The Greatest Story Ever Told - Production

Production

Stevens shot The Greatest Story Ever Told in the U.S. southwest, in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah. Pyramid Lake in Nevada represented the Sea of Galilee, Lake Moab in Utah was used to film the Sermon on the Mount, and California's Death Valley was the setting of Jesus' 40-day journey into the wilderness.

Stevens explained his decision to use the U.S. rather than in the Middle East or Europe in 1962. "I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ, and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American southwest," he said. "I know that Colorado is not the Jordan, nor is Southern Utah, Palestine. But our intention is to romanticize the area, and it can be done better here."

Forty-seven sets were constructed, on location and in Hollywood studios, to accommodate Stevens' vision.

To fill location scenes with extras, Stevens turned to local sources – R.O.T.C. cadets from an Arizona high school played Roman soldiers (after 550 Navajo Indians from a nearby reservation did not give a convincing performance) and Arizona Department of Welfare provided disabled state aid recipients to play the afflicted who sought Jesus' healing.

Principal photography was scheduled to run three months but ran nine months or more due to numerous delays and setbacks (most of which were due to Stevens' insistence on shooting dozens of retakes in every scene). Joseph Schildkraut died before completing his performance as Nicodemus, requiring scenes to be rewritten around his absence. Cinematographer William C. Mellor had a fatal heart attack during production; Loyal Griggs, who won an Academy Award for his cinematography on Stevens’ 1953 Western classic Shane, was brought in to replace him. Joanna Dunham became pregnant, which required costume redesigns and carefully placed camera angles.

Much of the production was shot during the winter of 1962-1963, when Arizona had heavy snow. Actor David Sheiner, who played James the Elder, quipped in an interview about the snowdrifts: "I thought we were shooting Nanook of the North." Stevens was also under pressure to hurry the John the Baptist sequence, which was shot at the Glen Canyon area – it was scheduled to become Lake Powell with the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam, and the production held up the project.

Stevens brought in two veteran filmmakers. Jean Negulesco filmed sequences in the Jerusalem streets while David Lean shot the prologue featuring Herod the Great. Lean cast Claude Rains as Herod.

By the time shooting was completed in August 1963, Stevens had amassed six million feet of Ultra Panavision 70 film (about 1829 km or 1136 miles, roughly the radius of the Moon). The budget ran to an astounding $20 million – 2010 equivalent: approximately $142 million – plus additional editing and promotion charges), making it the most expensive film shot in the U.S.

The film was deceptively advertised on its first run as being shown in Cinerama. While it was shown on an ultra-curved screen, there never really was any such thing as one-projector Cinerama, as its makers claimed. True Cinerama required three projectors running simultaneously.