BURNING SECRET: Early Stanley Kubrick Screenplay Surfaces
Some very exciting news for Stanley Kubrick fans came about this weekend. News sources report that a once thought lost screenplay co-written by Stanley Kubrick has surfaced.
Entitled Burning Secret, the script is an adaptation of the 1913 novella by the Viennese writer Stefan Zweig. In Kubrick’s adaptation of the story of adultery and passion set in a spa resort, a suave and predatory man befriends a 10-year-old boy, using him to seduce the child’s married mother.He wrote it in 1956 with the novelist Calder Willingham, with whom he went on to collaborate on Paths of Glory the following year.The screenplay was found by Nathan Abrams, professor in film at Bangor University and a leading Kubrick expert, who said: “I couldn’t believe it. It’s so exciting. It was believed to have been lost.”He added: “Kubrick aficionados know he wanted to do it, [but] no one ever thought it was completed. We now have a copy and this proves that he had done a full screenplay.”
Bangor University film professor Nathan Abrams announced the discovery while doing research for a new book, Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film. The script is owned by the son of one of Kubrick's collaborators.
The screenplay was stamped by MGM's script department in 1956. The same report suggests that perhaps the social climate of 1950s Hollywood may have found the content too risque for that viewing audience then. Other accounts suggest that MGM nixed the project when they found out that Kubrick was also working on Paths of Glory which would have put him in breach of contract.
Photo: Look Magazine 1949
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