Why Paul Newman refused to star in a movie that won 11 Oscars: “Never again!”
While there are plenty of movies released each year that feel like nailed-on awards season contenders, there’s no way anybody could predict a single film winning 11 Academy Awards. Even with the benefit of hindsight, though, Paul Newman didn’t regret his decision to turn down the lead role in one of them.
Only three pictures in the history of the Oscars have ever won 11 trophies, so Newman missed out on one of Hollywood’s rarest accomplishments. Not that he gave a shit, because he’d made a promise to himself that there was one embarrassing incident in his career that he never wanted to repeat ever again.
Ironically, The Silver Chalice likely wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the actor hadn’t kept bringing it up for decades. It was a run-of-the-mill historical epic that bombed at the box office and fared poorly among critics, and looking back, the only thing memorable about Victor Saville’s movie is that it marked Newman’s first appearance in a feature.
It should, and maybe would, have fallen through the cracks and into the abyss like so many other ‘Golden Age’ titles, but because the iconic star continued hammering The Silver Chalice, and infamously took out a full-page advert encouraging people not to watch it, he never managed to escape from its shadow, which was entirely his own fault.
However, it was enough to convince him that heading into the ancient past wasn’t the best use of his talents. Newman made a few period pieces, but none of them stretched back anywhere near as far as The Silver Chalice‘s ancient Greek setting, and his hatred for the film was the one and only reason he needed to flat-out reject the title role in William Wyler’s 1959 classic, Ben-Hur.
“Everyone thinks it was a disaster just because it was terrible, but I say it wasn’t,” Newman reflected on his failings in his first movie. “It’s like juvenile delinquency: if you can be the worst kid on your block, you can make a name for yourself.” He rebounded and then some to become one of the industry’s biggest stars, but he might have gotten there sooner had he played Judah Ben-Hur.
He wasn’t the only one who knocked it back, though, with Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, and Rock Hudson among the other established names who weren’t interested. That said, Newman’s reasons were more personal, and he succinctly explained why he wouldn’t be caught dead in another historical epic: “I wore a cocktail dress once. Never again!”
His reticence opened the door for Charlton Heston, who ended up winning ‘Best Actor’. Ben-Hur also took home another ten Oscars, and the only one of the 12 prizes it was nominated for that it didn’t win was ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’, and that history-making sweep saw the film enshrined itself in the ceremony’s history as the first 11-time Oscar-winning flick, and it would be the only one to do so until James Cameron’s Titanic cut a swathe through Academy voters almost 40 years later.
Would Newman have won ‘Best Actor’ if he’d played Ben-Hur? Probably, but thanks to The Silver Chalice, he wouldn’t even consider it.
