The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)
Trivia
Telly Savalas shaved his head bald for his role as Pontius Pilate. He kept his head shaved for the rest of his life.
The American movie debut of Max von Sydow. Prior to this movie, von Sydow was highly popular Swedish actor who appeared in Ingmar Bergman films such as Det sjunde inseglet (1957), Smultronstället (1957), Jungfrukällan (1960), and Såsom i en spegel (1961). Producer and director George Stevens wanted an unknown actor free of secular and unseemly associations in the mind of the public.
Producer and director George Stevens did many takes of John Wayne's single line, "Truly, this man was the Son of God." A rumor has long persisted that at one stage, Stevens pled with Wayne to show more emotion, an overwhelming sense of awe. During the next take, Wayne changed the line to, "Aw, truly this man was the Son of God."
Max von Sydow said that the hardest part about playing Christ was the expectations people had of him to remain in character at all times. He could not smoke between takes, have a drink after work, or be affectionate with his wife on the set.
In his diaries, Charlton Heston says that when he filmed the baptism scene with Max von Sydow that if the river Jordan had been as cold as Pyramid Lake where they shot the sequence, Christianity would never had gotten off the ground.
During filming, the first snowstorm to hit Arizona in decades buried the whole Jerusalem set. Several hundred cast and crew members, including producer and director George Stevens, went out with snow shovels, wheelbarrows, bulldozers, and butane flamethrowers to clear the set. Just as they were done, it snowed again, even harder than before. Production moved to Desilu Studios in Hollywood.
Producer and director George Stevens habitually took at least one whole year over the editing of his movies, once he had achieved complete artistic control over them. He usually shot dozens of takes of each scene, varying his camera angles from take to take, so that he would have a great deal of choice in the editing suite. In this case, so much footage was amassed that the movie's opening date, originally planned for Christmas of 1964, had to be postponed because the editing was not completed, even though he had finished shooting in the late summer of 1963. The movie opened at Easter of 1965 with a running time of three hours and forty-five minutes, making it one of the longest movies of all time. It was re-cut several times subsequently, and this version has not been seen since the 1960s.
During an interview on The Mike Douglas Show (1961), Jamie Farr related the story of how he was so desperate for work when he auditioned for the picture that he prayed to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, that he would get the job. He was ironically cast as the apostle Thaddeus, an alternate name for St. Jude (possibly used to avoid confusion with Judas Iscariot).
Final movie of cinematographer William C. Mellor. He suffered a heart attack, collapsed, and died on the set.
This was Claude Rains' final film before his death on May 30, 1967 at the age of 77.
Donald Pleasence (The Dark Hermit), Telly Savalas (Pontius Pilate), and Max von Sydow (Jesus Christ) all went on to play the James Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld: Pleasence in You Only Live Twice (1967), Savalas in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and von Sydow in Never Say Never Again (1983).
In his career, Max von Sydow played Jesus, Satan and the title character in The Exorcist (1973).
Producer and director George Stevens shot this movie in the American Southwest, in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. Pyramid Lake in Nevada represented the Sea of Galilee, Lake Moab in Utah was used to film the Sermon on the Mount, and California's Death Valley was the setting of Jesus' forty-day journey into the wilderness. Stevens explained his decision to use the United States rather than in the Middle East or Europe in 1962. "I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ, and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American Southwest", he said. "I know that Colorado is not the Jordan, nor is Southern Utah Palestine. But our intention is to romanticize the area and it can be done better here." Forty-seven sets were constructed, on-location and in Hollywood studios, to accommodate Stevens' vision.
Producer and director George Stevens originally hired 550 Navajos from a local reservation to be Roman legionnaires, but they could not stay on the set for very long and eventually went back home to participate in a tribal election. Stevens replaced them with Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadets.
George Stevens was under pressure to hurry the John the Baptist sequence, which was shot at the Glen Canyon area. It was scheduled to become Lake Powell with the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam, and the production held up the project.
To fill location scenes with extras, George Stevens turned to local sources, R.O.T.C. cadets from an Arizona high school played Roman soldiers (after five hundred fifty Navajo Indians from a nearby reservation allegedly did not give a convincing performance; other sources claim they weren't on-set long enough and left early to take part in a tribal election and Arizona Department of Welfare provided disabled state aid recipients to play the afflicted who sought Jesus' healing.
By the time shooting was completed in August 1963, producer and director George Stevens had amassed six million feet of Ultra Panavision 70 film (about 1,829 km or 1,136 miles, roughly the radius of the moon). The budget ran to an astounding $25 million - 2014 equivalent: approximately $185 million - plus additional editing and promotion charges), making it the most expensive movie shot in the United States, and the second-most expensive movie ever made at the time, following Cleopatra (1963).
Joanna Dunham (Mary Magdalene) became pregnant during filming. Producer and director George Stevens worked around this by shooting her from the chest up as much as possible, making her later scenes markedly unlike the earlier ones.
The screenplay took three years to write. Ever meticulous, George Stevens spent most of that time scrupulously researching academic and gospel texts, as well as spending a considerable amount of time in Israel.
This movie was filmed entirely in Ultra Panavision 70 and later projected using the single-projector Cinerama system in its first run. While it was shown on an ultra-curved screen, it was with one projector. True Cinerama required three projectors running simultaneously. A dozen other movies were presented this way in the 1960s, which the list includes It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Hallelujah Trail (1965), Battle of the Bulge (1965), and Khartoum (1966).
