It has been called the most expensive motion picture ever made.
Hail, Antony's legion!
It has been called the biggest flop of all time.
You will kneel. I will what?!
On your knees.
It is known as a film that nearly bankrupted a Hollywood studio.
Am I to understand, then, that you feel free
to do with me whatever you want, whenever you want?
And a scandal that sent the press into a feeding frenzy...
Antony, how will I live?
..that had the public begging for more.
Everything that I shall ever want to hold or look upon or have or be
is here now.
For nearly four decades, the story of Cleopatra has been
shrouded in rumour and marred by gossip.
It is one of the most famous - and infamous - stories ever put on film.
Where is Egypt?!
But behind the spectacle is a true story as compelling
and as tragic as anything seen on the screen.
It was a story that changed lives,
and a film that changed Hollywood...
forever.
To the outside world, Hollywood in 1959
was still the place where dreams - and fantasies - came true.
But unknown to the public and behind the backlot facades
was an insidious run of bad luck
that was eating away at badly needed profits.
In 1948, the US Supreme Court
had stripped studios of their theatre chains
and the success of television
had cut movie audiences by as much as 40%.
The studio system had broken down.
If you were in the studio system
at 20th in the '40s,
there was this huge, successful operation.
As it began to fall apart,
in the middle '50s, it was just entirely different,
an entirely different sort of plant.
But of all the surviving studios,
none was as vulnerable to the economic crisis
as 20th Century Fox.
Darryl F Zanuck,
the visionary who had co-founded the studio in 1935,
had departed to pursue his own dreams
of making independent films in Europe.
When Zanuck left, clearly, part of it was...
the change in Hollywood itself.
Hollywood's fierce competition with television.
They were not allies, at the time.
The battle against television
was left to Fox President Spyros P Skouras.
But the powerful Greek immigrant wasn't a film-maker like Zanuck.
He was an exhibitor, trying to fill seats.
We have invested the largest sums of money in our history
to provide a total of 55 productions
for the next 12 months.
These productions will be of quality and scope
that, we believe, will appeal to every one of you.
Even with such stars as John Wayne,
Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe
in the studio's roster, 20th Century Fox struggled to turn a profit.
By 1959, the studio was haemorrhaging money, thanks to
a series of high-profile flops.
They had Satan Never Sleeps.
They had the only John Wayne film not to make money,
The Barbarian And The Geisha.
It was a terrible, terrible run.
We had very, very tough times selling the movies,
getting people interested in the movies.
It was a company on the edge.
In an effort to rebuild Fox's ailing coffers,
Skouras entered negotiations to sell the studio's prized backlot
to real-estate developers.
But selling the property
would offer only a brief reprieve from Fox's financial woes.
Skouras ordered executive David Brown to search
the Fox Script Library for an idea that could be re-made quickly
and at minimal expense.
Spyros P Skouras sent me a memo
saying, "Dear Dave..." He called me Dave.
"..we need some big pictures," in his ebullient Greek accent.
And I went through the list of films that 20th Century Fox made
and there was Cleopatra.
Starring Theda Bara, the 1917 version of Cleopatra
had been a stunning success.
Brown and Skouras hoped a remake would bring in a tidy profit.
But while the executives easily agreed upon Cleopatra
as their story, finding a producer proved to be much more difficult.
We could find nobody to produce it until Walter Wanger,
a famous producer of his time, walked into my office and said,
"There's something I would love to do,
"it's a subject called Cleopatra." We fell on him.
Walter Wanger was a dapper veteran of the 1930s and '40s
whose prolific career had recently derailed,
largely due to marital problems with his wife, actress Joan Bennett.
Walter's wife was having an affair with her agent.
Walter...
who was, I guess, a fairly good marksman, sneaked up on them,
caught them in the car and pumped a bullet in a place where
this gentleman would not be able to consummate an affair.
Wanger served a four-month term for his crime of passion.
And in the years since his release,
the producer had been relegated to making B-movies
like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
Everyone! They're here already!
YOU'RE NEXT!
But a surprise Oscar-winning hit in 1958, entitled I Want To Live,
changed Wanger's luck for the better.
