Ben-Hur (1959 film) the box office), generating approximately $74.7 million in box office sales. Outside of North America, it earned $32.5 million in rentals (about $72.2 million at the box office) for a worldwide total of $66.1 million in rental earnings, roughly equivalent to $146.9 million in box office receipts. It was the fastest-grossing film as well as the highest-grossing film of 1959, in the process becoming the second-highest-grossing film of all-time (at that time) behind "Gone with the Wind". "Ben-Hur" saved MGM from financial disaster, making a profit of $20,409,000 on its initial release, and another $10.1 million in profits when re-released
Eddy Novarro Romanian descent and was born in Bucharest 1925. After emigrating to Brazil via Italy in 1946, he settled in Rio de Janeiro. In 1958, Novarro accepted an invitation from the architect Sergio Wladimir Bernardes to travel to the EXPO in Brussels and document the Brazilian pavilion in a photo series. it was there that he met René Magritte, who introduced him to the Paris surrealist circle. From the seventies onward, Novarro lived part of the time in Germany, because he considered Europe "the center of art". On a visit to New York City in February 1978, Novarro met gallery owner