Trivia / The Greatest Story Ever Told

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• All-Star Cast:
  • Charlton Heston as John the Baptist
  • Telly Savalas as Pilate
  • Martin Landau as Caiaphas
  • Claude Rains as Herod the Great
  • José Ferrer as Herod Antipas
  • Donald Pleasence as "The Dark Hermit" (Satan). Yes, this means that Jesus has two future Blofelds as antagonists in this movie. As well as playing one (non-canon) himself.
  • And even more stars appear in Celebrity Cameos.
• Backed by the Pentagon: 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.
• Box Office Bomb: Out of a budget of $21 million, it only managed to recoup less than $8 million by 1983 and the current box office total is $15,473,333.
• California Doubling: 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. 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.
• Contractual Purity: 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.
• Darkhorse Casting: 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.
• Deleted Role: Martin Landau said in interviews that half of his role was deleted in the editing stage.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Telly Savalas, already balding for some time, shaved his head bald for his role as Pontius Pilate. He kept his head shaved for the rest of his life.
• Genre-Killer: The film's failure at the box-office is largely cited as the reason why Biblical epics fell out of vogue.
• Hide Your Pregnancy: Joanna Dunham, who played Mary Magdalene, became pregnant during filming. The director worked around this by shooting her from the chest up as much as possible, making her later scenes markedly unlike the earlier ones. Her pregnancy remains obvious in the shots of her entering the tomb.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Max von Sydow, who played Jesus, was actually an avowed atheist.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A particularly funny one involves John Wayne Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud. The story goes that the director coached him to say his line more reverently: "Not like that—say it with awe!" On the next take, the Duke delivered his line: "Aw, truly this was the Son of God!" When asked if the story was true, Wayne denied it, but said it was Actually Pretty Funny.
• Re-Cut: Several versions of the film were officially released at one point or another, with the longest-known version running three hours and forty-five minutes and the shortest running a little over two hours. The most common version seen today runs three hours and fifteen minutes. There was reportedly a four-hour, twenty-minute version, but it is unknown whether or not that it ever was released at that length.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Filming began in 1962 and was completed in 1963, but the movie went unreleased for another two years, mostly due to director George Stevens' meticulous editing process.
• Troubled Production: Among other things, the production had to deal with a very non-Biblical snowfall while on location in the American southwest.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Alec Guinness was sought for a cameo.
  • George Stevens originally offered Elizabeth Taylor the part of Mary Magdalene but she declined due to scheduling difficulties. He also considered Audrey Hepburn and Jean Simmons.
  • Speaking of, Richard Burton was offered the role of Jesus. Really.
  • 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 shoot. The shooting schedules didn't overlap, but Tracy passed on the role anyway.

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