And my special thanks to Mr Walter Wanger,
who made this possible. I thank you!
APPLAUSE
It was thought that another critical success
would put the producer's career back on top.
But Fox wasn't concerned with critics. What the studio needed
was a film that would bring in box-office receipts.
They brought out this script
that looked like parchment, and said,
"Just give us this all over again and we'll make a million bucks."
But it was basically a silent movie script, with no dialogue.
And Wanger was appalled.
Wanger was told to rehabilitate the script
and get it into theatres as soon as possible.
Fox gave Wanger less than $2 million,
64 days and the run of the studio's backlot to make the picture.
They started clearing the backlot of the Fox lot to build the palaces
in the preliminary stage of Cleopatra,
when Skouras sort of said... gave the go-ahead for this.
Wanger was also ordered to cast his leading lady
from the roster of Fox's affordable contract players.
Names suggested included Academy Award-winner Joanne Woodward
and Joan Collins, who even screen-tested for the role.
Alexandria? Well, that's a noble present. Yes.
But I want something greater in exchange.
Rome.
And people have said that I am ambitious.
Why?
Don't you love me?
Don't you want Egypt?
Don't you want the world?
But Wanger protested.
He had dreamed of making Cleopatra for years
and didn't want the film to end up as another sword-and-sandal quickie.
Spending money out of his own pocket, the producer hired
Oscar-winning production designer John DeCuir to create exotic,
romantic sketches and models for presentation to Fox executives.
He did a spectacular display of inter-corporate salesmanship.
He built models, he had sketches done.
He showed the executives essentially
what they could have if they opened their mind.
Where Wanger saw beauty and vision,
the Fox executives saw the possibility of even bigger profits.
By mid-1959, Cleopatra's budget had swelled to nearly $5 million.
Bigger stars could now be considered for the lead,
including Audrey Hepburn,
Susan Hayward
and Sophia Loren.
But Wanger had another star in mind.
Elizabeth Taylor.
After 15 years, the violet-eyed actress was about to be
released from her contract with MGM.
For the first time, she was free to choose the films
she wanted to make and negotiate her own terms.
Taylor was also famous for her colourful personal life.
By the age of 25, she had been married three times,
before being widowed by a plane crash that killed her husband,
producer Mike Todd.
The public grieved with Taylor over her loss.
But the affection of her fans soon soured
when the young widow began spending time with Todd's best friend,
singer Eddie Fisher, who was at the time
married to actress Debbie Reynolds.
She was living with the ghost of Mike Todd.
And the closest thing to him that she could find
to keep that ghost alive was Eddie Fisher.
And I believe, myself,
that she married him
to marry the closest...
the ghost of...of Mike Todd.
Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher married in Las Vegas
on May 12th, 1959.
The tabloids labelled her a home wrecker,
and negative public opinion made Fox wary of hiring her.
But an even greater concern for the studio
was the actress's reputation
for having chronic health problems
that often caused expensive delays.
Walter Wanger ignored all warnings.
While Taylor was in London working on Joseph L Mankiewicz's production
of Tennessee Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer,
the actress received a phone call from Hollywood.
The phone rang and it was Walter Wanger,
asking her if she'd like to play Cleopatra.
And Elizabeth thought that was ridiculous.
Eddie had taken the call
and turned to her, apparently, and said what Wanger wanted
and Elizabeth said, "Tell him I'll do it for a million dollars."
And Wanger said, "OK."
Taylor was shocked by the offer.
And, apparently, so was Fox President Spyros Skouras.
In fact, Skouras commissioned a questionnaire
to go to all the film owners throughout the world,
asking, would you rather have Elizabeth Taylor or Audrey Hepburn?
Came back Elizabeth Taylor, hands down.
A million dollars was a lot of money for the struggling studio,
but Skouras was an exhibitor at heart
and he trusted the opinions of the theatre owners he serviced.
The motion picture casting achievement of the year
is about to become a recorded fact,
as Producer Walter Wanger introduces
Elizabeth Taylor to 20th Century Fox Executive Producer Buddy Adler.
The occasion - the Hollywood signing of the exotic Elizabeth
for the most exotic role in her career.
