Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2005 - 58

FIGURE 8
Diagram 2 from U.S.
Patent No. 666,714

[The wheel rolls from MESSALA's chariot, and
MESSALA falls as BEN-HUR draws past him. Stage
dark. Change: Lights up. BEN-HUR, standing in his
chariot before Consul's seat, receives the victor's
crown; ILDERIM caressing his horses; MALLUCH also
near horses. SIMONIDES, ESTHER, IRAS, BALTASAR,
and SANBALLAT in box above, in characteristic attitudes. Shouting-cheering-trumpet-calls. Curtain] (Mayer 1994, 273-274)
At this point in the performance, the stage lights are typically dimmed and a drop is lowered. When the lights come
back up, a large crowd cheering has gathered around BenHur. The race in Ben-Hur has both begun and ended with
horses galloping and the race in progress, like many racing
scenes in hippodramas that preceded it.
The chariots used in the race combined elements of Burgess' earlier designs and also seem to be similar to the stage
chariot design patented on 29 January 1901 by David Towers
(Towers 1901, Patent No. 666,714). This design, U.S. Patent
No. 666,714 (figures 7 and 8), seems compatible with the
other stage machinery used in Ben-Hur. It clearly builds on
earlier designs and acknowledges indebtedness to Burgess,
with whom Towers had probably worked in the past.10
Tower's patent features two panoramas and a means for
blowing "dust" between them to create the illusion of having the
horses actually run forward (and also to mask the meeting of the
two panoramas). It also features a novel projecting device (not
used in Ben-Hur) and, finally, has the horses positioned to
move toward the audience, instead of parallel to it, as was typical with earlier devices. Towers' patent elaborates the details
of his chariot device, which was designed to "lose" a wheel.
While Tower's chariot design may or may not have been the
one used in Ben-Hur, it is certain that this was not the first time
a chariot with a "trick" wheel was used in a stage spectacular.
In 1879, the Hanlon-Lees, a family troupe of acrobats
who enjoyed great popular success for presenting theatrical
spectacles of various types in Europe and the U.S., utilized a
similar device in their pantomime, "Le Voyage en Suisse" (The
Trip to Switzerland) (McKinven 1998, 47-49). It featured a
spectacular entrance by the Hanlons, in which their horse
drawn carriage loses a wheel and thus is caused to overturn
violently, allowing the Hanlon-Lees to perform an acrobatic escape.11 Although the Hanlons did patent many of their other
diverse designs there is no patent found for this carriage.
Ben-Hur played fairly regularly for twenty years and on
three different continents. The run began at the Broadway theatre in November 1899 and concluded in 1920, at which time the
original epic film version of the story was in the beginning stages
of production. It remains the most spectacular hippodrama in the
history of the American theatre and represents the height to
which the use of stage treadmills and panoramas rose with its
famous chariot race scene that incorporated more horses at
greater speeds and with more spectacular effect than has been
seen before or since.
The hippodramas cited here featured significant stage
machinery. These plays and others like them illustrate how the
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