Land of the Pharaohs

Land of the Pharaohs
Theatrical release poster
Directed byHoward Hawks
Written byHarold Jack Bloom
William Faulkner
Harry Kurnitz
Produced byHoward Hawks
StarringJack Hawkins
Joan Collins
Dewey Martin
Alex Minotis
CinematographyLee Garmes
Russell Harlan
Edited byVladimir Sagovsky
Music byDimitri Tiomkin
Production
companies
Warner Bros.
Continental Company
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
  • June 22, 1955 (1955-06-22) (Los Angeles)[1]
  • July 2, 1955 (1955-07-02) (U.S.)[2]
  • May 3, 1956 (1956-05-03) (UK)[3]
Running time
106 minutes (U.S.)
103 minutes (UK)[2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$2.9 million (estimated)
Box office$2.7 million (U.S.)[4]

Land of the Pharaohs is a 1955 American epic historical drama film in CinemaScope and WarnerColor from Warner Brothers, produced and directed by Howard Hawks. The cast was headed by Jack Hawkins as Pharaoh Khufu and Joan Collins as one of his wives, Nellifer. The film is a fictional account of the building of the Great Pyramid. Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner was one of the film's three credited screenwriters.

Land of the Pharaohs had a cast of thousands – Warners' press office claimed there were 9,787 extras in one scene[5] – and was one of Hollywood's largest-scale, ancient world epics, made in the same spirit as The Robe, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference schallert was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Land of the Pharaohs at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films
  3. ^ The Times, 2 May 1956, page 3: Review of Land of the Pharaohs, which states that the film opens "at the Warner Cinema to-morrow". Retrieved from The Times Digital Archive 2013-08-09
  4. ^ 'The Top Box-Office Hits of 1955', Variety Weekly, January 25, 1956
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference weiler was invoked but never defined (see the help page).