4GEMWORKS COMPLETE FOUR COLOR EMPORIUM
Four Color 1052

COMIC DETAILS

Comic Description: Four Color #1052 Universal
Grade: 8.5
Page Quality: OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
Certification #: 0255869009
Owner: 4GEMWORKS

SET DETAILS

Winning Set: 4GEMWORKS COMPLETE FOUR COLOR EMPORIUM
Date Added: 4/23/2015
Research: See CGC's Census Report for this Comic

Owner's Description

Ben-Hur 11/59 Adapted from the 1959 movie "Ben-Hur," based on the Lew Wallace novel of the same name. Though the Christ story plays an important part in the plot, Jesus is never directly referred to by name and his face is never depicted.

Painted Cover:: Sam Savitt
Script:Lew Wallace (original story); Eric Freiwald; Robert Schaefer (comic adaptation)
Pencils & Inks: Russ Manning

Table of Contents
0. MGM's Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur


Wikipedia provides a massive amount of background on the film. A small portion of that follows. The comic was directly based on the movie of the same year:

Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic historical drama film, directed by William Wyler, produced by Sam Zimbalist for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starring Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Hugh Griffith and Haya Harareet. A remake of the 1925 silent film with the same name, Ben-Hur was adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay is credited to Karl Tunberg but includes contributions from Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry.

Ben-Hur had the largest budget ($15.175 million) as well as the largest sets built of any film produced at the time. Costume designer Elizabeth Haffenden oversaw a staff of 100 wardrobe fabricators to make the costumes, and a workshop employing 200 artists and workmen provided the hundreds of friezes and statues needed in the film. Filming commenced on May 18, 1958 and wrapped on January 7, 1959, with shooting lasting for 12 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. Pre-production began at Cinecittà around October 1957, and post-production took six months. Under cinematographer Robert L. Surtees, MGM executives made the decision to film the picture in a widescreen format, which Wyler strongly disliked. More than 200 camels and 2,500 horses were used in the shooting of the film, with some 10,000 extras. The sea battle was filmed using miniatures in a huge tank on the back lot at the MGM Studios in Culver City, California. The nine-minute chariot race has become one of cinema's most famous sequences, and the film score, composed and conducted by Miklós Rózsa, is the longest ever composed for a film and was highly influential on cinema for more than 15 years.

Following a $14.7 million marketing effort, Ben-Hur premiered at Loew's State Theatre in New York City on November 18, 1959. It was the fastest-grossing as well as the highest grossing film of 1959, in the process becoming the second-highest grossing film in history at the time after Gone with the Wind. It won a record 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Wyler), Best Actor in a Leading Role (Heston), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Griffith), and Best Cinematography, Color (Surtees), an accomplishment that was not equaled until Titanic in 1997 and then again by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003. Ben-Hur also won three Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Stephen Boyd. Today, Ben-Hur is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, and in 1998 the American Film Institute ranked it the 72nd best American film and the 2nd best American epic film in the AFI's 10 Top 10. In 2004, the National Film Preservation Board selected Ben-Hur for preservation by the National Film Registry for being a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" motion picture.

Release: A massive $14.7 million marketing effort helped promote Ben-Hur.[137] MGM established a special "Ben-Hur Research Department" which surveyed more than 2,000 high schools in 47 American cities to gauge teenage interest in the film.[138] A high school study guide was also created and distributed.
Ben-Hur premiered at Loew's State Theatre in New York City on November 18, 1959. Present at the premiere were William Wyler, Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet, Martha Scott, Ramon Novarro (who played Judah Ben-Hur in the 1925 silent film version), Spyros Skouras (president of the 20th Century Fox), Barney Balaban (president of Paramount Pictures), Jack Warner (president of Warner Bros.), Leonard Goldenson (president of the American Broadcasting Company), Moss Hart (playwright), Robert Kintner (an ABC Television executive), Sidney Kingsley (playwright), and Adolph Zukor (founder of Paramount Pictures).

Box office
During its initial release the film earned $33.6 million in North American theater rentals (the distributor's share of the box office), generating approximately $74.7 million in box office sales. Outside of North America, it earned $32.5 in rentals (about $72.2 million at the box office) for a worldwide total of $66.1 million in rental earnings, roughly equivalent to $146.9 million in box office receipts.[137] It was the fastest-grossing film[13] as well as the highest grossing film of 1959,[141] in the process becoming the second-highest grossing film of all-time behind Gone with the Wind.

Ben-Hur saved MGM from financial disaster,[143] making a profit of $20,409,000 on its initial release,[4] and another $10.1 million in profits when re-released in 1969.[13] By 1989, Ben-Hur had earned $90 million in worldwide theatrical rentals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur_(1959_film)

Some data courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a Creative Commons Attribution license. http://www.comics.org/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
http://www.comics.org/issue/15318/
 
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