On a 1950s movie poster he’s the ultimate Hollywood tough guy — muscle-bound, hyper-masculine, playing cowboys and pirates. Behind closed doors he was a fiercely progressive intellectual who devoured James Baldwin, drew extensive FBI scrutiny, and landed on Richard Nixon’s enemies list. A staggering contradiction.

This story-driven deep dive follows a man who lived multiple lives at once: an East Harlem circus acrobat who conquered Hollywood, broke the back of the studio system, and used his fame as a shield for fearless activism during America’s most volatile eras.

• The accidental discovery — spotted in an elevator — and a bold promise to produce his own films within five years, almost delusional in the 1940s studio era
• How The Crimson Pirate let him break the fourth wall and tell the audience to “believe half of what you see,” then how Marty won Best Picture on a $350,000 budget
• His astonishing range, from Elmer Gantry to a Nazi in Judgment at Nuremberg to The Swimmer — for which the acrobat secretly couldn’t swim
• How his independent financial fortress shielded his activism, from delivering Baldwin’s words at the March on Washington to confronting AIDS stigma for Rock Hudson
• A turbulent private life and a deliberately anonymous exit — a small plaque, no funeral — for a man whose life played out on massive global stages