General Lew Wallace's enormously popular book (for a time, the biggest-selling book ever, after the Bible) was first turned into a stage production in 1899. It included a chariot race with two horses on a treadmill in front of a revolving panorama painting of the Circus Maximus.

The story was filmed twice before, in 1907 (with future Western star William S. Hart as Messala) and in a lavish 1925 MGM production starring Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman. The first version was filmed without permission. Author Lew Wallace's family sued, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The family won, setting a legal precedent for copyright protection of a writer's work. The 1925 version, plagued by numerous production problems, cost a then-staggering $4 million to make and took years to recoup any of its money. In 1931 it was reissued in a shortened version with sound added, but that flopped and was quickly pulled from distribution, never to be seen again.

The director of Ben-Hur, William Wyler, worked as an assistant on the 1925 chariot race filming. Many of the sequences used in the later version were modeled very closely on those in the 1925 release.

An animated version was made for television in 2003, with Charlton Heston supplying the voice of Judah Ben-Hur.

For one of the march themes in Ben-Hur, Miklós Rózsa reportedly reworked one he had written for the earlier Roman epic Quo Vadis (1951).

Publicity for Ben-Hur really swung into high gear in the months just prior to the November premiere date. By mid-summer 1959, advertising-pr expenses of more than $3 million had been approved. Merchandising tie-ins were lined up, including fashions inspired by the film, a chariot race toy set, a Ben-Hur candy bar, and children's costumes complete with swords, breastplates, helmets, and scooter chariots. Four different publishers put out paperback copies of the novel and Random House issued a hardback souvenir book to be sold in bookstores and theater lobbies.

The Japanese premiere of Ben-Hur marked the first time the Emperor and his wife left the palace for the purpose of attending a movie.

Film producer-director George Lucas said Ben-Hur was an inspiration to him early on as he strove to instill excitement into his action scenes and yet also focus on the personal stories of his characters. He noted in particular that the pod race in The Phantom Menace (1999) was a modern version of the chariot race.

The chariot race in Ben-Hur has been spoofed (e.g., an episode of The Simpsons) or referenced a number of times in other films and TV shows, particularly in the use of spiked wheels to win a race unfairly.

Director Ridley Scott and production designer Arthur Max said Ben-Hur is one of two pictures, along with The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), that they observed closely when preparing the film Gladiator (2000). Max called Ben-Hur "a master course in production design."

Production designer Arthur Max said that while scouring studios and film warehouses in Rome for materials for Gladiator, he and his crew found many old molds and forms for statues used in past films, some of which were likely in Ben-Hur. In fact, some of the statues seen in Gladiator were cast by the son and grandson of the original sculptor who made them for Ben-Hur.

During production, many celebrities flocked to Rome, eager to be a part of the buzz generated by the film, among them Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, and Ed Sullivan, who featured it on his TV show in January 1959. The hottest photo op was, of course, the chariot race, and many Italian nobles jockeyed to be cast as extras. One such titled extra was Princess Carmen de Hohenlohe, who played a guest at a banquet in the Rome section of the picture.

Charlton Heston directed a screen adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (1972) that borrowed some footage from Ben-Hur for the sea battle sequence.

Second-unit director Andrew Marton, who filmed the chariot race, said that stuntman Joe Canutt's spectacular feat of jumping Ben-Hur's chariot over another wrecked chariot would go down in stunt history equal to one performed by his father, Yakima Canutt, in which he jumped from horse to horse in Stagecoach (1939). The elder Canutt was the stunt coordinator for the chariot sequence and is often erroneously credited as the sole director of the race (an impression he helped to foster).

MGM issued three recordings of the soundtrack for Ben-Hur.

According to the Wall Street Journal prior to the film's release, MGM had licensed women's tiaras and combs with a Ben-Hur motif. Around this same time, one wag spoofed the preponderance of merchandising tie-ins and publicity gimmicks by claiming the studio was also licensing Ben-His and Ben-Hur towels.

Club Sportivo Ben Hur is the name of a sports and social club in Argentina, founded in 1940.

There are towns named Ben Hur in Virginia and Texas.

The Ben Hur was an automobile produced in Ohio in 1917-1918. Only about 40 cars were produced before the company folded.

The first scene between Judah and Messala, and Gore Vidal's description of how he conceived it as a love scene between the two men, is featured in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995) and discussed in the 1981 book of the same title by Vito Russo on which the documentary is based.

by Rob Nixon