PRE-DONNER - 1976/ ALEXANDER SALKIND AND MONEY

To understand the what's and whys I must start at the beginning of the STM production in England, No? You are quite right, let's go back further.

The Salkinds became notorious during the production of the Musketeer films. When Lester completed the picture, he had at least 4 hours worth of material. Alex Salkind threw up an idea, "Why not cut the film into half and make 2 movies?" And this is what happened. 2 movies were released, but one mistake, no one told the actors.
Enraged, Heston and his colleagues sued the producers for releasing 2 movies when their contract stated one film. Ultimately, the producers had to pay up. Lester, the director of the films demanded his share of the profits, more on this later.

After this debacle, the famous "Salkind Clause" was introduced and it started with Superman - It states that the producers must declare how many pictures they are shooting with the cast and crew.
Alex Salkind also had lawyers on his back for other alleged illegal activities, but for this report we don't think it's worth treading there but...

...I'll point out that Alex was arrested in Switzerland, but got out of it by claiming diplomatic immunity (he had been a honouree consultant to the Costa Rican embassy in Switzerland). The charge? Misappropriating 20 million dollars for investment in Superman and other Salkind projects. The money was stolen from a German company owned by William Forman (L.A. theater magnate) but charges were later dropped and a civil settlement was agreed, apparently Alex paid out 23million which included buying out the magnate's interest in the Superman project. This happened during the Superman shooting, but was worth mentioning very early in this report.

This Donner and Mankiewicz quote suggests that the Salkinds never stepped foot in Costa Rica - "They even had different passports from Costa Rica," and Mank continued "The old man was the cultural attaché from Switzerland to Costa Rica so he couldn't get arrested! And they had never, ever been to Costa Rica in their lives!"

Alex's activities does seem to tie in with the Superman production because to raise the dough, he had to get backers including a bank.

Superman began pre-production in Rome with Guy Hamilton set to direct, but Marlon Brando was banned in Italy, so he couldn’t work there. The Italian authorities would've thrown Brando in the slammer because of the nudity in the film, Last Tango in Paris. The Salkinds decided to move to England, since it was cheaper and Brando could work there. Guy Hamilton was a tax exile so he couldn’t go, he subsequently dropped out. Guy could only work for 30 days per year, otherwise he'd be liable to pay tax.

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