Using previously unpublished correspondence and personal journal entries from screenwriter Abraham Polonsky, neglected notices in Variety and other Hollywood trade publications, and a wide range of published sources, this narrative backstory of rival movie productions of The Gladiators vs Spartacus documents that intense competition with greater precision and clarity than any other existing account. The key role that this little-known chapter of Hollywood's blacklist history played, in connection with Dalton Trumbo's successful effort to win screen credit for Spartacus, is now for the first time available to film historians and lay readers. A companion study, Volume 2, is devoted to Abraham Polonsky’s rediscovered screenplay.