BEN-HUR / Karl Tunberg 1952 Screenplay, Classic Charlton Heston as Jewish Prince

  
Script Dated: September 9, 1954. This is an Original Movie Script used during the making of the 1959 Classic film titled, Ben-Hur. This script is Complete and it is 194 pages long. It has all white pages throughout it inside. This script has the original MGM Production Cover.

The front cover is stamped, "TEMPORARY COMPLETE". The front and back cover have some light water stain marks around the edges. Furthermore, all of the pages inside of the script are in very good condition.

Please view all of the pictures above carefully. It shows the appropriate signs of aging for being used during the 1950's. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) originally announced a remake of the 1925 silent film Ben-Hur in December 1952, ostensibly as a way to spend its Italian assets. Stewart Granger and Robert Taylor were reported to be in the running for the lead.

Nine months later, MGM announced it would make the film in CinemaScope, with shooting beginning in 1954. In November 1953, MGM announced it had assigned producer Sam Zimbalist to the picture and hired screenwriter Karl Tunberg to write it. Sidney Franklin was scheduled to direct, with Marlon Brando intended for the lead. MGM, however, suspended production in early 1956, following Franklin's resignation.

By the late 1950s, the consent decree of 1948 forcing film studios to divest themselves of theater chains and the competitive pressure of television had caused significant financial distress at MGM. In a gamble to save the studio, and inspired by the success of Paramount Pictures' 1956 Biblical epic The Ten Commandments, studio head Joseph Vogel announced in 1957 that MGM would again move forward on a remake of Ben-Hur. Filming started in May 1958 and wrapped in January 1959, and post-production took six months. One notable change in the film involved the opening titles.

Concerned that a roaring Leo the Lion (the MGM mascot) would create the wrong mood for the sensitive and sacred nativity scene, Wyler received permission to replace the traditional logo with one in which Leo the Lion is quiet. THE POSTER SHOWN IN THE LAST PICTURE ABOVE IS NOT INCLUDED, IT IS JUST BEING USED AS A VISUAL REFERENCE. Specializes in rare and collectible movie scripts. Our scripts are genuine, authentic and screen used. We also carry movie props from no genre in particular.

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Any changes made to the screenplay during production are known as revisions and these revision pages are inserted into that one script that was issued out to them. For example, if we are talking about a low-budget film with a small cast and only a few crew members, there are actually only a small number of scripts in existence around the world for that film. This aspect of collecting makes it fun but also difficult because there may be a certain writer or director that you love to collect and there may only be a handful of movie scripts that still exist from that specific film that you are looking for. We have some of the rarest movie scripts in the world. Each film project has a different total number of scripts that are issued. The older a film is you also have to figure in the fact that a lot of the original movie scripts have been thrown out or destroyed over time. We do our best to provide the widest selection of original movie scripts in the world.

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