Ben-Hur (1959)

[Emiliano]

This documentation were collected by journalists Michele Bovi and the poet, writer Pasquale Panella. Bovi just recently contacted me for the promotion of his new Podcast Ben-Hur, un altro film (2022) , advertised among others by the web newspaper Huffingtonpost. These infos coming directly from the scripts and logs for the cast of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, handwritten and typewritten notes of director William Wyler and his wife Talli, and many unpublished documents including official correspondence, personal letters, contracts, photographs and collected the testimonies of surviving insiders and family members of the disappeared.

After listening to all the episodes of the Podcast, I have extrapolated, sorted and translated the following data. I have excluded the actors already found here, while I have left the actors found but whose roles do not coincide (therefore probable errors in the documents, to be verified) or who can confirm a presence of the actor, but not found.

Crew uncredited

• Carmine Gallone .... First unit assistant director
• Mario Soldati .... Second unit director
• Sergio Leone .... Credit only (he didn't even set foot on the set)
• Enzo Barboni .... Cameraman

Uncredited cast scattered throughout the film

• Alessandro Zippel .... Double for Charlton Heston (Roman actor) pic - already found I know, just to confirm the presence whit a shot.
• Antonio Corevi
• Benito Stefanelli
• Dino Fazio
• Franco Fantasia .... One of the Roman soldiers in the galley of the naval battle - Not found in this role
• Giacomo Rossi Stuart .... Officer of Messala
• Giuseppe Tosi (Olympic discus throwing champion)
• Ludovica Modugno .... Child
• Mario Van Riel .... Merchant at the gates of Jaffa, the entrance to Jerusalem (stage make-up teacher at the C.S.C from 1936).
• Otello Polini
• Pasquale Basile
• Pietro Tordi
• Pippo Spoletini .... Insubordinate oarsman in the naval battle sequence (group-leader extras, the so called "capogruppo")
• Pietro Marra .... Sheikh Ilderim's stunt double / Man who drives and whips the sheikh's horses before Ben-Hur arrives to replace him pic #1 pic #2 - Found in the 1st role
• Tiberio Mitri
• Venantino Venantini
• Vittoria Febbi .... Child

Foreign actors

• Hector Ross
• Prince Hubert Gillis De Poliolo .... A Roman officer (Belgian secret agent with Portuguese passport, director of a casting agency in Rome since 1957, husband of the painter and actress Dorothey De Poliolo, former Miss Florida, later queen of the gossip met in Cuba and married shortly after). pic - Source: The book "Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA" by William Colby and Peter Forbath.
• Michael Dugan (USA)
• Titus Vossberg.... Rower in the galley next to Ben-Hur (German set and costume designer)
• Tutte Lemkov (Norwegian)

Sequence: Manger

• Armando Annuale .... Shepherd who attends the birth of Jesus - already found before this post, but we use this info as confermation
• Enzo Doria (Ezio Passadore) .... Shepherd boy

Sequence: In the House of Ben-Hur

• Andrea Petricca
• Barbara Chase-Riboud .... Maid in the House of Beh-Hur (Philadelphia sculptor, poetess) pic
• Bruna Cealti
• Henry Formiti - not sure about the right wording of the name
• Gloria Milland
• Guglielmo Leoncini
• Nicoletta Languasco .... Maid
• Umberto Lencioni

Sequence: Gardens of the Consul Quintus Arius, father of Ben-Hur

Nobles and true aristocrats as extras:

• Duke Francesco Saverio Marigliano Del Monte
• Austrian Prince Cristiàn of Hohenlohe-Langenburg
• Princess Carmen of Spain (real consort of the Austrian prince, born as Russian Princess Irina Wassilchikoff)
• Prince Emanuele Ruspoli
• Prince Raimondo Ruspoli

Actors with noble title of dubious veracity, dispensed from the magazines of the time:

• "Duchess" Nona Medici
• "Hungarian Baroness" Liliam De Balzo (Liana Del Balzo)
• "Spanish count" Santiago Oneto
• "Count" Mario Rivoltella

Sequence: Chariot race

• Eddie Oreghi
• Joe Yrigoyen .... American stunt double for Stephen Boyd

Group pic of chariot drivers
Caption for the pic: Charlton Heston (in the center with the ever-present Ray-Ban glasses) during a break in the shooting of the film. To his right we recognize Attilio Marra (driver of the Cyprus chariot) and Joe Canutt (Heston's stunt double). To his left Otello Capanna (driver of the Carthage chariot) and Sergio Casadei (driver of the Athens chariot). Below, trainer Pietro Marra with little Fraser, son of Charlton Heston.

