Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 9:30pm

Screen Pilates: Richard Boone

Richard Boone

 

The second of our series on screen portrayals of Pontius Pilate is Richard Boone in the film The Robe (1953).  ( The portrayal of Pilate by Rod Steiger in Jesus of Nazareth (1977), the first in our series, is reviewed here.)  Descended from a younger brother of Daniel Boone, Boone, a Navy veteran of the Pacific during World War ii, studied acting on the GI bill.  Boone assayed the role of Pilate only three years into his career, but he already had the three traits that made him stand out as an actor:  a commanding presence, a deep gravelly voice and an ability to suggest that a character he is portraying is not as simple as we think at first glance.  Boone went on to be a western television star in the hit show Have Gun Will Travel (1957-1963) in which he played Paladin, a West Point graduate who fought for truth and justice in the old West, as long as his $1,000.00 fee was paid.  Boone portrayed Paladin as a well-educated man who would often draw upon his knowledge of history to win the day.  It was the favorite show of a very small Donald McClarey and no doubt helped inspire a love of history in me.  Here is the Paladin theme song which could be sung by almost all schoolboys in the early Sixties:

Alright, that is quite enough Memory Lane!  Back to the task at hand.   Below is  the video clip of Boone as Pilate.

 

We see Pilate washing his hands.  Tribune Gallio, portrayed by Richard Burton, has been ordered to report to Pilate.  Gallio is being summoned back to Rome.  However, Pilate has one task for him to perform before he leaves.  A routine assignment, the execution of three criminals.  One of them is a fanatic, who has a following and Gallio is told by Pilate to bring enough men to deal with trouble.  Pilate gives these orders in a clipped military style, wasting not a syllable.

Then, the unexpected happens.  Pilate confesses, almost talking to himself, that he had a miserable night, bedeviled by factions and no one agreeing with anyone, with even his wife having an opinion. (“Have nothing to do with that innocent man, because in a dream last night, I suffered much on account of him.”). Pilate then shakes off his reverie, and wishes Gallio good luck.  He then asks a slave to bring water to wash his hands, and is reminded that he has just washed his hands.

It is a small gem of a performance.  Boone portrays Pilate as a no nonsense military man who is beginning to be haunted by what he has just done in sentencing Jesus.  It is a minimalist performance that conveys much in a very brief scene.

 

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 5:54am

“Have gun. Will travel.” Pretty much says it all: solve a ton of problems. Great line for a business card.

I watched that on TV when I was a kid, too.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 6:35am

I liked Gunsmoke better. Marshall Dillon did his job for free. As for Boone, not bad as Pilate. Victor Mature was an underrated actor, too. Liked him in Samson and Delilah. Not to threadjack but this could make an interesting topic, Don: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42215497/ns/us_news-life/
The U.S. bishops apparently back a new Bible translation that’s PC, which is another reason I have trouble being a Catholic. Whatever happened to tradition?

Joe Green
Joe Green
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 6:47am

Well, it wasn’t a grand, Don. Palladin was mercenary.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 8:01am

“…the Church has endured for 20 centuries.”

Don, there are many religions that precede Christianity. Here are scores to pick and choose from:

http://meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Ancient_religions/ancient_religions.htm

Joe Green
Joe Green
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 9:00am

Granted, Don, but claimed uniqueness, which is refutable, does not necessarily confer validity. There’s no gainsaying Christianity’s staying power. However, consider that the Virgin Birth was typically an Eastern idea that had been familiar from Egypt to Mesopotamia for at least 2,000 years, and nearly all the prophets and wonder-workers who swarmed in the vast and murky region had been “sons of the gods.”

Equally, the idea of Atonement was also Eastern, as was that of Original Sin and the Resurrection of the Body. Christianity, then, was in large part a syncretism, an outgrowth of Judaism, which accepted, on the one hand, a concept of immorality that came from the East, and, on the other, a concept of God that gradually become almost more Greek than Jewish.

Nor can one ignore the constant rewrites of Scripture (which continue to this day) as theologian after theologian looked for new interpretations of old texts. By the 4th Century, Jerome was saying that there were “as many readings as texts.”

Augustine, Origen, Irenaeus, Cyprian. Justian differed widely on meanings and matters and we are to be content with Tertullian’s “I believe because it is incredible.” Clearly a sign he began life as a lawyer, as HL Mencken quipped. (with all due respect, my barrister friend).

While 20 centuries old, it wasn’t under 325 a.d. that the Church picked up steam by establishing the divinity of Jesus, purging it of the Arian heresy, and getting the house in order. Three centuries prior there was free-for-all chaos. More than anyone perhaps, Christianity owes its durability to Constantine, who gave it status as an official faith.

The 17 centuries that followed resist analysis in this short space, but suffice it to say that theological shifts were seismic, resulting in a Church today that bears little resemblance to what was merely another Jewish sect from the start.

I leave for now with this quote from Eric Hoffer: “Though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious. The true believer is everywhere on the march, shaping the world in his own image. Whether we line up with him or against him, it is well we should know all we can concerning his nature and potentialities.”

Sandra Miesel
Sandra Miesel
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 9:06am

Because you live in Illinois, Don, I have to share a parody song to the tune of the PALADIN theme that a U of I classmate made up in the 60’s:

Champaign-Urbana is the name of a town,
A place without honor on a prairie mound.
The flicks they are lousy but the girls oh-boy,
Sodom and Gomorrah of the State of Illinois.

Illinois, Ilinois, Why are we here?
To get PhD’s and drink more beer.

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Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 12:03pm

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Don the Kiwi
Don the Kiwi
Thursday, April 21, AD 2011 7:12pm

Great Apologetics, Don.
I’ll have you on my team anytime 🙂

Brian Kelly
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 11:40am

Joe Green, with all due respect there is no religion that predated Christianity. True religion was the worship of the One God, and the Redeemer to come that began with Adam and Eve. God revealed more to Noah, Abraham, and Moses. But it was the same religion. The Hebrews of the Old Testament (and some non-idolatrous gentiles, like Job) believed in a Savior to come. We Catholic, true Christians, believe in a Savior who has come, and still abides with His Church, our Emanuel. The words “synagogue” and Church “ecclesia” mean the same thing in Greek and Hebrew. The Church was prefigured in the Old Testament in which all the rituals and sacrifices were a sign of what was to come in the one sacrifice that would actually atone for the sins of the world. Thus the Baptist identifies Christ as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

I realize that you already know this and so much more, but you are confusing the aberrations of false religions, which were corruptions of the true, with the true religion revealed by God. Some Jewish leaders in the 12th century (Moses Maimonides among them), in their determination to undo Christianity, changed their own dictionaries to render the word “alma” to mean “young woman” instead of “virgin.” Thus, they rejected their own greatest scholars who translated the Hebrew scriptures in to Septuagint Greek in the 3rd century BC. These scholars translated Isaias 7:14 as “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emanuel.” And, too, why would the apostle Matthew, a Jew, use this text as proof of Jesus being the Messiah, if “alma” meant “young woman”? What scandal it is that the New American Bible mistranslates this passage based on a defective Hebrew dictionary, whose authors deleted the primary meaning of the word “alma.”

Joe Green
Joe Green
Friday, April 22, AD 2011 12:31pm

Brian, with all due respect, I suppose it depends on one’s definition of “religion.” which Webster’s firstly says is “the service and worship of God or the supernatural.”

Before Christ it is incontrovertible that humans worshipped or otherwise acknowledged divinities, real or imagined. Whether they be “true” or “false” is another matter.

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