While between Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), Sir David Lean directed some interior scenes with Claude Rains and José Ferrer as a favor for George Stevens, who was bogged down with the production in Nevada. Meanwhile, Jean Negulesco directed the Nativity scene.
Filming began using 3-strip Cinerama process. After three days of filming with the 3-strip camera, the production switched to 70mm Ultra Panavision 70.
Martin Landau has said in interviews that half of his role was deleted in the editing stage.
The only time that George Stevens received screenwriting credit on a movie that he directed.
Jean Simmons was initially announced to portray Mary Magdalene.
This was Joseph Schildkraut's final film before his death on January 21, 1964 at the age of 67. He died almost fifteen months before the film was released.
The cast includes eight Oscar winners, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, John Wayne, José Ferrer, Van Heflin, and Martin Landau; and ten Oscar nominees, Max von Sydow, Carroll Baker, Victor Buono, Dame Angela Lansbury, Dorothy McGuire, Sal Mineo, Claude Rains, Telly Savalas, Ed Wynn, and Robert Loggia.
Final movie of art director David S. Hall.
Forty-seven sets were constructed, on-location, and in Hollywood studios, to accommodate this movie.
Donald Pleasence appeared in another all-star Jesus Christ biopic, Jesus of Nazareth (1977).
The final of three George Stevens movies in which Shelley Winters appeared. The others are Jeolmeunieui yangji (1951) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). She received Oscar nominations for both of these performances, winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the latter.
George Stevens originally offered the role of Mary Magdalene to Dame Elizabeth Taylor, but she was unavailable.
Two members of the crew, art director David S. Hall and cinematographer William C. Mellor, received posthumous Oscar nominations for this movie, their last credited work. The two later lost their respective awards to Doctor Zhivago (1965).
Max von Sydow, though playing Jesus, was actually an avowed atheist.
This movie was slightly over thirty days in production using the original 3-panel Cinerama process when orders were given to abandon the Cinerama camera in favor of Ultra-Panavision 70; thus ending forever the cumbersome 3-panel Cinerama process in Hollywood. Numerous scenes had to be re-shot in the new single-lens Ultra-Panavision 70 process.
This was originally set up at Twentieth Century Fox in 1959, but they put the movie into turnaround in 1961 after having spent over two million dollars on development without a single frame of film being shot.
George Stevens was in the midst of making The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) when he learned that Twentieth Century Fox had the rights to the radio series from the early 1950s.
Max von Sydow was chosen to play Christ because he was an unfamiliar face to American audiences and wouldn't distract them from the story being told.
George Stevens offered Spencer Tracy the role of Pontius Pilate, but Tracy was convinced that it would conflict with his It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) shoot. The shooting schedules didn't overlap, but Tracy passed on the role anyway.
George Stevens would shoot his scenes in long shot first from every angle before then filming close-ups of all the participants in each scene.
Much of the production was shot during the winter of 1962-1963, when Arizona had heavy snow. David Sheiner, who played James the Elder, quipped in an interview about the snowdrifts: "I thought we were shooting Nanook of the North (1922)."
Although not strictly correct, rumors abounded that George Stevens cut all of Max von Sydow's scenes to make it appear that he never blinked.
Due to its having many famous stars in secondary roles, some critics called or compared this movie with the mayhem comedy It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), released around the same time, with a number of well-known actors in the cast. And by coincidence, Spencer Tracy, the "straight man" in that feature, was sought out by George Stevens to portray Pontius Pilate before settling with Telly Savalas.
Joseph Schildkraut (Nicodemus) previously played Judas Iscariot in The King of Kings (1927), which also depicted the life of Jesus Christ.
Principal photography was scheduled to run three months, but ran nine months or more due to numerous delays and setbacks (most of which were due to Stevens' insistence on shooting dozens of retakes in every scene).
This movie's failure at the box office is largely cited as the reason why Biblical epics fell out of vogue.
Richard Burton was offered the part of Jesus.
It is most unusual for a biblical epic of this scale and size during this period of Hollywood filmmaking that its vast and starry cast only contains four non-American stars in the main roles.
Three time Oscar winner Ken Darby wrote "Hollywood Holyland" published in 1992 by Scarecrow Press and chronicled what he perceived as the butchering of Alfred Newman's superb score.
It would be another fifteen years before another expensive epic would come along and tank at the box office to the same extent as this movie. That would be Michael Cimino's ill-fated Heaven's Gate (1980).
Max von Sydow, while keen to break into Hollywood movies, was initially hesitant about taking on such an iconic role.
John Wayne, Roddy McDowall, and Sal Mineo appeared in another large all-star cast movie, The Longest Day (1962).
George Stevens shot some scenes in Glen Canyon, in the estuary of Colorado River, where a gigantic dam was built. The set built for the movie remains today four hundred feet underwater.
Reportedly, John Wayne was the first actor cast for the film. A promo card showing him in his role was shown about 4 1/2 years before the film was released.
His uncredited role was the final feature film for prolific British-born character actor Leonard Mudie, ending a career of almost 45 years and over 150 roles.
This movie reunited George Stevens with many actors and actresses with whom he'd previously worked: Carroll Baker (Giant (1956)), Van Heflin (Shane (1953)), Joseph Schildkraut (The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)), Shelley Winters (Jeolmeunieui yangji (1951) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)), and Ed Wynn (The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)).
