December 30, 1925—It was already the bestselling novel of the 19th century, the greatest Broadway success of its time, and the subject of additional books, signs, toys and ads. And it was no different when the first full-length film version of Ben-Hur premiered at the George M. Cohan Theater in New York City--everyone wanted to be part of this multigenerational, multimedia phenomenon.
Spectacle represented a huge part of the appeal of this project--including the epic galley battle and, of course, the thunderous chariot race that climaxes this tale of vengeance and faith. And people not only wanted to see a spectacle in the form of the finished picture, but even in the course of filming.
What separates a Titanic from a Cleopatra, aside from millions in profits? Certainly not expense, nor even pre-release troubles.
A Vanity Fair article on the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor behemoth noted that “It took two of everything to get Cleopatra in the can: two Twentieth Century Fox regimes, two directors…and more than two years of shooting.” Yet nearly four decades before the release of that film, Ben-Hur had already set the template, becoming a cost-overrun horror show because of changes in costumes, scripts, directors and even principal actors.
The on-location Roman sets for Ben-Hur were so lavish, so beyond anything experienced before, that crowds of spectators (including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald) turned out to gawk.
Yet the film’s producers decided they needed to rein in a production exacting unexpected costs both in monetary terms (its approximate $4 million in costs set a record for the time) and in human life (a stunt man was killed during the shooting of the chariot race scene, and several accidents also occurred). To impose some order on what was turning out to be a mess, they turned to Fred Niblo, who had already scored hits with The Three Musketeers and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Sets and costumes were scrapped as the crew relocated to where the studio could keep a better eye on them: Culver City, Calif.
Moreover, the original Ben-Hur, George Walsh, had only shot one reel of film--a test, mind you--when he experienced the indignity of hearing about his sacking secondhand from co-star Francis X. Bushman, who read about it in the papers. (Rudolph Valentino was the overwhelming popular choice to play the title character, the same way that Clark Gable would dominate the Rhett Butler sweepstakes in Gone With the Wind--but Ramon Navarro was eventually judged a suitable replacement for Walsh by studio and public.)
Like Cleopatra, Ben-Hur also went through two studio changes. Goldwyn Pictures had bought the film rights from a producer of the stage play, Abraham Erlanger, but then Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer inherited the project.
(Oh, I forgot to mention that the original screenwriter, June Mathis, was also yanked from the production. But are you really surprised by this, faithful reader? After all, Hollywood runs through screenwriters the way Larry King does wives. I mean, what can you say when you learn that at least five screenwriters slaved over the Tom Hanks film, Turner and Hooch? Come on--how many ways can you tell the story of a dog?)
After all the migraines and agita, was it all worth it? For the filmmakers, perhaps not. The film grossed $9 million, but the cost overruns and the lucrative deal made by Erlanger loomed so large that MGM made few if any profits.
For the public, it was another story, as they got to see all the technical power that Hollywood could bring to a property, with all kinds of records set in the process: 48 cameras used for the sea battle, the most edited scene in film history (200,000 feet of film boiled down to a mere 750 feet for the chariot race) and, perhaps, the largest cast (a purported 125,000).
Americans had already proved they would snap up anything connected to the name Ben-Hur since the novel’s publication in 1880. The gargantuan success of the latter provided much-needed balm to the ego of Lew Wallace, who, after a controversial performance as a general at the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War, had been popping up, Zelig-like, throughout the postwar period: as a judge during the trials of the Lincoln conspirators, again as a judge investigating the horrors of Andersonville prison camp, as a commissioner deciding the disputed Presidential election of 1876, and as territorial governor of New Mexico when Billy the Kid was raising a ruckus.
It was during his tenure in the latter post that Wallace wrote his second--and by far most successful--historical novel. Intellectuals would never put him in the same company as Hawthorne or Melville, but with Ben-Hur this Hoosier-born romantic man of action effected a broadening of American literary culture that the elites could never manage.
Because of its religious subject matter (in a brilliant stroke of marketing, the novel was subtitled, “A Tale of the Christ”), Ben-Hur became the first book other than the Bible even found in many homes. For a former soldier who acted upon a challenge by noted agnostic Col. Robert Ingersoll, it must have been especially gratifying to hear from many readers that Ben-Hur even led them to convert to Christianity.
Spectacle represented a huge part of the appeal of this project--including the epic galley battle and, of course, the thunderous chariot race that climaxes this tale of vengeance and faith. And people not only wanted to see a spectacle in the form of the finished picture, but even in the course of filming.
What separates a Titanic from a Cleopatra, aside from millions in profits? Certainly not expense, nor even pre-release troubles.
A Vanity Fair article on the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor behemoth noted that “It took two of everything to get Cleopatra in the can: two Twentieth Century Fox regimes, two directors…and more than two years of shooting.” Yet nearly four decades before the release of that film, Ben-Hur had already set the template, becoming a cost-overrun horror show because of changes in costumes, scripts, directors and even principal actors.
