This aerial shot of MGM’s 1925 version of “Ben Hur” intersection makes me shake my head in wonder. In the movie it all looks to grand, but when you look at it like this, it doesn’t look all that impressive. What impresses me more is all that vacant land! This scene was shot at the corner of La Cienega and Venice Boulevards, just below the 10 Freeway. There sure as hell ain’t no room for no Circus Maximus there now.

In this shot of the Circus Maximum from the movie, the top part was actually a miniature constructed to exactly match the real-life set that MGM had built:

This photo shows which part was real and which part was miniature. Clever, huh???

This is a little blurry but the big figure in the middle is the back of a crew member fiddling with the miniature Romans filling the miniature Circus Maximus:

And here is a close-up of what those miniature Romans looked like. They were attached to long rods so that the prop people could move them so that they looked like actual people cheering on the charioteers:

Another couple of long shots of the set, part real, part miniature:

The cast and crew take a break during shots. Those movie cameras we can see here were three of forty-two cameras MGM used that day.