Page "Ben-Hur (1959 film)" Paragraph 18

Wyler, like Zimbalist, was also unhappy with the script.

He felt Tunberg's draft was too much of a morality play overlaid with current Western political overtones, and that the dialogue was too modern-sounding.

Zimbalist brought in playwright S. N. Behrman and then playwright Maxwell Anderson to write drafts.

Behrman spent about a month working on the script, but how much he contributed to the final version is unclear.

Both a contemporary account in the British magazine Films and Filmmaking as well as Vidal biographer Fred Kaplan claim that Anderson was ill and unable to work on the script.

But the New York Times reported in June 1957 that Anderson was at work on the script.

( The newspaper would later informally retract this statement, and admit in 1959 that Anderson had been too ill to do any writing.

) Gore Vidal said that, by spring 1958, the script largely reflected Anderson and Behrman's work and nearly all the dialogue was in Anderson's " elevated poetic style.

" Kaplan describes the script at this point as having only a " modest to minimal " understanding of what the ancient Roman world was like, dialogue which veered " between flat Americanisms and stilted formality ", and an ill-defined relationship between Judah Ben-Hur and Messala.