Scripture on Wide Screen

Hollywood's most valuable--but unpaid--writers are a group of Jews who turned in their stories a couple of thousand years or more ago. The Bible is a supercolossal treasury of story lines that is never likely to be equaled for surefire box office. "We always have westerns, musicals and Bible pictures," says Columbia Pictures Executive Producer Jerry Wald.

But there has never been such a run on flowing robes, phylacteries and false beards as there is in the studios just now. Prop men from Paramount are scouring Egypt for frogs to make a likely plague (Exodus 8:31, for non-biting insects to substitute for lice (Exodus 8:16), and they are making the necessary preparations to turn the Nile to blood (Exodus 7:19)--all for The Ten Commandments. In Hollywood Columbia executives are busy scanning six weeks' worth of background shots (using 17,500 Egyptian extras) for Joseph and His Brethren, and laying plans to follow it up with Mary Magdalene next year. And the California organizations of Protestants, Roman Catholics and Jews are beginning to get accustomed to waves of script-waving, sincere-talking cinemakers who beg them to scrutinize their movies for "anything offensive to your faith." As one movieman thoughtfully explained last week: "We are not theologians."

$25 Million Robe. At least a dozen Biblical films are currently slated for production. Warner Bros, has three: 1) The Silver Chalice, with Virginia Mayo, Pier Angeli, Jack Palance and "a cast of thousands" in Novelist Thomas B. Costain's story about the cup Christ used at the Last Supper; 2) Land of the Pharaohs, which was written for the movies by Nobel Prizewinner William Faulkner; 3) Daniel and the Woman of Babylon, which has not yet been cast.

Encouraged by The Robe, which has already grossed $25 million ("And may go to $60 million," say publicity flacks), 20th Century-Fox is producing two more: the late Fulton Oursler's The Greatest Story Ever Told (for which the studio is paying a cumulative $2,000,000, biggest movie sales tag in history), and a sequel to The Robe called Demetrius and the Gladiators. Others include The Big Fisherman (Columbia), The Galileans (Universal), The Story of Ruth and The Song of Songs (Charles Feldman), The Prodigal (M-G-M)--in which Lana Turner plays a priestess of Astarte.

$6,000,000 Commandments. Like California olives, Biblical movies come in sizes ranging from mammoth up. The most mammoth of them all will certainly be The Ten Commandments, made by the patriarch of the industry's epic makers--72-year-old Cecil B. DeMille. It is a remake of his first big Biblical movie, made in 1923, though the present Ten Commandments is a straight biography of Moses while the older version paralleled the Bible story with a contemporary drama of lust and greed (starring Rod La Rocque, Richard Dix and Nita Naldi). Although responsible for such other triumphs as The King of Kings (1927) and The Sign of the Cross (1933), DeMille never before has given Scripture such a generous helping hand; the new Ten Commandments will cost an estimated $6,000,000 to make, and will have what Paramount's publicity department calls "the largest film set in motion-picture history." DeMille feels that the present trend toward Bible movies is a symptom that "the world is beginning to realize how deep the trouble is that it is in, and that there is only one way out--the law laid down by Moses and its interpretation by Jesus and Mohammed and other great religious leaders."

There are other reasons, too, for the vogue: the need for material worthy of the majesty of modern film techniques. "Spectacle," explained one publicity man last week, "lends itself to the wide screen."

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