And the role? Cleopatra. The most fascinating woman of history,
who exclaimed, "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."
Whom Antony called "my serpent of the Nile,"
of whom Shakespeare wrote, "Age cannot wither her,
"nor custom stale her infinite variety."
What a role! And Liz is the gal to do it justice.
On October 15th, 1959, 20th Century Fox became the first studio ever
to pay a star one million dollars for a single role.
There are two misfortunes in life - not getting what you want
and getting what you want. And we got what we wanted.
Whatever fears Skouras had about Elizabeth Taylor's hefty pay cheque
were quelled by his heartfelt notion that
with her as Cleopatra, Fox would have a guaranteed hit.
Stars are worth money because
studios need something that will give them some security,
some hope of security that this will work.
Taylor's final contract made two more demands -
Cleopatra had to be filmed out of the country,
and Cleopatra had to be shot in Todd-AO,
a 70mm- technology developed by her late husband
and which she now owned.
Skouras happily obliged his glamorous new star.
While Taylor finished her final MGM film,
Butterfield 8, co-starring Laurence Harvey and Eddie Fisher,
Wanger and Skouras hired veteran screen-writer Nigel Balchin.
Now all Fox needed was a director.
Skouras and Wanger turned to their friend,
62-year-old Rouben Mamoulian, a veteran known for
his romantic film-making, but not for directing large-scale epics.
Rouben Mamoulian was an old-time director,
mainly famous for films he had done in the '30s.
He was known for having been able to coach great performances
out of temperamental beauties like Greta Garbo.
He was also a friend of Spyros Skouras, a personal friend.
So he got the job.
He was a great visual artist.
Cleopatra now had a star, a director and a script -
and 20th Century Fox had a lot on the line.
Spyros Skouras knew Cleopatra would either be the hit Fox needed
or a disaster that would close the studio doors forever.
With one million dollars of Cleopatra's budget
earmarked for Elizabeth Taylor, Spyros Skouras
was eager to keep a tight rein on the film's escalating budget.
To satisfy Taylor's request that Cleopatra be filmed abroad,
the studio searched for exotic locales.
Fox considered Italy and Turkey, before finally choosing
Pinewood Studios in England as the setting for Ancient Rome,
despite the serious objections of Director Rouben Mamoulian.
Everyone considered the weather.
London has great studio facilities,
Pinewood and other studios,
and they had all the resources to make a big movie.
At that time, the government had in place tax concessions
called The Eady Plan, whereby if a certain amount of British
crew and cast were involved in the production,
then the British government will put up monies towards the production.
With the government subsidising his production,
Mamoulian had to build his cast
from the pool of available British talent.
At Taylor's request, 44-year-old Peter Finch,
a veteran film and stage actor,
was hired to play Caesar.
The pair had worked together on the 1954 film Elephant Walk.
For the role of Mark Antony,
Mamoulian turned to 32-year-old Stephen Boyd,
an actor who had won acclaim for his role as Messala in 1959's Ben-Hur.
As Caesar's opportunistic nephew Octavian,
Mamoulian cast Keith Baxter, a respected British stage actor.
It was going to be eight weeks in England,
and it was £2,000 a week,
which was a king's ransom to me then
and was a lot of money.
With much of the cast and crew now in place,
a small fortune was spent testing various costumes.
The Pinewood footage shows in some very short scenes
Peter Finch in uniform as the Roman general.
And he looks very commanding.
The money that was being shelled out was absolutely unbelievable.
I had a very grand robe for when I became
Imperial Caesar at the end.
And it was embroidered with oak leaves and laurels
and it was embroidered by the women that had...
the seamstresses who had embroidered the Queen's coronation gown.
And they had made... they had made four of them.
On the Pinewood Studios' backlot,
$600,000 was spent transforming 20 acres of English farmland
into the port city of Alexandria, Egypt.
They'd flooded this huge area,
only to a depth about 18 inches, but it looked like
this great harbour, and these huge temples and statues.
The job was so vast that the production couldn't find
enough plasterers in the small town
of Iver, Buckinghamshire.
The art department resorted to running ads in cinemas
around the country, in an effort to recruit more construction workers.
