Ben-Hur (1959 film) New York City on November 18, 1959. Present at the premiere were William Wyler, Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Haya Harareet, Martha Scott, Ramon Novarro (who played Judah Ben-Hur in the 1925 silent film version), Spyros Skouras (president of the 20th Century Fox), Barney Balaban (president of Paramount Pictures), Jack L. Warner (president of Warner Bros.), Leonard Goldenson (president of the American Broadcasting Company), Moss Hart (playwright), Robert Kintner (an ABC Television executive), Sidney Kingsley (playwright), and Adolph Zukor (founder of Paramount Pictures). During its initial release the film earned $33.6 million in North American theater rentals (the distributor's share of
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