Here’s the latest from The Magnificent 60s
Columbia offset the gamble of turning an award-winning play with a stage star with no movie marquee luster, a co-star who had just about the same pulling power for audiences, and a host of actors nobody had ever heard of by cutting the budget to the bone – the $ 2million spent would barely be enough for a mid-level Hollywood production – even though director Fred Zinnemann belonged in the upper reaches of the Oscar hierarchy with one win and six nominations to his name.
You could even argue that the best-known person in the cast was female lead Susannah York (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965, The 7th Dawn, 1964) or the legendary Orson Welles or even screenwriter Robert Bolt, acclaimed for his work on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965)…