DIRECTOR: William Wyler
BOTTOM LINE: It’s the big one! William Wyler’s religious epic “Ben Hur” starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd as best friends who have a falling out and then must battle it out in a spectacular fashion to Miklos Rozsa’s pounding score – although some would argue that the chariot race in the 1925 Fred Niblo/Ramon Navarro silent version is superior. If you believe Gore Vidal, it was all because of a lover’s spat. Wyler and Boyd were in on the ruse, and Boyd played his scenes that way, but Heston was not.
I persuaded the producer, Sam Zimbalist (this was an MGM film and the writer worked not with the director but the producer; later the director, in this case William Wyler, weighed in) that the only way one could justify several hours of hatred between two lads–and all those horses–was to establish, without saying so in words, an affair between them as boys; then, when reunited at picture’s start, the Roman, played by Stephen Boyd, wants to pick up where they left off and the Jew, Heston, spurns him.
COUNTERPUNCH: GORE VIDAL RESPONDS TO CHARLTON HESTON. LOS ANGELES TIMES, JUNE 17. 1996.
