It all starts with a crime.
A shoemaker named Pierre Picaud, living in France in 1807,
was happily engaged to a beautiful, wealthy young woman. But the marriage was
not to be.
Three men who Picaud considered his friends plotted against
him and had him falsely accused of spying for England. Arrested and found
guilty, Picaud was sentenced to Fenestrelle Fort, where he was assigned as
servant to a rich Italian cleric. The cleric, over the years, grew to view
Picaud as something of a son, and when he died he bequeathed him his fortune.
Upon his release from prison, Picaud decided to seek his
revenge.
The first of his accusers was found dead with a knife in his
throat. The words “Number One” were engraved on the handle.
The second accuser was found poisoned not long after.
The third was different. He had married Picaud’s fiancé, and
so something more elaborate had to be planned. Loupian, as the third man was
called, was father to a son and daughter. Picaud lured the son into a life of
crime and arranged for the daughter to become a prostitute. It was all very
elaborate, and everything went according to plan.
Until a fourth man entered the picture.
Unbeknownst to Picaud, his three friends had asked for the
aid of a fourth in framing him. The fourth had declined, but had known of the
plot, and so was worried his life was in danger. He deduced Picaud’s identity,
and fatally stabbed him.
The police report was found, some years later, by a Parisian
true crime archivist by the name of Jacques Peuchet. Peuchet published it in a
collection of other intriguing murder tales in 1839.
Always on the lookout for inspiration, popular author
Alexandre Dumas picked up a copy of Peuchet’s crime stories. Though Peuchet had
a good idea of which stories would be interesting, he had an archivist’s skill for
narrating (it’s cool, Peuchet, so do I). But Dumas saw the potential in the Picaud
story.
He and his writing partner Auguste Maquet set about building
a novel around the revenge tale. They changed numerous elements, drawing on an
earlier novel they’d done called Georges,
about a vengeance obsessed young man lashing out at the bigotry he’d suffered
at the hands of his racist community.
For good measure, the Italian cleric was exchanged for
actual historical figure Abbé Faria, and an enormous secret treasure was added,
as well as some really good stuff about tunnelling out of an island fortress.
In 1844, the first instalment of The Count of Monte Cristo appeared and took France by storm. It
was, and remains, a terrifically good story.
My BFF Richard Chamberlain as the Count in 1975 |
And it was popular! It was an international sensation the
likes of which had never been seen before! Normally, a serialized novel would
be published gradually in its originating language, then collected, then
translated. But with Monte Cristo,
each installment was translated right away, and published in magazines around
the world. Everyone waited with bated breath to see what would happen to Edmond
Dantés in his obsessive quest for revenge.
Time to move forward thirty years and across the Atlantic to
the battlefields of the Civil War.
By this time, Monte
Cristo was well rooted in the literary consciousness, but it was far from
the mind of Major General Lew Wallace after the Battle of Shiloh. The number of
Union casualties reported climbed higher and higher, and it was becoming
apparent that the Confederates had won the meticulously planned battle. When
Lincoln demanded an explanation from generals Grant and Halleck, Halleck blamed
Wallace and his unit for the loss.
Wallace felt betrayed and slandered. He wrote to Grant
several times asking for a formal enquiry, and tried to encourage William
Tecumseh Sherman to help clear his name. Sherman urged patience.
The Shiloh controversy branded Wallace an ill-equipped
leader who had failed his country and his fellow soldiers.
After the war, Wallace decided to try his hand at writing
fiction. His first novel was about Cortez’s conquest of Mexico. Wallace, like
many other officers of his generation, had fought in the Mexican-American War,
and it was a subject that fascinated him. That first novel was called The Fair Hand, and it wasn’t much of a
success, but the writing of it had so pleased Wallace that he decided to tackle
a more ambitious project.