Additional notes: filming of the race lasted two months and the stunts often swapped roles - source: Ferdinando Marra, son of Attilio Marra. Alfredo Danesi (Chariot from Messina) was the son of Severo Danesi, the chariots builder. Otello Capanna (Chariot of Carthage) was nicknamed "the strongest man in Rome".

Other interpreters in the same sequence:

• Francesco Casaretti .... Stableman of Ben-Hur - Found
• Nando Cicero .... Stableman of the chariot of Alexandria

The following names are not very reliable since we have noticed several mismatches with the scenes shot and the roles played

Among the 6,000 extras (there were 6,500 in all) in the sequence, there were many Italian and US soldiers with ministerial authorizations. Around the emperor Tiberius Julius instead there are many authorities and illustrious characters:

• Annibale Scicluna Sorge (director of the Italian Cinematography Censorship)
• Audrey Hepburn
• Mel Ferrer
• Eitel Monaco (President of ANICA)
• Italo Gemini (President of AGIS)
• Father Félix Andrew Morlion (Dominican friar president of the PRODEO International University) pic
• Raffaele Resta (Undersecretary to the Prime Minister)
• Sam Zimbalist (New York producer of Quo Vadis, King Solomon's Mines) pic #1 pic #2 - caption for the pics: he's the tall man in the middle.
• Tito Marconi (Roman councilor for entertainment)
• The daughter of British Ambassador Henry Ashley Clarke
• The wife of US Ambassador James David Zellerbach

Sequence: External Calvary (Crucifixion)

• Angelo Dessy .... Thief crucified next to Jesus
• Aurelio Pascucci .... Giuseppe Di Arimathea
• Emanuele Di Cola .... Jesus (alternates Claude Heater - later director of photography for musicarelli and director of spy-movies)
• Emma Baron .... Maria, mother of Giacomo (maybe a 2nd role?)
• Enzo Armenia .... John the Evangelist
• Fiorella Ferrero .... Maria Maddalena (already in her 7th film experience)
• Giovanni Anzaldi .... Simon of Cyrene
• Maria Serra .... Mary (alternates Josè Greci)
• Romolo Coccia .... Thief crucified next to Jesus

[Emiliano]

...and maybe in the N. 133 in the middle there is Renzo Pevarello.

And thanks to Dan, Armando Annuale is in the N. 9 in the middle, as Nick wrote.

[PeplumParadise]

This documentation were collected by journalists Michele Bovi and the poet, writer Pasquale Panella. Bovi just recently contacted me for the promotion of his new Podcast

Already identified

Ferdy Mayne
"Davis Ward", correct spelling is "Dervis"
"Duncan Lemant", correct spelling is "Lamont"
"Howard Leng", correct spelling is "Lang"
"Richard Coldman", correct spelling is "Coleman"
"Maxwell Show", correct spelling is "Shaw"

Presumably mis-spellings

"William Leoncini" is obviously Guglielmo Leoncini
"Ezio Doria" is obviously Enzo Doria, but at age 23 he was hardly a "boy" in 1959
"Antonio Coreri" is presumably Antonio Corevi

"Among the 6,000 extras (there were 6,500 in all) in the sequence, there were many Italian and US soldiers with ministerial authorizations. Around the emperor Tiberius Julius instead there are many authorities and illustrious characters:"
This makes no sense as Emperor Tiberius does not appear in the chariot race sequence. He is only in the scenes set in Rome and the chariot race is in Jerusalem, so either the actors named appear in another sequence or else they mean Pontius Pilate rather than Tiberius.

