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MGM wanted an authentic-looking Roman boat for the live battle scenes. To design the boats, they hired a person who had spent his whole career studying Roman naval architecture. When he presented his designs to the MGM engineers, Mauro Zambuto (set engineer) exclaimed, "But this is top heavy! It will sink!" They built the boat anyway and launched it in the ocean, and at first it seemed to float. Then, however, a little wave came along, a wake from another boat, splashed against the highly unstable boat, and tipped it over. MGM then put the boat in a large pond with a huge painted sky backdrop. To steady the boat, they ran cables from the bottom of the boat to anchors on the bottom of the pond.

When it came time to film inside the boat, it was discovered that the large 65mm cameras wouldn't fit. The boat had to be taken out of the pond, cut in half lengthwise, and placed in an Italian sound stage. The oars wouldn't fit in the sound stage, so they had to cut them off just beyond the hull. This resulted in an extremely light oars which, when rowed by the actors, didn't look believable, since you could move them with one hand. To solve the problem, Mauro Zambuto sent an army of production assistants to all of the hardware stores in Rome to buy the kind of spring-and-hydraulic piston mechanisms that are normally attached to doors to force them closed but to keep them from slamming. Placing these devices on the oars and the hull gave enough resistance to make the rowing scenes look realistic.

The film used over 1,000,000 props.

Initially there were queries over whether William Wyler was the right director for the job, as he'd never tackled a film of this scale before. One of the doubters was Wyler himself.

Charlton Heston was taught to drive a chariot by the stunt crew, who offered to teach the entire cast. Heston was the only one who took them up on the offer. At the beginning of the chariot race, Heston shook the reins and nothing happened; the horses remained motionless. Finally someone way up on top of the set yelled, "Giddy-up!" The horses then roared into action, and Heston was flung backward off of the chariot.

Miklós Rózsa wrote the musical score in eight weeks.

Burt Lancaster, a self-described atheist, claimed he turned down the role of Judah Ben-Hur because he "didn't like the violent morals in the story" and because he did not want to promote Christianity.

Charlton Heston himself wrote some additional scenes between Ben-Hur and Messala. They were never used as William Wyler deemed them to be "the phoniest thing" he'd ever had to deal with from an actor.

In the original novel, Ben-Hur's mother does not have a name; she is referred to as Mother of Hur. For the film, she was called Miriam.

Paul Newman was offered the role of Judah Ben-Hur but turned it down because he said he didn't have the legs to wear a tunic.

Stephen Boyd, and several other actors playing Romans, wore dark contact lenses to make their eyes appear brown.

Gore Vidal was uncredited as a screenwriter, although producer Sam Zimbalist promised he and Christopher Fry, who worked on the script independently from Vidal, a screen credit. Karl Tunberg, who wrote the original screenplay that had been very much rewritten into a shooting script by Vidal and Fry, claimed the credit. Zimbalist died before the movie ended, and thus could not testify at the guild arbitration hearing. Tunberg won the credit, but failed to win the Oscar. The film had been nominated for 12 Oscars, and won a record 11 (since tied). The movie's sole loss was for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, and usually is attributed to the fallout from the credit dispute, which Vidal made widely known.

According to Gore Vidal, as recounted in The Celluloid Closet one of the script elements he was brought in to re-write was the relationship between Messala and Ben-Hur. Director William Wyler was concerned that two men who had been close friends as youths would not simply hate one another as a result of disagreeing over politics. Thus, Vidal devised a thinly veiled subtext suggesting the Messala and Ben-Hur had been lovers as teenagers, and their fighting was a result of Ben-Hur spurning Messala. Wyler was initially hesitant to implement the subtext, but agreed on the conditions that no direct reference ever be made to the characters' sexuality in the script, that Vidal personally discuss the idea with Stephen Boyd, and not mention the subtext to Charlton Heston who, Wyler feared, would panic at the idea. After Vidal admitted to adding the homosexual subtext in public, Heston denied the claim, going so far as to suggest Vidal had little input into the final script, and his lack of screen credit was a result of his being fired for trying to add gay innuendo. Vidal rebutted by citing passages from Heston's 1978 autobiography, where the actor admitted that Vidal had authored much of the final shooting script.

During the 18-day auction of MGM props, costumes, and memorabilia that took place in May 1970 when new owner Kirk Kerkorian was liquidating the studio's assets, a Sacramento restaurateur paid $4,000 for a chariot used in the film. Three years later, during the energy crisis, he was arrested for driving the chariot on the highway.

