Biography for
Karl Tunberg More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

11 March 1909, Spokane, Washington, USA

Date of Death

3 April 1992, London, England, UK

Trivia

President of the Screen Writers Guild. [1950-1951]

Though Karl Tunberg is the only writer officially credited with writing the screenplay for "Ben-Hur", and although he was the only writer to be Oscar-nominated for the film, he is also one of the few major creative people involved with it who did not win the Academy Award that year, and it has been documented that director William Wyler was completely dissatisfied with Tunberg's script. It was he who called in a host of celebrated writers, among them playwrights Christopher Fry and Maxwell Anderson, to improve the quality of the script.

According to a recent biography of William Wyler, Tunberg insisted on being the sole person given screen credit for the screenplay of the 1959 "Ben-Hur", much to Wyler's displeasure. Wyler was apparently just as displeased when Tunberg was the sole writer who was Oscar nominated for "Ben-Hur".