9/28/23
Newsletter #472
The Crack of Dawn
MGM is a conglomerate created in 1924. It was a combination of Lewis Selznick’s company, Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer Pictures, and Goldwyn Pictures. Many assets came with the merger, including the Goldwyn Studio (formerly Triangle Pictures), which became the MGM lot in Culver City (now Sony Pictures). The most expensive asset, which could easily still prove to be the biggest debit, was the unfinished, extremely troubled, production of Ben Hur (1925), that was presently shooting in Italy. At a time when the average Hollywood feature film cost $150,000, they had already spent two million dollars on Ben Hur. Worse still, everybody hated all of the footage. The first big decision made at MGM was to shut down the production on Ben Hur and bring it back to Hollywood. They scrapped all of the footage, fired the director, and recast the lead. The film finally came in at a whopping four million dollars, making it the most expensive movie of the silent era. Even though the film grossed nine million dollars worldwide, it still ended up as at least a million-dollar loss. Everybody understood that the only way that MGM could ever recoup their money was to eventually remake the film.
For the next 35 years Ben Hur was the albatross production of MGM. The studio really wanted to remake the film and was willing to put up a lot of money to do it. However, not only did the project carry an enormous amount of baggage, and expectations, the first version had destroyed many people’s careers. Nobody wanted to touch the idea of a remake, except that everybody knew that MGM really wanted it.
At some point a script was ordered up and written by the unexceptional screenwriter, Karl Tunberg, which nobody liked (when the smoke cleared years later, Karl Tunberg got the credit and the Oscar). Over the years such writing luminaries as Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Christopher Fry, and finally, Gore Vidal, were brought in and paid big fees to rewrite the script. No matter what was done to the script, nobody liked it. The original book by Civil War General, Lew Wallace (about whom I’ve written an unfinished book), was written in 1880 as Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ and no longer really made sense to a modern audience. The years went by, and the loss remained on MGM’s books. Worse still, and quite frankly humiliating, was that the loss was caused by an enormous hit. Ben Hur was the second-highest grossing silent movie, next to Birth of a Nation (1915).
In 1925 when Ben Hur initially came out, Sam Zimbalist, a Jewish immigrant from Kyiv, Ukraine, was working in the Metro Pictures editing room. As Sam Zimbalist edited the Metro production of The Wizard of Oz (1925, with Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man), Metro became MGM. He had a front row seat to watch the hysteria of Ben Hur’s post-production, release, a huge success that wasn’t big enough, and the beginning struggle of getting it remade as first a talkie. Zimbalist worked his way from the editing room to producing Tarzan movies, to B-films, to good, solid, successful films, like Boom Town (1940) with Spencer Tracy; 30 Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), which was a big hit and is a particularly good movie; King Solomon’s Mines (1950) with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, which was also a big hit.
In 1951 Sam Zimbalist produced one of MGM’s biggest films ever, Quo Vadis? (and if you ever wondered what the hell does quo vadis? means, and why it has a question mark, it’s Latin and means, where are you going?). The film stars Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr in glorious Technicolor, looks great, but is actually a pretty dismal film (except for Peter Ustinov). But to me what is really interesting is that it was made two years before widescreen was introduced. To see a big Hollywood, Roman soldiers, Technicolor epic that’s square is unique. Two years later 20th Century Fox came out with CinemaScope (with the equally miserable, The Robe [1953]). The head of 20th, Darryl Zanuck, put it wryly, “The point now is not to be deep, it’s to be wide.”
With Quo Vadis? at MGM making so much money it only made sense to get Sam Zimbalist to finally make a sound version of Ben Hur. For the next seven years Zimbalist was the producer who brought in all the terrific writers, paid them well, and never got a good script.
So it’s 1958. I’m born. Who should enter the Ben Hur fracas but my favorite director (already), William Wyler. Wyler had the longest streak of hit movies in Hollywood – from the early talkie western, Hell’s Heroes (1929), to 1958’s biggest western, The Big Country, with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston. William Wyler, a man after my own heart, had managed in his astounding, truly exceptional, Oscar-laden, 25-year career, to never make any real money. For the first fifteen years he was under contract at a weekly rate (which was undoubtedly a very good salary during that period known as the Great Depression, and certainly Wyler did not want), but he didn’t get rich, either, or really save much, or anything. Five years was lost (and his hearing) to WWII. After the war, William Wyler became his own producer, and got quite good at it (and it’s hard as hell), culminating with the hit, The Big Country. But no matter how well that film did, Wyler had already basically sold his soul to get it made – it’s produced by Gregory Peck and William Wyler – and he would certainly make money, over time, but he would once again not get rich.
So, William Wyler bet on his ability. He met with Sam Zimbalist over at MGM and said that he, and only he, could actually make a good sound, color, widescreen version of Ben Hur. Sam Zimbalist had to believe him, and asked, “Have you got a lead in mind?” Wyler said, “Yes, Charlton Heston, who co-stars in my new picture, The Big Country.” Of course, Sam Zimbalist had to ask, “And what do you want?” That was easy for William Wyler. He said, “Half the receipts. I’m going to get rich.” How could Sam Zimbalist not give Wyler, his fellow immigrant Jew (they were both in their 50s), what he wanted? The chances were really good that if anyone could deliver, it was Wyler.
OK. Here’s the story I initially wanted to tell. The last writer brought aboard the long train of Ben Hur screenplays was the young, hot, opinionated, TV writer, Gore Vidal, who was just getting some feature films made. William Wyler brought Vidal along to Cinecetta Studios in Rome for the last-minute rewrites.
Gore Vidal wrote a great essay about this, but I’ll do my best. William Wyler and Gore Vidal were flying to Rome, first class, and between them sat a 350-page screenplay (scripts are usually 120-pages). Somewhere during the long flight Wyler asked, “Did you read it?” Gore Vidal said yes. Wyler asked, “What do you think?” and Vidal said, “It doesn’t make any sense.” And Wyler said, “That’s what I thought. How do we fix it?” Gore Vidal said, “Well . . . If they were more than friends in their youth, they were sexual lovers, then Masala left for Rome, breaking Ben Hur’s heart, then as our story begins, Masala returns to Jerusalem, a Roman commander, and their sexual tension causes them to get into this problem of him betraying his people, but that’s not what it’s about, it’s about their shared guilt, and the rest of the story happens.”
Wyler thought about it long and hard. It really does make sense out of a senseless story. He finally turned to Gore Vidal and said, “Don’t tell Chuck.”
It’s not quite dawn yet.