On September 28th, 1960, the cameras finally rolled.
But the first day of principal photography was a disaster.
The British Hairdressers' Union disrupted the shoot by walking out
in protest over the presence of Hollywood hair stylist
Sydney Guilaroff.
The union pointed out that contractually,
only its members could work on the film set.
Elizabeth Taylor insisted on him
without checking with English regulations, which stated by law
that if they were to participate in the Eady Plan,
they had to provide those services.
She said, "No, I'm not going to have it."
Eager to avoid the heavy cost of lost production days,
Wanger struck a deal with the union -
Guilaroff would do Taylor's hair
at her hotel and the union would touch it up on the set.
But with the settlement of one crisis came yet another -
weather.
THUNDERCLAP
London was an insane place to have done this, from the start.
A lot of Cleopatra was filmed outdoors,
and they could never shoot.
I mean, they'd start to, they'd get everything ready
and it would rain just a little. But that would be enough to kill it.
The conditions, the weather conditions were impossible.
These huge temples and statues,
all peeling, papier-mache. Every day, they would peel down.
Every morning, the crew would be painting them up again.
The severe weather also had a troubling effect
on Elizabeth Taylor.
She never was well enough
to really appear in other than costume tests for this film.
She was carried to the set, she was so ill.
She'd do a few costume tests and then be carried back.
And she was always, always sick during this time.
Taylor's illness slowly turned from a slight cold into a raging fever.
The star was quickly attended by several doctors,
including the Queen's physician, Lord Evans.
With Taylor unable to work,
Mamoulian began to shoot around his star.
They were looking for things to film.
There was a lot to film for Finch and some with Stephen Boyd,
exterior stuff, but they couldn't do any of the interior scenes
because his scenes were mostly with her, obviously.
And, action!
But they had me to film.
So I did these scenes, but very little.
I shot a part of my arrival in Alexandria
after the defeat of Antony.
The focus of the film was so much on Cleopatra,
there was so little that could be done that she wasn't in.
Desperate to make the best of a bad situation,
Mamoulian focused on using the grand Alexandria set
and the army of extras hired for the film.
Can we have wardrobe come back out, please?
On October 14th,
the director gathered 1,000 extras in the frosty British night
to film this scene - Caesar's evening arrival in Alexandria.
Bad choices, worse luck,
and Elizabeth Taylor's persistent illness
were beginning to cost the studio dearly.
By October 24th, Fox executives estimated
that the production was losing over $100,000 per day.
Spyros Skouras used to come down, wander around with his worry beads.
Well, you're meant to...
I think you're meant to just sort of lightly fondle worry beads.
Well, he was twirling them like a stripper with her tassels.
And one day, they just broke, went all over.
"My worry beads! They're my worry beads!
"For God's sake, get my worry beads!" Didn't save the picture.
By November 18th, no more scenes could be shot without Taylor.
And to continue without her, the script had to be rewritten.
The re-writes were arriving every day in pink pages,
blue pages, green pages, like a snowstorm.
And when one went down to do these costume tests,
Mamoulian was sitting in a corner with some scribe,
you know, writing some. It was... That was a nightmare.
There came a point where they had to shut the production down
because they had shot everything they could
without Miss Taylor's presence on set.
Production was put on hold for one month -
time enough for Taylor to recover
and for the script to receive a badly needed rewrite.
To that end, the studio brought in
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Nunnally Johnson.
He was paid $140,000 dollars to polish the script.
But Mamoulian also wanted his own writer on board,
leaving Johnson with nothing to do but cash his hefty pay cheque.
In January, 1961, production resumed
as Elizabeth Taylor returned from her vacation well enough to work.
Among the first shots filmed was this test,
set inside a warm Egyptian spa.
But in sharp contrast to Cleopatra's steamy bathtub
was the cold rain of the English winter.
It quickly ate away at the desert vegetation
that had been brought in to evoke ancient Egypt.
The palm trees, which had been imported, kept wilting
and every day, flight loads of more palm tree palms
were actually being imported to replace the wilting ones.
The weather took its toll on the sets and they started to disintegrate.
