I like to tell visitors this: The guy who posed for the statue of Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, outside the the Mitchell Courthouse on St. Paul Street was a Baltimore-born actor who played the bad guy in the 1925 Hollywood epic “Ben-Hur.” His name was Francis X. Bushman, and 100 years ago, he was huge.

Bushman learned to drive a chariot for that long-ago movie, and he got through the filming of its brutal chariot race.

In fact, when Hollywood remade “Ben-Hur” in the late 1950s, the star of that production, Charlton Heston, was reported to have said, “The only man in Hollywood who can drive a chariot is Francis X. Bushman, and he's too old!”

Bushman died 50 years ago.

Once upon a time, he was a matinee idol, the highest-paid screen actor of his era, known at the peak of his career as “the handsomest man in the world.” He built a mansion near Baltimore.

He took the role of Messala in MGM's “Ben-Hur,” at $4 million, the most expensive film of the silent age. Bushman plays opposite another silent-movie beefcake, Ramon Novarro, in the title role.

I mention it because of the release today of a new “Ben-Hur,” starring Jim Huston as Judah Ben-Hur and Toby Kebbel as Messala.

In a current episode of the Roughly Speaking podcast, critics Linda DeLibero and Christopher Llewellyn Reed talk about the various productions of “Ben-Hur” and the long line of movies rightfully called Hollywood epics.

dan.rodricks@baltsun.com