Starring Howard Keel, Susan Kohner, John Saxon, Martha Hyer, Herbert Lom, Alexander
Scourby, Beulah Bondi
Directed by Frank Borzage

Print: color
Runtime: 180 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B

The lush romanticism of director Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, Street Angel) is
subsumed by the plodding reverence of producer Rowland V. Lee's screenplay (co-written
with Howard Estabrook), based on the best-selling novel by Lloyd C. Douglas. Howard Keel
stars as a stalwart Simon-Peter, the apostle of Christ called "the fisher of men" and the
"Rock" upon whom the Christian Church was founded. The film, on the surface, deals with
Simon-Peter's conversion from a self-sufficient fisherman to a believer in the inspirational
teachings of Christianity. Simon-Peter also serves the needs of the real story: how Simon-
Peter succeeds in joining together two lovers from the other side of the tracks. John Saxon
is Voldi, an Arab prince who wants to follow in his father's footsteps as the chief of an Arab
tribe and marry his beloved, Fara (Susan Kohner). But Fara, wants to see her father, Herod
Antipas (Herbert Lom), dead for the misery he has inflicted upon her mother — abandoning
her for the lustful Herodias (Martha Hyer). When Voldi and Fara hear the teachings of Christ,
they realize that their love must be put in abeyance to their Christian beliefs.

Follows The Robe (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954).