Word: filming
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...running 21 years, had been seen by 20 million fans, had grossed $10 million. In 1926, M-G-M turned it into the first of the cinemammoths, a $4,000,000, two-hour spectacle starring Ramon Novarro as Ben-Hur and Francis X. Bushman as Messala. By 1936, the film had grossed almost $10 million, and the book had become the biggest bestseller (more than 2,000,000 copies) in U.S. history, not counting the Bible...
...serious heart attack, and two weeks later Producer Sam Zimbalist had a fatal one. By the time the cameras had finally stopped rolling, MGM's London laboratories had processed, at a cost of $1 a foot, some 1,250,000 feet of special, 65-mm. Eastman Color film...
...film has its failures. The movie hero is pretty much an overgrown boy scout who never experiences the moral struggles that beset the hero of the book. Then, too, the story sometimes lags-not, oddly enough, because it is too long but because it is too short. For the final script, M-G-M eliminated an entire subplot that gives the middle of the story its shape and suspense. But the religious theme is handled with rare restraint and good taste. The face of Christ is never fully revealed. The Sermon on the Mount, The Trial. The Ascent of Calvary...
...easy street for the rest of his life. But it is probable that MGM, which was in a shaky financial spot when the project was launched, will not have any trouble keeping up the payments. Ben-Hur has run up the biggest advance sale ($500,000) in film history, and the studio expects it to run at least two years at high-priced, ten-a-week showings in selected theaters, and to make more money than The Ten Commandments, which has already grossed more than $50 million...
That's the first prerequisite. The second involves not letting the name William Faulkner cross your mind during the show, for it will only evoke sympathy for Mr. Faulkner and antipathy for Jerry Wald, of Peyton Place fame, who lovingly identified Faulkner with his film, but who cunningly ripped up The Hamlet into many pieces, tossed them into the air, and caught mostly his own chaff...