Heston: Truth About Big 'Ben'

By Stephen M. Silverman

Tuesday April 28, 1998 12:00 AM EDT

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With Oscar season in the air, it may be time to reflect upon the 1959 Best Picture winner, "Ben-Hur." Beating even the 10 Oscars collected by that all-time Hollywood classic, 1939's "Gone With the Wind," director William Wyler's "Ben," an ancient Roman epic based on the Lew Wallace tale of Christ, saved MGM from financial ruin and picked up an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards -- a record it held until "Titanic" sailed along in 1997 and tied it. Now "Ben" is back, in a fancy Warner Home Video DVD package (Warner, like PEOPLE, is part of AOL Time Warner). As part of the DVD's behind-the-scenes featurette, the movie's leading man Charlton Heston dispels some of the myths that have long surrounded this larger-than-life gladiator production. For instance, that there was a red Ferrari parked outside the Coliseum and visible to moviegoers during the chariot scene. Not true. That he was wearing a wristwatch. Not true. That people were killed during the movie's making. Not true. What is true, conceivably, is revealed in an interview with one of the spectacle's screenwriters, Gore Vidal. He says that he tried to convince director Wyler into providing "something emotional" to the relationship between the characters of Ben and Mesala (played by square-jawed Stephen Boyd). Wyler passed on the suggestion.