In 1959 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released its supercolossal epic, Ben-Hur. At a cost of $15 million this lavishly produced film employed six 65-millimetre cameras*, 3000 sets and 50,000 people, including main actors Carlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet and Stephen Boyd.

In addition to a magnificent score, stunning photography and intelligent direction, the film boasted those essential ingredients which guarantee a movie's long-term success: injustice, pathos, survival in the face of perscecution, spirited action (on the epic scale!), grandeur, romance, and of course, a biblical setting. And successful it surely was. It grossed $80 million for MGM in rentals and even twelve years after its release it attracted a staggering 32.5 million viewers when first shown on national TV in America.

Surprisingly, MGM has made a Ben-Hur epic twice. In 1923 the company obtained movie rights to the story, and in 1925, following a variety of upsets and financial uncertainties, a silent film finally emerged that became the most successful celluloid the early movie industry had ever seen.


Stills from the costly 1925 screen version of Ben-Hur.

Prior to this the story of Ben-Hur had become hugely successful as a stage production based on the 500-page best-seller by General Lew Wallace.

Unlikely though it may seem, the author of Ben-Hur was an industrious lawman. When he retired from his position as a union general (a title he kept), Wallace became a territorial governor in New Mexico.

Although at one time he was involved in a legal wrangle over the imprisonment and proposed release of Billy the Kid (within the privileges of his own amnesty proclamation of 1878), and even though he was kept busy with the general administration law and order, he still found time to write the final chapters of a book he had been working on for about five years. He called the finished story, “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ”.


Ben-Hur's author Lew Wallace and detail from a poster advertising the successful stage version of the book, a grand presentation that grossed $10 million in 20 years and was seen by around 20 million people.


1) Charlton Heston 2) Stephen Boyd, wearing brown contact lenses to hide his blue eyes. 3) Haya Harareet 4) Jack Hawkins 5) A rare photograph of the actor who played Christ. 6) Charlton Heston beside one of the production's $100,000 65mm cameras. 7) Heston and Boyd between takes.

The central characters in Wallace's book are Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy and influential Jew, and Messala, a former friend, recently returned to Judea from Rome with a garrison under his command.

Ben-Hur quickly discovers that Messala's god is Rome. The magnificence of the Roman Empire fills his vision and his desire to serve the Emperor (in whom there is "true divinity", he says) consumes him. When he expects Judah to help him subjugate the Jewish people, a conflict flares up between them. Ultimately Ben-Hur finds a solution to this apparently irreconcilable problem in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah.

 

* One of these cameras was destroyed in an accident during rehearsals for the chariot race.

 

Go to Page 2

 

 

 

photography | gallery | quotes | xmas | dementia