"Sequence: External Calvary (Crucifixion)"
Other than the thieves on the crosses (who are barely seen identifiably), none of the roles listed here are named in the film and if these characters do appear then they are only seen as extras. Maybe there was a scene containing characters from the bible that was cut? I would guess that they are the characters seen in image 285, but that really is all you see of them

[PeplumParadise]

Based on the new identifications Francesco Casaretti must be in 195 / 210 / 231

Mario Van Riel could maybe be the old man in 4, who is probably listed on IMDb as "Raimondo Van Riel" as Old man, however this hardly looks like someone who would still have been working in 1979, 20 years later, so maybe the "Raimondo" ID is correct? Mario's IMDb credits only commence in 1951.

[van den bremt rudy]

For Foreign Actors, i have found these two photos on Aveleyman and maybe you can identify them in Ben-Hur.
No other photographs of these actors found for those years.
First actor is Hector Ross (British actor) (Year of photo not mentioned)

Second photo is American actor Michael Dugan from the movie "The monster that challenged the world) (1957)

What a mastodont work for Ben-Hur, what a cast list !

[PeplumParadise]

This must be Pietro Marra as Sheikh Ilderim's stunt double. He's not seen clearly enough to identify his face, which is, of course, how it should be for a stunt double.

[PeplumParadise]

I don't see Guglielmo Leoncini or Gloria Milland anywhere in the "House of Ben-Hur" sequence, but the actor on the right in 209, a totally different scene, does seem somewhat like Leoncini

[Emiliano]

This documentation were collected by journalists Michele Bovi and the poet, writer Pasquale Panella. Bovi just recently contacted me for the promotion of his new Podcast

Already identified

Ferdy Mayne
"Davis Ward", correct spelling is "Dervis"
"Howard Leng", correct spelling is "Lang"

Presumably mis-spellings

"William Leoncini" is obviously Guglielmo Leoncini
"Ezio Doria" is obviously Enzo Doria, but at age 23 he was hardly a "boy" in 1959
"Antonio Coreri" is presumably Antonio Corevi

"Among the 6,000 extras (there were 6,500 in all) in the sequence, there were many Italian and US soldiers with ministerial authorizations. Around the emperor Tiberius Julius instead there are many authorities and illustrious characters:"
This makes no sense as Emperor Tiberius does not appear in the chariot race sequence. He is only in the scenes set in Rome and the chariot race is in Jerusalem, so either the actors named appear in another sequence or else they mean Pontius Pilate rather than Tiberius.

"Sequence: External Calvary (Crucifixion)"
Other than the thieves on the crosses (who are barely seen identifiably), none of the roles listed here are named in the film and if these characters do appear then they are only seen as extras. Maybe there was a scene containing characters from the bible that was cut? I would guess that they are the characters seen in image 285, but that really is all you see of them

I corrected the mispelled names.

I think that the journalist confused Pontius Pilate with Tiberius, because there are some photos of Andreotti during the circus working sequences, so maybe other authorities participated as well. But if you look closely around Pontius Pilate there are none one of them. Perhaps they only witnessed the "rehearsals" of the scene and did not participate in the actual shooting.

I'm honestly puzzled by the names in the Crucifixion sequence. For example, neither of the two thieves that can be seen can be Angelo Dessy, because he has always been plump and they are not at all. Though they are glimpsed, their body is definitely not Dessy's. I think that these parts should not be considered as useful for rebuilding the cast.

I knew we would find many errors here as well. Also because in the Podcast he doesn't say if he found the roles and simply reported them or if he "identified" them.

[Emiliano]

I don't see Guglielmo Leoncini or Gloria Milland anywhere in the "House of Ben-Hur" sequence, but the actor on the right in 209, a totally different scene, does seem somewhat like Leoncini

Yes, he looks like him, with an obvious wig, but I don't know him so well to being sure.

Definitively Casaretti for me. Marra too (he uses the same vest here)

[PeplumParadise]

...and maybe in the N. 133 in the middle there is Renzo Pevarello.

I also wondered about that being Renzo, though it seems more how he looked 10 years later. Unfortunately he's only seen in movement so impossible to get a sharp image, but can maybe be another "probable" identification?