WHILE 16-year-old Steven Spielberg was editing a home movie of his family holiday he noticed something that would change his life for ever.
His amateur film footage had captured his dad’s best pal, who had joined them on their trip, cosying up to his mum.
Now, 60 years later, that chilling teenage discovery — and the eventual end of the couple’s marriage — has inspired the world-renowned director to make a screen drama based on his own remarkable early years.
The result, The Fabelmans, is among the frontrunners for Oscar success in 2023. And while the names have been changed, this coming-of-age story set in a very unconventional household is all 76-year-old Steven's own.
His mum Leah — called Mitzi in the movie, and played by Michelle Williams — bought a pet monkey, had mental health problems, married his dad’s closest friend and treated her kids like friends.
From tongue scraping to saying no, here are 12 health trends to try in 2023
And his dad Arnold — renamed Burt and portrayed by Paul Dano in The Fabelmans — was an aloof, workaholic engineering genius who worked on the development of early computers.
Through the film Steven reveals the anti-Semitic beatings he suffered at school, a scary visit by a lion-taming uncle and how he almost gave up on his dream of making movies.
The pain of his parents’ bitter fighting left a scar on the great American film-maker that has found its way into his stories.
Trains crashing
There was the father who left his family in ET, the emotionally distant dad in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade and the husband who left for outer space in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.
Steven was estranged from Arnold for 15 years, reportedly blaming him for the end of his parents’ marriage.
But The Fabelmans paints a far more sympathetic view of his dad, who he had grown close to, prior to his death at the grand old age of 103 in 2020.
Instead we learn that it was Leah who enjoyed trysts with Arnold’s friend, Bernie Adler.
Steven said: “That was a secret we shared for most of our lives. In a way, making this movie made me realise that I had been carrying that burden all these years, and I had to exorcise it from my own heart and soul.”
While he was shooting the $40million (£33million) film, he is reported to have regularly asked himself: “Is this $40million of therapy?”
Even in Hollywood, that would buy a lot of hours on the psychiatrist’s couch.
How to de-clutter if you have a beauty stash to last you a lifetime
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Steven moved from city to city as his father earned ever greater promotions.
In New Jersey he made his first film, with his dad’s 8mm camera, recording his toy trains crashing, and then in Phoenix, Arizona, he roped his friends into increasingly elaborate projects.
For a 1962 scene from the Second World War they went up a hill dressed in clothes dyed to look like military uniforms, the action being filmed by six cameras carefully set up by young Steven.
Meanwhile at home, all was not well for his parents. Free-spirited Leah had given up a career as a concert pianist to look after Steven and his younger sisters Anne, Nancy and Sue.
In contrast, Arnold worked long hours developing computer systems for RCA, General Electric and IBM.
Steven said that while his dad was “fulfilled”, his mum was “full of despair” in Phoenix.
For comfort she turned to Bernie — called Bennie and played by Seth Rogen in The Fabelmans.
For Steven, the decision to recreate his horrified teenage moment of realisation about his mum’s infidelity in the new film was not an easy one.
He said: “That was one of the toughest things, I think, that I had to sit down and decide to expose, because it was the most powerful secret my mum and I shared since my discovery when I was 16.
“Sixteen years old is too young to realise that my parents are people, and also the struggle not to hold that against them.”
When the family upped roots again, moving to Saratoga in California’s Silicon Valley, it was hoped that they could have a fresh start without Bernie. This time Leah chose a small monkey as a companion.
Steven said: “It was a therapeutic companion for my mum, who was really at that time in our lives going through a major depression.”
It was also a wild beast that scared the children with its erratic behaviour around the family home.
Steven told actress Michelle Williams that he and his mum “were more like playmates” and Michelle said: “They got into mischief together. They got into fun.”
Leah was not the only odd one in her family — her brother Boris was a lion tamer who worked for the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Steven said: “I only met him twice. He scared everybody in the family.”
While California is considered one of America’s most liberal states, it was there that young Steven encountered the most explicit anti-Semitism.
Two students at Saratoga High School bullied him and he once revealed: “I got smacked and kicked around. Two bloody noses. It was horrible.”
In 1964, aged 17, Steven put away his camera, as his father believed he should give up what he regarded as a hobby to pursue a “proper” job.
But he took it up again for an end-of-year school movie, which made him popular with his class-mates. It was a useful distraction from an increasingly fraught home life.
He said: “I wish my parents had divorced five years before they did, because they weren’t happy for five years, and we were more miserable living with that.
“Had it been a clean break we wouldn’t have had to have five years of hearing the fighting coming through the heating vents from their bedroom to ours and hearing all the yelling.”
In 1966 the couple finally realised enough was enough and agreed to a divorce. A year later Leah married Bernie, and Arnold sub-sequently had two more marriages.
Even though Steven went to live with his dad and knew about his mum’s infidelity, he blamed Arnold for the break-up — after his dad had given his kids the impression that he had asked Leah for the divorce, because he did not want them to hate their mum.
He once told a TV documentary: “I never would tell the kids that she divorced me. Instead, I let them think I divorced her.”
As a result, Steven would praise his mum in interviews and at awards ceremonies while criticising his father for being absent.
That would have been painful for his dad, who had helped Steven get a place as an intern at Universal Pictures, which turned into a full-time job directing movies for TV.
Their frosty relationship finally thawed in 1989 after Steven’s own divorce from his first wife, actress Amy Irving, after four years.
It was one of the most expensive divorces in Hollywood history, with the director agreeing to pay the mother of his first child Max, 39, $100million (£83million).
Two years later he tied the knot with actress Kate Capshaw, who he had cast in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom in 1984.
Steven admitted: “I wanted my father to remarry my mother, and he didn’t. You’re 16, 17 years old, blaming your parents for some-thing you know very little about.
“I don’t really share with my children the relationship I have with Kate. So I had been making judgments about a divorce, and whose fault it was, as an outsider.”
The story of ET, where a young boy finds a friendship with an alien after his dad leaves the family home, was inspired by his parents’ break-up. “The whole movie is really about divorce,” he has admitted.
After he and his dad became close again, Steven paid tribute to him through his Oscar-nominated 1998 war film Saving Private Ryan.
Arnold had signed up to fight during the Second World War and played a key communications role for the Burma Bridge Busters, the US bomb squadron that destroyed 192 Japanese-held bridges in what is now called Myanmar.
Steven also became close friends with Leah again prior to her death at the age of 97 in 2017.
He said: “My sisters and I constantly marvel at the fact that very few kids get their parents back after a divorce.
“And yet we were able to get ours back.”
A GAME...FILM, SET & MATCH
THERE is no bigger beast in movies than Steven Spielberg – but can you tell your Jaws from your Jurassic Park just by seeing the director at work on set?
Try our quiz, with clues to help you – and the answers at the bottom.
Answers
1) Hook
2) Tintin
3) Minority Report
4) War Horse
5) The Terminal
6) The Lost World: Jurassic Park
7) Ready Player One
8) Raiders of the Lost Ark
9) Bridge of Spies
10) A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
