The Robe - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[wallace]

Passed by the British Board of Film Censors with a "U" certificate on 26 October 1953, the film opened in London at the Odeon, Leicester Square, on 19 November 1953 and ran for 12 weeks. The general release on the Rank circuit was scheduled for Monday, 11 January 1954, but ran into difficulties owing to a dispute. Fox tried to insist that Rank equip every cinema with not only a new wide screen, but also wall-to-wall stereophonic sound. Rank refused to pay that much, so Fox approached the lower circuits and independents who were only too pleased to fill the void left by Rank. Granada re-equipped their Walthamstow cinema in order to book The Robe, and Essoldo did likewise with their Troxy cinema in Portsmouth. In Derby the ageing independent Black Prince closed for a week to undergo re-designing and re-equipping, and suddenly emerged as Derby's leading cinema. The Robe opened there on 8 March 1954 and ran for four weeks.

[tammy]

Darryl F. Zanuck originally offered the role of Marcellus to Tyrone Power in a bid to get him to renew his contract with Fox. Power instead opted to star in the play "John Brown's Body" on Broadway, which closed after 65 performances.

[mathew]

The Praetorian Guards' rebellion at being denied a promised gold coin is a reference to Roman Emperor Galba's Welshing on a similar pledge to those Praetorians who helped him become emperor. Because of this, they turned on Galba and killed him.

[elmer]

The set of Cana, the Galilee village where Marcellus Gallio meets Peter after the wedding at which Jesus officiated, was a redress of sets originally built for Algiers (1938), that had stood on the studio back lot for 17 years. The sets were later used in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) - this film's sequel - as the poor Christian neighborhood in Rome where Demetrius lives in the beginning of the movie. The well with the old broken columns can be easily recognized.

[willard]

Burt Lancaster was originally cast in the role played by Victor Mature.

[ivan]

Writer Herb Meadow worked, uncredited, on the script.

[ethel]

The opening shot after the title credits against a "red robe" is actually a scene lifted from this film's sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), in which Jay Robinson Caligula presides over a gladiatorial contest. This differs from the opening in the "flat" 1.37:1 Academy ratio version. Susan Hayward, which is merely various shots of the Rome built on the Fox lot, over which is laid Richard Burton's narration.

[marc]

Famous as the first film released in CinemaScope, but was not planned that way. After a week of shooting in standard "flat" Academy aspect ratio (1.37:1), the production was shut down. When production was resumed, principal photography started from scratch, shooting alternative takes in both CinemaScope, and Academy format, on the assumption that not all theaters booking the film would rush to equip themselves with expensive wide screens and stereophonic sound-playback equipment, thought the film was initially released only in CinemaScope. For until well into the home video era, a transfer from the flat negative was the only version to play on television. Now the CinemaScope version is the only available version.The two negatives differ in more than pictorial composition: the two versions' opening shots are markedly different, the length of shots and scenes in each differ slightly, actors' performances are somewhat different, and the sound designs are also divergent, with some actors' voices being replaced via looping.It is widely thought that the flat version is slightly better than its 'Scope sibling.

[darrell]

It has to be the height of Hollywood irony , that an atheist, chain-smoking, alcoholic who's costar was having an open affair with him though both were married - portrayed the two righteous Christians willing to be martyred for their faith whose closing soliloquies were about morality and faith.

[lynn]

Harry Shearer appears uncredited in the role of David, the disabled friend of Jonathan, the boy to whom Marcellus gives the donkey.

[kim]

This film was first telecast on US television on Easter weekend,1968 on ABC. Not only was the telecast aired at an early hour (7:00 PM EST) to facilitate family viewing, but, unusually, it aired with only one commercial break (for Ford Motor Co.).

[brent]

At one point the producers considered making Marcellus older and casting Laurence Olivier.

[veronica]

Richard Burton smoked 100 cigarettes a day throughout filming.

[sophie]

This film contains approximately 517 transitions (edits, dissolves etc) in about 131 minutes of action. This equates to an average shot length of about 15 seconds.

[maureen]

Film debut of Jay Robinson (I).The studio had originally cast British stage actor John Buckmaster in what would have been his first Hollywood film, but the prospect of acting in front of a camera proved so unnerving to him that the studio felt he was unreliable and that continuing with him was too great a financial risk. Fox then signed Robinson to replace him.

[jim]

The girl in the poster for this film is not Jean Simmons (I) but rather the original actress cast in the role of Diana, Jean Akers. She dropped out of the film because she was pregnant, but the face in the poster was left unchanged.