Samuel Bronston

[Marky B]

Watching 55 Days At Peking the other day,and in the credits it mentioned it was filmed at the Samuel Bronston Studios in Madrid. Why did he build the studios in Spain?

Ta Ta

Marky B

[batman]

Because it was cheaper to make his kind of film in Spain rather than in the US. He was one of the first US producers to locate to Europe.

[Marky B]

Cheers,Bats. I also believe Kirk Douglas and his Bryna production company made their epics over here (probably for the same reason) as they were European set and so therefore should be made in Europe.

Ta Ta

Marky B

[wadsy]

I think it was "The Fall of The Roman Empire" that undid Bronston, apparently it cost



$20m to make & only made $2m at the box office. Times were changing the &



the big epics were no longer popular.

[Stephen Pickard]

FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - A Kine Weekly Supplement - March 26th, 1964:

[wadsy]

Some great stuff there Stephen !!!

[AdrianTurner]

Samuel Bronston was a hero of mine because I loved those epics he made in the 1960s. His early career is rather murky but he had the foresight to realise how the major Hollywood studios had massive funds locked in various countries, so he did a deal with General Franco and started up his own independent studio, initially funded by MGM because of King of Kings. El Cid - the idea of the Spanish hero appealed to Franco - was a huge hit and enabled Bronston to expand, so he built the vast Forum set for The Fall of the Roman Empire and then had it demolished when Charlton Heston turned the picture down. Peking was built on the ruins of Rome, then rose again and has been said previously, that film was a colossal flop and signalled the end for Bronston's fledgling empire. He did Circus World and Isabella of Spain was almost in production when Bronston ran out of funds. It's said that close associates were seen fleeing the country with sackfuls of dollars and the priceless antiques that decorated his sets. In the end, foresight gave way to shortsightedness - unlike similarly independent tycons such as Sam Spiegel, Joe Levine and Dino de Laurentiis, Bronston lacked flexibility and he lacked real understanding of the movies. Even so, he's still a hero and there's an exhaustively researched biography on the way written by a couple of Americans aficionados.

[pelam123]

Is he any relation to the producer of this classic?





[http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...0348900501724#

[Stephen Pickard]

[AdrianTurner]

I happen to own two of Macek Piotrowski's credit title backgrounds from The Fall of the Roman Empire - they are in the original 2.76:1 aspect ratio and I've had them framed. The electric light switch is included for purposes of scale!



Title for Yakima Canutt and Robert Lawrence:





Title for Michael Waszynski: