For a long time there was an urban legend that 1959 epic Ben Hur had captured the death of a stuntman during the chariot race. That urban legend stated that Stephen Boyd's double was killed in second-unit director Yakima Canutt's centre-piece sequence, but he confirmed that all of the characters run over were no more than articulated and weighted dummies and it was merely good editing that made it look so convincing. But despite that truth, the reality is that a stuntman was indeed killed filming a Ben Hur chariot sequence - it just wasn't the Charlton Heston version of the film. Back in 1925, Louis B Mayer produced the second big screen adaptation of Ben Hur - a silent movie starring Ramon Novarro - and during the production of that movie a stuntman did lose his life. During an early attempt to film the chariot race on location at the Circus Maximus in Rome, one chariot wheel broke a wheel and the stunt man was killed, though he will forever be forgotten thanks to the careless quashing of rumours that someone died recreating the sequence for the film that came more than 30 years later.