The on-location Roman sets for Ben-Hur were so lavish, so beyond anything experienced before, that crowds of spectators (including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald) turned out to gawk.
Yet the film’s producers decided they needed to rein in a production exacting unexpected costs both in monetary terms (its approximate $4 million in costs set a record for the time) and in human life (a stunt man was killed during the shooting of the chariot race scene, and several accidents also occurred). To impose some order on what was turning out to be a mess, they turned to Fred Niblo, who had already scored hits with The Three Musketeers and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Sets and costumes were scrapped as the crew relocated to where the studio could keep a better eye on them: Culver City, Calif.
Moreover, the original Ben-Hur, George Walsh, had only shot one reel of film--a test, mind you--when he experienced the indignity of hearing about his sacking secondhand from co-star Francis X. Bushman, who read about it in the papers. (Rudolph Valentino was the overwhelming popular choice to play the title character, the same way that Clark Gable would dominate the Rhett Butler sweepstakes in Gone With the Wind--but Ramon Navarro was eventually judged a suitable replacement for Walsh by studio and public.)
Like Cleopatra, Ben-Hur also went through two studio changes. Goldwyn Pictures had bought the film rights from a producer of the stage play, Abraham Erlanger, but then Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer inherited the project.
(Oh, I forgot to mention that the original screenwriter, June Mathis, was also yanked from the production. But are you really surprised by this, faithful reader? After all, Hollywood runs through screenwriters the way Larry King does wives. I mean, what can you say when you learn that at least five screenwriters slaved over the Tom Hanks film, Turner and Hooch? Come on--how many ways can you tell the story of a dog?)
After all the migraines and agita, was it all worth it? For the filmmakers, perhaps not. The film grossed $9 million, but the cost overruns and the lucrative deal made by Erlanger loomed so large that MGM made few if any profits.
For the public, it was another story, as they got to see all the technical power that Hollywood could bring to a property, with all kinds of records set in the process: 48 cameras used for the sea battle, the most edited scene in film history (200,000 feet of film boiled down to a mere 750 feet for the chariot race) and, perhaps, the largest cast (a purported 125,000).
Americans had already proved they would snap up anything connected to the name Ben-Hur since the novel’s publication in 1880. The gargantuan success of the latter provided much-needed balm to the ego of Lew Wallace, who, after a controversial performance as a general at the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War, had been popping up, Zelig-like, throughout the postwar period: as a judge during the trials of the Lincoln conspirators, again as a judge investigating the horrors of Andersonville prison camp, as a commissioner deciding the disputed Presidential election of 1876, and as territorial governor of New Mexico when Billy the Kid was raising a ruckus.
It was during his tenure in the latter post that Wallace wrote his second--and by far most successful--historical novel. Intellectuals would never put him in the same company as Hawthorne or Melville, but with Ben-Hur this Hoosier-born romantic man of action effected a broadening of American literary culture that the elites could never manage.
Because of its religious subject matter (in a brilliant stroke of marketing, the novel was subtitled, “A Tale of the Christ”), Ben-Hur became the first book other than the Bible even found in many homes. For a former soldier who acted upon a challenge by noted agnostic Col. Robert Ingersoll, it must have been especially gratifying to hear from many readers that Ben-Hur even led them to convert to Christianity.
When he wasn't writing melodramatic claptrap (especially involving the vamp Iras), Wallace created lean, sinewy prose that only a man of action could produce and only the motion picture could do full justice to, as in these sentences from the sea-battle scene:
"At last there was a sound of trumpets on deck, full, clear, long-blown. The chief beat the sounding board until it rang; the rowers reached forward full-length, and, deepening the quiver of their oars, pulled suddenly with all their united force. The galley, quivering in every timber, answered with a leap....There was a mighty blow; the rowers in front of the chief's platform reeled, some of them fell; the ship bounded back, recovered, and rushed on more irresistibly than before."
Two other ways in which adapting Ben-Hur to film made history:
* In 1907, a pioneering motion-picture company, Kalem, filmed the chariot scene without getting permission from General Wallace's estate. His son pounced with a lawsuit that was eventually decided in his favor in a 1911 Supreme Court precedent-setting decision that extended copyright law to the new medium of film.
* In 1959, MGM, in dire straits, bet the ranch on a remake of Ben-Hur. It raked in $40 million in its first year alone, along with 11 Oscars (including a Best Actor statuette for Charlton Heston and Best Director honors for William Wyler, who, during production of the silent version, had served as one of 60 assistant directors for the chariot-race scene). It was not unlike the stupendous bet made by the villainous Messala on the printed page and screen, except with a much more agreeable outcome.
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