His law practice and occasional forays into government failed to match his ambitions. When the drama subsided, Wallace grew bored by his life in Indiana. The stigma stuck with Wallace even as he went on to sit on the tribunal for Lincoln’s assassination, and to a later career as a lawyer in his native Indiana. The mistake cost Wallace his command and damaged his reputation. When he was a young general during the Civil War, he made his regiment late for the Battle of Shiloh, which the Union won despite enduring heavy losses of life. Army struggled to suppress local Apaches while a consortium of corrupt businessmen dominated the region and almost all of its commercial interests. Range wars ripped the territory into pieces. If General Lew Wallace, the author of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, came to the Territory of New Mexico in 1878 in search of a writer’s retreat, he came to the wrong place. And, while the 1959 film never shot a day in New Mexico, the story came to life on the Santa Fe Plaza. The film won all but three of those statues, and tied a record that had stood for 38 years until Titanic, no other film could match Ben-Hur at the Oscars. JAMES CAMERON'S EFFECTS-LADEN TITANIC was 1997’s biggest box-office smash, sailing into the 70th Academy Awards with 14 nominations and expectations the size of icebergs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |