Where to watch Ben-Hur (1959)

Trivia & production notes

• Gore Vidal was initially suspended by MGM for refusing to write a script version for Ben-Hur in 1957, then later brought back to work on the film.
• William Wyler only became interested in directing Ben-Hur after learning that MGM would spend up to $10 million on the film, including storyboards showcasing the chariot race.
• Wyler's base salary of $350,000 plus 8 percent of the gross box office was the largest amount ever paid to a director for a single film at the time.
• More than 12 different script versions were written by various writers before production began, leading to extensive rewrites throughout the shoot.
• Gore Vidal rewrote nearly all of the dialogue from the Tunberg, Behrman, and Anderson scripts, though Christopher Fry later rewrote about a third of Vidal's dialogue for the first half.
• Christopher Fry spent six days a week on set writing and rewriting scenes and dialogue until the picture was finished, giving the final script a more formal and archaic tone.
• Vidal's key structural change was breaking Ben-Hur and Messala's single reuniting scene into two separate scenes, first at the Castle Antonia and later at Ben-Hur's home.
• The role of Esther was greatly expanded from the original novel to provide a strong romantic interest throughout the film.
• Wyler cast British actors as Romans (speaking in upper-class British accents) and American actors as Jews (with American accents) to use accent as linguistic coding that underscored the divide between the two groups.
• MGM opened a casting office in Rome in mid-1957 to select 50,000 people for minor roles and extras, with a total of 365 actors having speaking parts in the film.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Ben-Hur (1959 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.