Take the first edition of the novel ... Valles has the scoop on everything to do with Ben-Hur: the novel, a Broadway play in 1899 with real horses on a treadmill on stage, a silent move in ...

The Byers Opera House (also known as Greenwall’s Opera House), shown here in 1908, hosted sold-out shows of the spectacular “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ” play for the first time in 1911.

So Heston, who had had a breakthrough with 1956’s The Ten Commandments but wasn’t yet a superstar, took on the role — and won his first and only Oscar as a result. Much of Ben-Hur was shot ...

So why was “Ben-Hur” so successful? And why does it still hold up today? When citing the film’s strengths, the first scene that comes to mind is the nine-minute chariot race between Judah ...

There was so much for moviegoers to love about the biblical epic “Ben-Hur”: a riveting performance ... only to be told that fashionable Roman men in first-century Judea were clean-shaven.