worked hard to lend the sets a different look.

  The studio’s costume, prop, and weaponry departments were nothing short of amazing. They seemed to have virtually everything already in stock, and what they didn’t have, they could rent from an outside supplier, or create from scratch themselves, overnight or in a day or two at the most. If you told them you needed to outfit five hundred extras in complete uniforms and armor from head to foot, to transform them into ancient Roman soldiers, the answer was, No problem. What era of soldiers do you need, precisely? And are you sure you couldn’t use six hundred, or eight hundred? You’re going to want a complete army, aren’t you—foot soldiers, cavalry, standard bearers, commanders, generals? We can have it all ready for you the day after tomorrow.

  There was, for example, a whole warehouse that specialized in footwear—sandals and boots. Here, a certain pecking order kicked in, so to speak. If you were a mere extra, or you were playing a bit part, you were given your footwear out of stock. If you were playing a character important enough to receive billing, you had your sandals and boots made especially for you. Eric and I belonged to the latter category. We were measured by a cobbler, who made sure that from the knees down at least we would pass for authentic ancient Romans.

  We met the other members of the cast, and the crew.

  Tito Manlio was a virtually all-male affair. But Claudia, the token female in the story, was portrayed by Marina Fausti. She was a beautiful young woman and a versatile actress, although for some reason she kept being typecast and showcased in these sword and sandal films. In them, she played either the innocent, virginal heroine, or the slutty villainess, and she did both equally well.

  Marina could be drop-dead glamorous when she was all dressed up, on or off the set. (The costume department loved putting
her characters into elaborate gowns and jewelry, and the makeup artist followed suit by giving her “big hair” via wigs.) But she didn’t give herself any movie star airs. She looked great when she hung around the set in casual clothes, such as jeans and sweatshirts, with no makeup and her own hair hanging loose. She was “one of the guys,” and she loved to hear, and tell, dirty jokes.

  Marina and Alain Camargue were old friends. Alain had a dry sense of humor which struck me as typically French.

  During our very first conversation, after we were introduced, Alain joked that the movie ought to be titled not Tito Manlio, but, in English, Manly Tits—because there were so many bodybuilders in the cast, and so many bare male chests on display. He wasn’t exaggerating. The studio had found a huge blond, blue-eyed bodybuilder to play the ill-fated Gaul warrior in the prologue. He was a giant of a man, six and a half feet tall and proportionately broad. He looked Scandinavian, but he was in fact a Venetian. The equally ill-fated Latin warrior, Geminus, was played by another Italian bodybuilder. And a dozen or so other muscle men had been recruited as extras, to (literally) beef up the cast.

  Some of these Italian bodybuilders regarded Eric and me with suspicion, and even with resentment, at first. I couldn’t blame them. Eric and I were Americans—interlopers on these guys’ turf. They were all no doubt wondering why one of them couldn’t have been given a chance at a real role in this film. What did Eric and I have that they didn’t?

  Soon, though, we bonded, and established good working relationships with our fellow physique enthusiasts. That was the clue. We had our interest in weight training in common; that was our common ground. We bodybuilders were brothers under our skins. That fact overcame any prejudices or hard feelings.

  From the start, I became friends with Alain Camargue, who—like Marina—wasn’t intimidating at all. It wouldn’t have been inconceivable that Alain might have felt he was lowering himself by acting alongside a couple of novices such as Eric and me. But Alain was warm, friendly, and funny.