Cinema: Calendar Christ

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To give scope to Story, Director Stevens filmed it in Hollywood and in Glen Canyon, Utah. And he summoned unto him so many actors great and small that Galilee often seems but a stone's throw from Desilu. The long, long road to Calvary is lined with the usual yea-verily types (Claude Rains as Herod the Great, Charlton Heston as John the Baptist) plus, it would seem, any other celebrity ready to trade top billing for a chance to play holy charades. Jesus cures a cripple (Sal Mineo), a blind man (Ed Wynn) and a leper (Shelley Winters). He bears his cross under the stern eye of Roman Centurion John Wayne. Veronica is Carroll Baker, who mops his brow, and—in a labored salute to brotherhood—he gets a helping hand from Simon of Cyrene (Sidney Poitier). Such coy vignettes add star power but not stature. They merely bolster the evidence that Western man's greatest story has yet to be greatly told on film.

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