He would combine his own bitterness about the Shiloh affair
with the plot and structure of one of his favourite books, The Count of Monte Cristo; and since he had enjoyed the researching
of his first novel, he would choose another historical setting. This time, it
would be Ancient Rome during the life of Jesus. He was an agnostic and totally
uninformed about the place and time he chose, but he diligently studied all
resources available at the Library of Congress, and imbued the Roman military
with his experiences in the Union Army.
Veterans of the Civil War would find much familiar; unlike Monte Cristo, there was no need to
understand the social impact of French politics in the Napoleonic era. All you
had to know was the basic story of Jesus, and in 19th century
America, most people did.
Wallace called his second novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It was first published in 1880.
Author Lew Wallace |
Like Monte Cristo
before it, it was a runaway smash hit. It was the first novel to be blessed by
a Pope. It didn’t get a sandwich named after it, but it did have its own brand
of flour. (Tie-in marketing wasn’t really cohesive back then.)
Ben-Hur changed
everything for Wallace, even getting him a position as US ambassador to Turkey.
Unfortunately, he could never quite escape was the black eye of Shiloh. It wasn’t
until after Wallace’s death that Ulysses S. Grant officially explained that the
loss had not been Wallace’s fault.
By 1907, the story of Ben-Hur
was tightly woven into American popular culture. It was so ubiquitous that
Canadian silent film director Sydney Olcott decided to make a quick and cheap fifteen minute
silent film depicting the famous chariot race. Neither he nor the producing
studio had obtained the rights to do so, and the book was still under
copyright, at this time to Wallace’s widow.
In the early days of film, copyright infringement was par
for the course. Nobody in Hollywood cared, and the copyright holders felt that
there was little they could do about it.
Until Wallace’s widow and the publishers of Ben-Hur, Harper & Brothers, sued the pants off of Kalem Studios and The Motion Picture Patents Company, dragged them all the way to the Supreme Court and in 1911 had the law changed forever. From then on, if anybody wanted to make a film of any previously published work still under copyright, they had to obtain the production rights first.
Until Wallace’s widow and the publishers of Ben-Hur, Harper & Brothers, sued the pants off of Kalem Studios and The Motion Picture Patents Company, dragged them all the way to the Supreme Court and in 1911 had the law changed forever. From then on, if anybody wanted to make a film of any previously published work still under copyright, they had to obtain the production rights first.
And that brings us to our next batch of three men. These
three weren’t planning on framing anybody for treason, or scapegoating their
way out of a Civil War failure, they were trying to make a movie. It was 1925,
their names were Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn and Irving Thalberg. They
needed a good idea, a framework for their next major project.
Ben-Hur hadn’t
been on anybody’s to-do list since the massive lawsuit, but as long as they
could get the film rights, why not?
It was a little more expensive than they were hoping. After
the copyright debacle in 1907, if you wanted to see a dramatization of Ben-Hur, you had to hit up a long-running
play produced by Abraham Erlanger. The play had run, enormously successfully,
for twenty-five years. The curtain had barely dropped on the final tour when
the Goldwyn Company came a-knocking. Erlanger would not budge on his price for
the production rights.
Expensive as it was, the three producers shilled out. There
was this vision of the chariot race being shot to look like a painting by
Alexander von Wagner, and nobody could shake it. It was a brilliant idea.
Wagner's painting. Click to embiggen. |
1925’s Ben-Hur: A Tale
of the Christ was shot on location in Rome, at further expense. Everything
was replaced at least once, including the director and the stars. The finished
film was helmed by Fred Niblo, and featured Ramon Novarro as Judah Ben-Hur. The
scenes featuring Jesus were shot in two-tone Technicolor, and the chariot race
remains a spectacular feat of filming. The film clocks in at a comparatively
lean two and a half hours, most of it concerning the race.
For a fun Easter egg, you can look at the gallery of stars watching
in Roman garb as the chariots thunder by. There’s Louis B. Mayer himself, a
very young Joan Crawford, the Gish sisters, the Barrymore brothers, Marion
Davies, John Gilbert, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, all
chilling at the circus maximus.
