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I know we've been here before. It doesn't look like anybody's ripe to take this one up?

Well, AGAINST the idea we have the following:

(a) People like Ralph Erkelenz and Joe Caporiccio (who edited much of this MGM material for laserdisc tracks professionally, and has the cue-sheets) have no record of it ever being recorded at that time.

(b) No tapes of it have been found.

(c) It's based on the rejected Entr'Acte music (which WAS recorded and is on the Aldebaran 3CD boot as 'Overture to Act 2') with a different midsection. You won't find this on the Rhino. As such it looks like a construction for the albums. Now AS a piece based on that Intermission music (and Ralph Erkelenz pointed out in PMS that the intermission was slated as JUST BEFORE the circus scenes in the original writes of Tunberg's script) it seems to refer to the CHARIOT RACE. I had myself always felt it was just a piece about the Romano-Judaean conflict (a la Josephus et al) since all the tunes are Hebraic, but Rozsa's own notes imply it's about fanfares and chariot races really. AS SUCH it wouldn't be appropriate for the BEGINNING of the film, rather the MIDDLE.

(d) MGM were very fussy about how this film should be presented, and gave precise instructions re the non-visual parts of the reels.

As regards the PROs of your theory:

(a) You are adamant that you remember it. (I have to be honest, and say that when I first heard it as a teenager on another LP I too thought I recognised it from an INFANT viewing of the film in a theatre some years later with my parents. I recall visuals too, but that might have been a pre-Overture travelogue or something .... I just can't be sure at all).

(b) I suppose Rozsa DID call it an 'Overture' on Volume 2 .... but an Overture to what? Elmer Bernstein later renamed his Entr'Acte from 'The Ten Commandments' as 'Overture to Act II' as well. It's certainly AN Overture to the ALBUM ... but then again, he could hardly open an LP with a piece called 'Intermezzo', could he? He had to call it SOMETHING.

(c) There are nearly always other deviant prints of these films. We know 'Ben-Hur' was cut and recut many times before final scoring, and many alternative cues for the cuts exist. Maybe, just maybe, there are a few out there. I know of someone who thinks he heard a SECOND NARRATION (not Finlay Currie's) over the link from the Prelude to the Marcia Romana ... on top of the Judaea theme. He even thinks he recognises the VO narrator ... Valentine Dyall, and he thinks Messala was referred to as 'Valerius Messala' with close-ups of Boyd riding over the hill we see in the distance. That's what he says. I dunno. Does the mind play tricks?

So those are the pros and cons. The cons, I'm afraid AT THE MOMENT seem to outweigh the pros. BUT .... remember those French fanfares from the children's bedtime album on 'Philips Jeunesse'? They sound so like the OST sound that I'm beginning to wonder if more material wasn't recorded off the cue-record, as spec or scamp material. My attitude is 'never say never'.

A Lee Hern wrote:

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Frankly, I've always wondered why BEN-HUR never had any exit music, as so many immense road-show epics did in those days. One piece of music on the old Ben-Hur Volume II album ("Christ Theme," on disc 2 of the Sony set) is an arrangement appearing nowhere in the film, and it's interesting to speculate whether Rózsa wrote it with the expectation that it would accompany patrons' march up the cinema aisles.

It would work I suppose. The only problem is that it begins pianissimo, then crescendos gradually to a big tutti, then fades away. The patrons would be halfway to the toilets before they could even hear it. Mind you, on the Telarc and Prometheus versions, this piece begins less piano. And Miklos Rozsa had a thing about Epilogues based on love-themes. It could be an alternative write for 'The Miracle' to segue from 'Shadow of a Storm' in some other cut. The Rhino alternative 'Star of Bethlehem' works surprisingly well too.

Balthassar is the interpreter of the story, even in the novel an interpreter of events. That he should be the marketplace storyteller, or the 'grand old man' Hermes who conveys the wisdom is apt enough. The only thing that takes us out of the film is the strong north Scottish accent!

In a similar vein, the best written VO narration from that period is Ardrey's 'Khartoum' for Leo Genn. It sets the tone brilliantly against that great Cordell music, gives us clues to the 'mystery' of what the film's core really is, namely ethical narcissism, and yet is in a sort of pipe-smoking Kiplingesque informal style, yet still very poetic, like Genn's own projected character I suppose. Genn misdelivers the line of his reprise though. At the end, he should really say, 'We do not know how long HIS memory will last ... but there is this' .... emphasising the 'HIS' in contrast to the OTHER memories from history he mentioned in the opener. But by that time no-one much notices probably.

The balance looks against it, as Joe made clear, but Med believes he heard it so ......

This score had such a long gestation and so many reworkings that one always supposes one hasn't heard everything.

My favourite rendition of the 'Friendship' theme is the sublime version Savina recorded, (also on the Lion album, but not so serendipitously echo-blended). It was mostly taken from the Overture (as exists) of course, but if you listen to the Savina, what are the images that enter your head? Those triangles (?) with their cool chimes at the beginning and that sensual string writing are just dripping with the feel of cool breezes and gently flowing palm-leaves in Summer. It's not the nocturne in the Fortress Antonia for sure ... that's in the Rhino/Decca piece. What it IS is two young friends meeting in a garden ... like in the book. I have a slight hunch that piece may have been conceived for the horse gift scene between 'House of Hur' and 'Conflict', where it works a treat, (if the coda is faded out, and it begins before they leave the divans), but never recorded. The piece CONJURES UP the whole relationship just as in the film and book, but is nowhere in the actual film. Sometimes that's how memory necessarily conflates. We feel it IS there, in memory. Music is very like that. But let's keep the mind open.

John Fitzpatrick .... if you'd lived in the UK, right up until the early 1980s, you'd never have HEARD those exit-epilogues, because it was mandatory to play a short exit film (if the last programme of the day) showing the Queen trooping the Colour against the National Anthem. This was on late-night BBC broadcasts too until the '70s. Only in arthouse screenings and film-clubs did anyone ever hear the epilogues... or soundtrack albums!