Continuity mishaps in Ben Hur

Cafe Society
1

This might have been asked and answered before, but the SDMB search engine doesn’t allow searches for words with less than four letters, and “heston watch” provided lots of threads of which none seems to refer to this.

It’s about two widespread rumours I heard regarding the famous chariot race in the 1959 picture Ben Hur. One says Charlton Heston forgot to take off his wrist watch, so he’s wearing it throughout the scene; the other says there’s a red car to be seen in the background during the race. I watched the movie today and found nothing peculiar; I googled up several movie mistakes websites, but all of them merely mention those “generally known” mistakes without providing sreenshots. Are those mistakes actually there, or is it just faxlore passed on without actually checking if it’s true?

2

The IMDB has a section for “goofs” for all of their movies, including Ben Hur.

They make no mention of either of these two rumors. They say that one of the trumpeteers is seen wearing a watch but also say that some people think it may be a shadow. They do not mention a car at all. (They say a plane flies by in one scene and that the tire tracks from the camera truck are visible during the chariot race, but no mentions of a car.)

Of course, most of the “mistakes” reported by the IMDB are sent in by readers so it doesn’t prove anything but does imply that those specific mistakes are not there.