It was produced by Samuel Bronston for Allied Artists, with a screenplay by Philip Yordan and Bernard Gordon, and with uncredited contributions from Robert Hamer, Julian Halevy, and Ben Barzman.

It stars Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven, with supporting roles by Flora Robson, John Ireland, Leo Genn, Robert Helpmann, Harry Andrews, and Kurt Kasznar.

55 Days at Peking was released by Allied Artists on May 29, 1963 and received mixed reviews, mainly for its historical inaccuracies and lack of character development.

Approximately a thousand foreigners from various western industrialized countries have exploited their positions inside Beijing's legations, seeking control of the weakened nation.

Beijing's foreign embassies are gripped by terror, as the Boxers, supported by Imperial troops, set about killing Christians in an anti-western nationalistic fever.

As the siege worsens, Maj. Lewis forms an alliance with the senior officer at the British Embassy, Sir Arthur Robertson, pending the arrival of a British-led relief force.

As the foreign defenders conserve food and water, while trying to save hungry children, the Empress continues plotting with the Boxers by supplying aid from her Chinese troops.

When the soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance have taken control of the city, after routing the Boxers and the remnants of the Imperial Army, Maj. Lewis assembles his men, having received new orders from his superiors to leave Beijing.

He stops and circles back to retrieve Teresa, the young, half-Chinese daughter of one of his Marine comrades who was killed during the 55-day siege.

Yordan dismissed the idea, but later on having returned from a cruise in London, his wife located a book with a chapter titled "Fifty-five Days at Peking" inside a bookstore and showed it to him.

[5][6] In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Bronston stated he was attracted to the Boxer Rebellion because it showed "the unity of peoples, no matter what their beliefs, in the face of danger.

"[7] In September 1961, Bronston announced he was planning a trilogy of historical epics in Spain, among them was 55 Days at Peking and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

Furthermore, he stated that he had filed an infringement complaint with the Motion Picture Association of America because he had approached Yordan to write a script in 1956.

In December 1961, following the Madrid premiere of El Cid, during a flight back to Los Angeles, Yordan and Ray again pitched the idea to Heston, and this time he agreed to star in the film.

[15][16] In March 1962, Bronston told columnist Hedda Hopper that he had hoped Katharine Hepburn would portray Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi.

[22] By late June 1962, Hepburn had dropped out of the cast, and Bronston announced that Flora Robson had replaced her to portray the Chinese empress, while Robert Helpmann would play Prince Tuan.

"[24] Prior to filming, Gordon and Ray had worked on a draft in which the former struggled writing as he contracted "colds and the flu and constantly ran a low-grade fever."

After four weeks of work, they presented pages of their draft to Yordan, who ordered them to "go back to square one and write the kind of clumsy, impersonal, fat historical opus" that the international distributors wanted.

[39] At this point, production had fallen six weeks behind schedule with Gardner's role being nearly complete, but significant scenes for Heston and Niven had yet to be shot.

To replace him, Heston suggested Guy Green, who had previously directed him in Diamond Head (1963), to finish the remaining scenes between him and Gardner.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described the film as: [R]ousing, sometimes exciting, action fare that should keep the customers alert and entertained even if their intellects are confused.

The fact of the matter is that the principals and the multitudinous extras involved have no more depth than Occidental and Oriental figures on a Chinese tapestry.

[49] Gene Arneel of Variety praised the production design and Jack Hildeyard's cinematography, but also felt the script "plays interestingly but somehow lacks appropriate power.

"[50] Philip K. Scheuer, reviewing for the Los Angeles Times, wrote that "For sheer color magnificence—photographed by Jack Hildeyard in Super Technirama 70—it is as breathtaking as El Cid.

It should hold and fascinate spectators for its two-and-a-half hours of sheer, pell-mell movie making, even though characters are stereotypes whose melodramatics are as dated as the period itself.

"[51] Time magazine felt "Pictorially, the film is magnificent, and some of the handsomest scenes—an orange sun rising over the peaks of the Forbidden City, midnight pyrotechnics as the Imperial arsenal blows up, the gates of the great Tartar Wall being stormed by Boxers in scarlet turbans—are almost as good as the evocative paintings by Water-colorist Dong Kingman, which open and close the picture.

It was doubtless ghastly to wait 55 days at Peking until international reinforcements arrived, and the moviegoer who experiences the whole siege in two hours and 30 minutes comes out feeling lucky.