Legendary 1976 sports drama Rocky told the rags-to-riches story of smalltime backstreet boxer Rocky Balboa, who eventually ends up going a full fifteen rounds in a world heavyweight championship match. With that in mind, it could be argued that the film’s plotline mirrors the uphill struggle that inexperienced writer and leading man Sylvester Stallone had in transporting his inkling of an idea for a boxing movie into a franchise-starting, Oscar-winning box office smash. Here are some facts about the “Rocky” road the movie had to go down ahead of production.
FIRST PUNCH
Stallone—who is said to have had barely $100 in his bank account when he first began work on the movie—first conceived of the idea behind Rocky after watching an infamous championship fight between Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner in 1975. He refined the idea in his head for over a year before first putting pen to paper. Despite having little screenwriting or storytelling experience, Stallone was able to bring his first draft together almost impossibly quickly: Reportedly, it took him just three and a half days to complete his first attempt at the script.
RINGING THE CHANGES
That first draft, however, wasn’t quite the same movie that would eventually end up on screen. In the original, Rocky’s Italian American girlfriend Adrian was conceived as a sweet young Jewish girl; Stallone reportedly modeled the original character on Bette Midler. His steadfast coach Mickey Goldmill (who would go on to be played by an Oscar-nominated Burgess Meredith) was originally conceived of as a brutal, abrasive bigot. Apollo Creed, the all-American, stars-and-stripes wearing world champion played by Carl Weathers, was meant to be Jamaican. And at the end of the movie, Stallone initially decided that Rocky would throw the fight, and use the money he made from his experience in the ring to open a pet shop with Adrian. “Not as dramatic, is it?” Stallone once quipped when asked about his first plans for the movie.
THE RIGHT BOX
It wasn’t just the plot that went through a series of revisions either. Stallone had always envisaged himself in the title role, but after he started shopping the idea around the major Hollywood studios, it soon emerged that few producers shared his view. United Artists, who would eventually go on to release the movie, immediately liked Stallone’s script but saw it as a vehicle more befitting one of Hollywood’s better-established stars. In early meetings with Stallone, the studio heads explained that they were interested in casting someone like Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, or James Caan in the title role. Thankfully, Stallone’s agents stepped into the negotiations and were so insistent on Stallone playing the role of Rocky himself that they issued an ultimatum: no Stallone, no script. As for Adrian, her part was initially offered to Susan Sarandon (who was later taken out of negotiations for being “too sexy”), Bette Midler (who turned it down, despite being Stallone’s original idea for the part), and Diary of a Mad Housewife star Carrie Snodgrass (who initially won the part but was later turned down when her agent asked for too much money). The role eventually went to Talia Shire, who would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for her performance.
GOING FOR GOLD
Shire and Meredith weren’t the movie’s only Oscar nominees. Rocky received a total of ten nominations at the 49th Academy Awards in 1977, including nods for Stallone, both as Best Actor and in the Best Screenplay category; Burt Young, who played Rocky’s best friend Paulie, as Best Supporting Actor (in competition against his costar, Burgess Meredith); and in the Best Original Song category, for the title theme “Gonna Fly Now.” (Contrary to popular belief, Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” was written much later, for Rocky III in 1982; it went on to lose out on the Best Song Oscar to “Up Where We Belong” from An Officer and a Gentleman.) In total, Rocky won three of the Oscars it was shortlisted for: Best Editing, Best Director, and Best Picture—beating off stiff competition from the likes of Taxi Driver, Network, and All the President’s Men.
BOXING FANS
Thanks to Stallone’s relative inexperience as a writer and actor at the time, Rocky’s Best Picture win came as something of a surprise on Oscar night—but it doubtless proved popular with its fans in the audience at home, who had helped Rocky earn an impressive $225 million at the 1976 box office, against a mere $1 million budget. According to Stallone, however, the movie also had more than its fair share of famous fans. In an interview with GQ in 2010, Stallone explained that Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, and legendary director Frank Capra all later contacted him after the movie’s success at the Oscars. Elvis reportedly invited Stallone to watch the film with him in a private showing in Memphis, but Stallone was too shy to accept and Presley passed away just a few months later. Chaplin wrote to explain that Balboa’s rags-to-riches story reminded him of one of his own characters, and invited Stallone to visit him in Switzerland to discuss it; alas, Chaplin too died just weeks after the invite was sent. And when Stallone lost out on the Best Actor Oscar (to Peter Finch in Network), Capra wrote to him to say, “Take heart … because it’s fitting that the character you created, Rocky, would lose, that other people would take all the glory.”