March 21, 1937—An auto accident involving actress Merle Oberon proved the last straw for
the production of I, Claudius, which ceased following weeks of trouble on the set
of the adaptation of Robert Graves’ works on imperial Rome. Korda, a Hungarian émigré to Britain, was in the middle of a solid decade-long run as an independent producer of intelligent, often history-based drama, including Fire Over England, That Hamilton Woman, The Private Life of Henry VIII, and Rembrandt. At the height of his artistic and commercial prestige, he also had a good track record as a director, and could very well have taken over this role as well.
Instead, he turned to Josef von Sternberg to take direct Graves' script of his own novel in the form of an "autobiography" of the Roman emperor. Sternberg had a reputation as a “woman’s director,” in no small part due to the several films he made at Paramount featuring Marlene Dietrich. Korda's choice might seem curious at first, given that the main character in I, Claudius was male. But Sternberg’s films often were suffused with themes of corruption and sexual depravity—certainly elements of the Roman Empire—and Korda thought that Sternberg could carefully guide his lover Oberon in the complex role of Messalina, the virginal teen bride of Claudius who eventually becomes the worst of female Roman voluptuaries. The price of Sternberg's acceptance of the job: he had no say in the casting of Oberon.
But unexpectedly, it was Laughton rather than Oberon, a young, beautiful, but not terribly gifted actress, who presented problems for Sternberg. Though the two had previously been friendly, Sternberg now left the actor adrift as he groped for a woman into his character.
Many actors would have killed for Laughton’s gifts, which included a marvelous voice, the ability to play comedy and drama with equal dexterity, and an intelligence so keen that, a decade later, he worked with Bertolt Brecht on perhaps the best English translation of the playwright’s Galileo. But the actor was in a sham marriage to Elsa Lanchester to conceal his homosexuality from the public; he believed himself physically hideous (“I have got a face like an elephant's behind!"); and when he couldn’t find the key to a character, the portly star’s torment could capsize a production. Korda, who had worked with him previously (including his Oscar-winning role as Henry VIII), remarked, “With him, acting was an act of childbirth. What he needed was not so much a director as a midwife.”
Sternberg made it painfully obvious to cast and crew that Laughton was on his own in the role. But, no matter how frustrated set observers might have felt with the tormented star, the director squandered any reservoir of sympathy he might have had with them because of his own behavior. His aristocratic pretensions (including what many believed to be a bogus "von") and his hypocrisy in sneering at Laughton's mental anguish (Sternberg had suffered a nervous breakdown when his own career at Paramount came crashing down) increased tensions on the set immeasurably.
Under these circumstances, Oberon's auto accident came as "a godsend," according to Emlyn Williams, the actor-playwright who played Claudius' mad nephew, the cruel Caligula. Indeed, some cynics have wondered not just about Oberon's injuries (she did not end up in critical condition), but whether they occurred at all. The accident furnished such a ready pretext for ending the production, in this view, that the whole thing smelled phony.
I think that argument can be dispensed with easily: If Oberon was faking, then why did she carry a facial scar for the rest of her life--one noticeable enough that her second husband, cinematographer Lucien Ballard, had to create a special compact spotlight that would reduce the incidence of notable lines such as this?
Just before production was abandoned, Laughton believed he had finally found the key to his character, a royal thrust into circumstances beyond his control, in the fate of King Edward VIII, and he began to listen obsessively to the latter’s famous abdication speech. The ironic thing was that, if the actor wanted a real royal model to follow, he might have tried to learn more about the man who assumed the throne after Edward stepped down, his brother George VI—someone who, like Claudius, suffered mightily from his vocal impediment (as the world now knows, famously, because of The King’s Speech).
Given Korda's record as a producer and director, there is plenty of reason to mourn the loss of I, Claudius. Among the list of potentially great (or at least fascinating) films that never got made (including two by Orson Welles, It's All True and The Other Side of the Wind), this takes pride of place.
Most of the talented personnel associated with the film moved on to projects at least as good as this (notably Oberon, cast two years later in Wuthering Heights). The one whose career was never really the same was Sternberg. He was involved in eight other movies over the remaining three decades of his life, but I, Claudius represented his last significant attempt to stay on the radar as a filmmaking force. His last years were notably dour. He had a great deal to teach film students at UCLA, but interviewers inquiring about his last work, including the young critic (and future director) Peter Bogdanovich, ended up getting a stream of short, surly responses.
Among these interviewers were the makers of a documentary from the 1960s about the making and unmaking of I, Claudius, The Epic That Never Was, narrated by Dirk Bogarde. On camera, Sternberg notes that the film was shut down because of "the actors"--a contention that surviving cast members had to restrain themselves in rebutting.
A long, telling excerpt from this documentary--including a haughty, none-too-pleased Sternberg--along surviving footage--can be found here.
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