One of the very few (and very expensive) 65mm cameras in the world was wrecked during the filming of the chariot race.

The production cost MGM a massive $15 million and was a gamble by the studio to save itself from bankruptcy. The gamble paid off, with the film earning $75 million.

The film's credits appear with the Sistine Chapel ceiling as background. Charlton Heston played Michelangelo, the painter of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, in the film The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Audrey Hepburn visited the set during the filming of the chariot race (she was in the midst of shooting The Nun's Story). This led to the false legend that she was an extra in the crowd scenes, as a favor to her former director, William Wyler.

The chariot race required 15,000 extras, on a set constructed on 18 acres of backlot at Cinecitta Studios outside Rome. Tour buses visited the set every hour. Eighteen chariots were built, with half being used for practice. The race took five weeks to film.

It is the first movie remake to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The Departed became the second remake, 47 years later.

Producer Sam Zimbalist offered William Wyler $1,000,000 to direct this film. This was the highest director's fee ever paid up to that time.

[June 2008] Ranked #2 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Epic".

Jesus Christ was played by opera singer Claude Heater, who went uncredited for his only film role, because he never spoke.

Director William Wyler took on the project because he wanted to do a Cecil B. DeMille type picture.

The 10 square block set that represents Jerusalem is a historically accurate one.

The only Hollywood film to make the Vatican approved film list in the category of religion.

This was to be the last film for Cathy O'Donnell who was then married to Robert Wyler, the director's brother.

Martha Scott was 45 at the time of filming, only 10 years older than her screen son. She also played Charlton Heston's mother in The Ten Commandments three years before.

William Wyler missed just 2 days of the lengthy shoot due to influenza.

When he was cast as Messala, Stephen Boyd grew a bushy beard for the role, only to be told that fashionable Roman men of the time didn't wear beards.

Producer Sam Zimbalist originally intended for the chariot race to be shot in Cinerama. This proved to be too expensive and unwieldy an idea.

Sidney Franklin had initially been courted to direct the film.

Original Elmer Fudd actor, Arthur Q. Bryan died on the very same day that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer originally released Ben-Hur, on Wednesday, November 18th, 1959.

The first of only three films to win 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It also has the highest percentage of winning Academy Awards. In 1959 and 1960 there were only 12 categories. 11 of 12 = 91 and 2/3%, 91.667%.

Stuntman Cliff Lyons worked as a stuntman/chariot driver in both Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ and the remake Ben-Hur.

When the screenplay credit went to arbitration, the WGA accorded sole credit to screenwriter Karl Tunberg, despite Gore Vidal's rewrite and Christopher Fry's polish.

Sergio Leone has an uncredited second unit director credit. In later years, he claimed that he directed the chariot race scenes, but that is a falsehood (Leone had a reputation for not always being truthful).

The success of Quo Vadis (and a lot of its sets and costumes) convinced MGM to make another Roman epic at Cinecitta in Rome.

Charlton Heston had about a month to learn how to drive a chariot properly. Stephen Boyd - who was cast much later in the production - only had two weeks to do so.

While Ben-Hur was occupying most of the studios at Cinecitta, Federico Fellini was shooting La Dolce Vita in the backlots.

Of the 3 Academy Awards that Miklós Rózsa won, he cherished the one he won for Ben-Hur the most.

May McAvoy:  Esther from the original Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ is the only member of the original MGM film to appear in Ben-Hur as well. She's an extra in a crowd scene.

The chariot race segment was directed by legendary stuntman Yakima Canutt. Joe Canutt (Yak's son) doubled for Charlton Heston. During one of the crashes, in which Judah Ben-Hur's horses jump over a crashed chariot, the younger Canutt was thrown from his chariot onto the tongue of his chariot. He managed to climb back into his chariot and bring it back under control. The sequence looked so good that it was included in the film, with a close-up of Heston climbing back into the chariot. Canutt got a slight cut on his chin, but it was the only injury in the incredibly dangerous sequence. Stuntman Nosher Powell, who worked on the film, states in his biography, that Yakima Canutt went pale as a ghost when the chariot crashed. The crash was not planned, and everybody - including Yakima Canutt - believed that Joe Canutt had died.

Three lifelike dummies were placed at key points in the chariot race to give the appearance of men being run over by the chariots. The best of these was the stand-in dummy for Stephen Boyd's character that gets tangled up under the horses hooves and gets trampled to death. This resulted in a realistic death sequence that shocked the theater audiences of the time, and spawned an urban legend that this was a real death.