Both of his Best Actor Oscar nominations - forEast of Eden (1955)and later forGiant- were announced posthumously.Ben-Hur says he "drank a toast" to Messala when he heard the news he had become a tribune.They challenge each other to a friendly competition, hurling javelin spears into the point where two wooden beams cross in the ceiling, exclaiming: "Down Eros, up Mars!" Their aim at the crossbeam and their friendship is "still close.The wind blew the dying leaves from trees.The driver was drunken son Kyle Hadley (Robert Stack) returning from a wrong-side-of-town bar to his white-columned mansion estate.Directed by Irving Rapper, its screenplay by Casey Robinson was based on the 1941 novel by Olive Higgins Prouty (who also wroteStella Dallas).