a spurned homosexual lover. Vidal said that he believed that Messala's vindictiveness could only be motivated by the feeling of rejection that a lover would feel, and suggested to Wyler that Stephen Boyd should play the role that way, and that Heston be kept in the dark about the Messala character's motivations. Vidal further claimed that Wyler took his advice. Whether Vidal wrote the scene in question or had the acting conversation with Wyler, and whether Wyler shot what Vidal wrote, remain issues of debate. In 1980, Wallace biographers Robert and Katharine Morsberger said that Vidal's contribution to the script remained unclear. Heston has asserted that Wyler felt Vidal did not solve the problem of motivation, and that Wyler shot little of what he wrote or made little contribution to the script. Wyler himself says that he does not remember any conversation about this part of the script or Boyd's acting with Gore Vidal, and that he discarded Vidal's draft in favor of Fry's. Film critic Gary Giddins also dismisses Vidal's claims, concluding that 80 percent of the script had been written "years before" Vidal came aboard the production. However, Jan Herman, one of Wyler's biographers, asserts "there is no reason to doubt" Vidal's claim, and that Wyler's inability to remember the conversation was just part of the director's notorious caginess. There appears to be some contemporary support for Vidal's assertions. Morgan Hudgens, publicity director for the film, wrote to Vidal in late May 1958 about the crucial scene, and implied there was a homosexual context: "... the big cornpone [the crew's nickname for Heston] really threw himself into your 'first meeting' scene yesterday. You should have seen those boys embrace!" Film critic F. X. Feeney, in a comparison of script drafts, concludes that Vidal made significant and extensive contributions to the script. The final writer on the film was Christopher Fry. Charlton Heston has claimed that Fry was Wyler's first choice as screenwriter, but that Zimbalist forced him to use Vidal. Whether Fry worked on the script before Vidal or not, sources agree that Fry arrived in Rome in early May 1958 and spent six days a week on the set, writing and rewriting lines of dialogue as well as entire scenes, until the picture was finished. In particular, Fry gave the dialogue a slightly more formal and archaic tone without making it sound stilted and medieval. For example,