The Bible in film Christ with a climactic resurrection scene in color. "King of Kings" was re-released in 1931 with a synchronized musical score. MGM's 1925 silent-era "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ", starring Ramon Novarro was the most expensive film of its time. It included two spectacular scenes: the sea galley battle with pirates and the famous chariot-race. Another "swords and sandals" epic of the 1920s was "Noah's Ark" which combined title cards with spoken dialogue. The major studios produced fewer epics during the 1940s due in part to wartime scarcity of resources. After the war, some of Hollywood's highest grossing films were
Ramon Novarro del Río, Lupe Vélez and James Cagney, Novarro was accused of promoting Communism in California after they attended a special screening of the film "¡Que viva México!" by famed Russian filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein. Novarro was murdered on October 30, 1968, by brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, who called him and offered their sexual services. He had in the past hired prostitutes from an agency to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex, and the Fergusons obtained Novarro's telephone number from a previous guest. According to the prosecution in the murder case, the two young