King of Kings

The number one selling book was The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone.

Top movie was King of Kings.

It's about Jesus living under Roman rule.

Stars Jeffrey Hunter and Siobhán McKenna, Howard Hatfield.

After 1954's candy-colored Western Johnny Guitar, Ray directed James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, continuing his interest in protagonists who stand outside society and pay a price for it.

After 1956's Bigger Than Life, starring James Mason as a prototypical American dad who gets addicted to medication and turns on his family, Ray directed the war drama Bitter Victory with Richard Burton, The Savage Innocence with Anthony Quinn, and 1961's epic King of Kings, which which was taken out of Ray's hands and the editing stage.

Ray was given the reins of another epic, 1963's 55 Days at Peking, starring Charlton Heston, but problems on the set with the actors and the producers led Ray to walk off the film, leaving it to be finished by others, including Heston himself.

Addicted to various substances and unable to develop new projects, Ray lived in various places across the globe.

At the end of that film, and that suggests something about his personality that he was felt kinship with these kinds of people that were on the margins of society and society was like, Nope, you know, you had you stepped outside the line, you're going to pay for it.

And that once I knew that and I could sort of see it through the different I would argue some of his best films, it made it very rewarding to kind of pick up on these things.

I mean, if you want to, you could even argue that's what King of Kings is.

It's about Jesus.