The production was expensive and nobody
made back what they put into it, but the film itself was a critical darling and
scored big time with audiences. The publicity was excellent, and helped
establish the new MGM studios.
Thirty years of relentless innovation and cut-throat deals
later, MGM was no longer the new kid on the block. But things weren’t
going so well financially. Television had begun to cut considerably into the
profits of every studio, and MGM was among those struggling to keep afloat. Discussions of a remake of Ben-Hur had started in 1952, but it wasn’t until
Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments
raked in major cash for Paramount that the discussion became serious.
In 1957, MGM studio head Joseph Vogel announced that a new,
glorious adaptation of Ben-Hur would
begin shooting in 1958 and reach theaters in 1959.
One problem: nobody wanted to play Judah Ben-Hur.
The original choice, back in 1952, had been Marlon Brando.
By 1957, that seemed like a terrible
idea, so MGM approached the ever-golden Burt Lancaster. Lancaster shot down the
offer right away. He thought the script was boring, and the way it used Jesus
as a side character was kind of offensively weird (I love you so much, Burt
Lancaster). Paul Newman declined because his first major film had been 1954’s The Silver Chalice about Ancient Greece,
and he hated the beefcake ethos of epic films so much he’d vowed never to do
another. “I don’t have the legs to wear a tunic,” he quipped. Rock Hudson,
Leslie Neilson, and Geoffrey Horne also all said no.
Messala was easier to cast, since Messala is pretty much the
best role. Director William Wyler had gotten his first choice, Charlton Heston.
With nobody playing Judah Ben-Hur, though, there wouldn’t be a movie, so Wyler
asked Heston if he’d be willing to switch roles.
About two seconds after this happened, Kirk Douglas offered
to play Ben-Hur if they were really stuck and willing to pay him a ton of
money. Heston was cheaper and had already agreed, so it was all settled.
The production is best described as “lavish” and “costly” –
like every epic ever, it was too expensive and took too long to film.
But it did make its 1959 release date.
With a four hour runtime, of particular note is the chariot racing sequence. Again. It was an almost shot-for-shot copy of the 1925 version,
with some extended tension and an extra stunt or two.
At the Oscars, Ben-Hur
won an unheard of eleven Academy Awards; a record that would not be broken until 1997’s Titanic.
In 2001, the chariot race was once more diligently
recreated, this time for the Boonta Eve Classic podracing sequence in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
And tomorrow, you’ll get a chance to see another adaptation
of Ben-Hur or another adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, depending on
how you want to look at it. This time it stars Jack Huston of The Huston Dynasty,
who was originally cast as Messala but had to switch roles when they couldn’t
find anyone to play Judah Ben-Hur.
Director Timur Bekmambetov is especially pleased with (surprise!) the
chariot race. He hasn’t copied the 1925 version, he’s decided to take a cue
from how Nascar is filmed on mobile devices by audience members. So, like a
YouTube video from Ancient Rome.
No matter how you feel about this latest version, no matter
whether it sucks or does just fine, no matter how nauseated those chariot sequences make you, it’s a good thing that they’re trying
something new with an old favourite.
Everything from
the Parisian archivist to the Wallace novel to the 1959 version of Ben-Hur happened because somebody was “out
of ideas.” And from one accounting of a true story, there have grown abundant
retooling and retellings of a fictional story, which has doubtless indirectly
influenced and melded with others on the road to creating new stories.
There’s often a sense, when a new remake or reboot comes
out, that you shouldn’t mess with the classics. But that’s malarkey. Every idea
needs to come from somewhere. So what
if the beloved film version of Ben-Hur
comes from Monte Cristo which comes
from an essay on Picaud, which comes from real life? It’s probably a safe bet
that Picaud got the idea for his revenge scheme somewhere else, too.
Maybe even from fiction.
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