Solomon and Sheba

One of those movies that has a bit of a reputation because of the backstory is Solomon and Sheba, the reason being that actor Tyrone Power suffered a fatal heart attack on the set of the movie. Filming went ahead without him, but before now I'd never actually seen the finished product. When I noticed that it was on Tubi, I decided to watch and see what the final result actually was.

Tyrone Power was cast to play biblical King Solomon, and had actually done quite a fair bit of the movie at the time of his death, so he was replaced by Yul Brynner and all of his close-up scenes reshot. Solomon, for those who don't know this portion of the Bible that well, was the son of King David (Finlay Currie) who, at the time the movie opens, is elderly and has two sons. Solomon is the younger which means that he probably shouldn't inherit the throne, that normally going to the eldest son Adonijah (George Sanders). But David is a wise man and realizes that Adonijah would be a disaster which is why he makes it an explicit point to name Solomon the heritor after Adonijah, thinking David has already died, tries to have himself crowned king.

Solomon does a pretty good job with Israel, making it prosperous even though surrounded by enemies that aren't as well to do, something that mirrors the situation today. This makes the Egyptian pharaoh (David Farrar) angry, and he gets all of his allies together to come up with a plan for what to do with Israel. Among those allies is the monarchy of Sheba, led by a queen (Gina Lollobrigida). She's got a brilliant idea, which is that she will use her sex appeal to make Solomon fall in love with her. Israel, you see, is different from all the other countries surrounding it in that it's the only one that's monotheistic and doesn't really do depictions of its one god. Once the Queen of Sheba gets Solomon in her clutches, she'll try to introduce elements of polytheism which will bring God's wrath upon the Israelites.

It's not so much polytheism that brings all sorts of horrors upon the kingdom of Israel so much as it is Solomon's hubris. He's been a good king for the most part, but he's beginning to get a bit full of himself and thinks he's bigger than he is. And he's still got Adonijah close by, as the commander of the army no less, just waiting for the right moment to happen when he can turn on Solomon.

Solomon has by this time already built the first Temple in Jerusalem, but God's wrath leads to the destruction of the temple as well as all sorts of Biblical disasters like famine and drought upon the kingdom. Adonijah sees that this is a good time to get Egypt to attack, and Adonijah will become ruler of a vassal state. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, as the saying goes. Of course, according to the Bible, Adonijah is not ultimately successful. But if you don't know the complete Biblical story, you'll have to see the movie to see just how Adonijah fails.

Filming for Solomon and Sheba began in 1958, at a time when Biblical epics were all the rage in both Hollywood and Europe, which makes this story one that you can see why someone would want to make a big production out of. And there's some good stuff here, mostly in the cinematography. Unfortunately, as we all know, Tyrone Power died, which necessitated not just all those reshoots, but apparently rewrites for Yul Brynner as well. Whether the script doctoring or the general atmosphere of having to complete a troubled production is what brings the movie down, I'm not certain. But there really is something here that doesn't feel quite right.

Having said that, I really think that even moreso than with other pictures I don't like, Solomon and Sheba is one where you need to watch it for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to what went wrong.