The Greatest Story Ever Told

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The Greatest Story Ever Told
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	George Stevens
Produced by	George Stevens Frank I. Davis George Stevens Jr. Antonio Vellani
Written by	George Stevens James Lee Barrett
Starring	Max von Sydow Charlton Heston
Music by	Alfred Newman
Cinematography	Loyal Griggs William C. Mellor
Editing by	Harold F. Kress Argyle Nelson Jr. Frank O'Neil
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	February 15, 1965
Running time	225 min. (premiere version) 199 min. (edited version) 141 min. (re-issue version)
Language	English
Budget	$20,000,000
IMDb profile

This article is about the film. For other uses, see The Greatest Story Ever Told (disambiguation).

The Greatest Story Ever Told is a 1965 film about the life of Jesus, directed by George Stevens (with some scenes by Jean Negulesco and David Lean). Max von Sydow stars as Christ, and the film features a number of other top Hollywood stars at the time, including Charlton Heston as John the Baptist, and Telly Savalas as Pontius Pilate. The movie was based on the 1949 book of the same title by Fulton Oursler.

1 Production and exhibition
2 Responses and legacy
3 Cast
4 References
- 4.1 Notes
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Production and exhibition

The Greatest Story Ever Told was produced by United Artists. It was one of only nine films shot in Ultra Panavision 70 and was exhibited in larger cities in 70mm Cinerama. The music was composed and conducted by Alfred Newman, and supplemented (at the request of the director) with the Hallelujah chorus from George Frideric Handel's Messiah and the Verdi Requiem, (both adapted and conducted by Newman associate Ken Darby).

The film held its world premiere on February 15, 1965 at the Warner Cinerama Theatre in New York City.

[edit] Responses and legacy

The film was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Musical Score, Best Cinematography (color), Art Direction (color), Costume Design (color), and Special Visual Effects (Joseph McMillan Johnson).

Despite the awards, The Greatest Story Ever Told was director George Stevens' first flop. It cost an estimated $20,000,000 but made back only $12,000,000 worldwide. It was the last of the big budget Biblical spectacular films.

The American protest singer Phil Ochs introduced his 1968 song Cannons of Christianity with a narrative satirically implying that if God himself saw the movie, he wouldn't believe it and declare "It's gone too far. Something must be done about Christianity."

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Max von Sydow	Jesus
Dorothy McGuire	The Virgin Mary
Robert Loggia	Joseph
Charlton Heston	John the Baptist
Joanna Dunham	Mary Magdalene
Telly Savalas	Pontius Pilate
Claude Rains	Herod the Great
Jose Ferrer	Herod Antipas
Disciples
Gary Raymond	Peter
David McCallum	Judas Iscariot
Roddy McDowall	Matthew
Michael Anderson, Jr.	James the Younger
Robert Blake	Simon the Zealot
John Considine	John
Tom Reese	Thomas
David Hedison	Philip
Jamie Farr	Thaddaeus
Burt Brinckerhoff	Andrew
David Sheiner	James the Elder
Peter Mann (II)	Nathanael

The large and notable cast also includes John Abbott, Rodolfo Acosta, Michael Ansara, Richard Bakalyan, Carroll Baker, Ina Balin, Pat Boone, Victor Buono, Richard Conte, Philip Coolidge, John Crawford, Frank DeKova, Cyril Delevanti, Van Heflin, Russell Johnson, Martin Landau, Angela Lansbury, Mark Lenard, Janet Margolin, Sal Mineo, Nehemiah Persoff, Donald Pleasence, Sidney Poitier, Joseph Schildkraut, Marian Seldes, Frank Silvera, Joseph Sirola, Abraham Sofaer, Paul Stewart, Harold Stone, Michael Tolan, John Wayne, Shelley Winters, and Ed Wynn.^[1]

[edit] References

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[edit] Notes

^ It should be noted that most of these stars play extremely short cameos. This was a criticism labeled at the film at the time, particularly John Wayne as the Centurion who supervises Christ's execution.