Such production disasters caused delays
and fuelled tensions on the set,
especially with co-star Peter Finch.
'It got to a point where he thought he was going mad.
'He would spend long hours in the green room at Pinewood
'and get absolutely paralytic drunk.
'It got to a point where he'd just sit in the middle of the green room'
and just stare for hours on end.
These delays also gave the stars time to reconsider the script,
which Taylor AND Finch found appalling.
Mamoulian liked that script.
Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Finch didn't.
They couldn't act it. It was un-actable.
Once again using her clout,
Elizabeth Taylor demanded a script meeting with Mamoulian.
She didn't want her first post-MGM vehicle to be a second-rate B-movie,
which is where she felt the production was headed.
Taylor knew that if the movie failed,
neither the script nor the director would be blamed,
fingers would be pointed at the million-dollar actress.
But Mamoulian defended his script
and, in a bid to gain more time, the director threatened to resign.
To assert his authority, Mamoulian put forward an ultimatum,
thinking that he would be backed by other people, and it backfired.
He called bluff with Skouras
and didn't expect to be fired.
After years of dealing with moguls like Louis B Mayer, her boss at MGM,
Taylor knew how to play hardball.
She told the studio to accept the director's resignation
and, to Mamoulian's surprise, they did.
On January 18th, 1961 Rouben Mamoulian left the production
having spent 16 weeks and $7 million
and leaving behind only ten minutes of usable film.
Once again, 20th Century Fox faced a major decision -
shut down the production for good,
or salvage the film.
Spyros Skouras decided to roll the dice one more time.
Why didn't we give up when we had spent relatively little money?
Because in the movie business, and particularly then,
naivete and compulsive behaviour were the order of the day,
and the inmates ran the asylum.
And so we never gave up on an obsession,
because we were fuelled by the idea that every obsession makes money.
The first step in salvaging 20th Century Fox's huge investment
in Cleopatra was to hire a new director.
But the studio's choices
were limited by Elizabeth Taylor's contract.
Fox had given her another thing that no actor had at that time,
which was director approval.
It was unheard of.
And she said, "I approve two directors,
"George Stevens or Joe Mankiewicz."
With George Stevens busy directing The Greatest Story Ever Told,
Fox executives turned to Joseph L Mankiewicz.
Mankiewicz had successfully directed Taylor in Suddenly Last Summer,
proof enough for the studio that he could work with the star
and help her deliver an outstanding performance.
The director was also well qualified to rehabilitate
Mamoulian's troubled script.
A decade earlier, Mankiewicz had won back-to-back Oscars
for both writing and directing A Letter to Three Wives
and All About Eve.
But in 1961, the 52-year-old director was enjoying
the peace and quiet of actor Hume Cronyn's island getaway.
He was holed up in his room,
and the telephone rang, and it was
a call from Hollywood
and they asked for Joe and I said, "He's working,"
and the voice said, "I don't care if he's on the can. Get him!"
His first reaction was, "No, no, no, no."
But they kept calling back and begged him to at least
have a meeting with Skouras.
Skouras knew every man had his price,
but this one proved to be exceptionally high.
The Fox President made Mankiewicz an offer worth several million dollars.
And Joe, in one of the worst decisions of his life,
said, yes, that he would.
Hollywood clamoured with the news that the acclaimed director
had signed on to helm the film.
It was the first good press
the production had received in a long time.
The big thing for all of us was that
it was now going to be Joe Mankiewicz who would write.
So the buzz was that the picture would be
one of the biggest pictures of all time.
On February 1st, 1961,
less than a month after Mamoulian's departure,
Joseph L Mankiewicz arrived in London
to take the reigns of Cleopatra.
Joseph L Mankiewicz was on his way to his hotel
and saw the Pinewood sets, stopped off and saw them,
and it has been reported that he felt they were a garish nightmare.
But bad weather continued to plague Elizabeth Taylor.
On March 4th, she was laid up at the Dorchester hotel,
recovering from the Asian flu
when the illness unexpectedly turned into pneumonia.
She was being cared for by a nurse
and she went into a coma in the hotel.
And the nurse called the hotel
and there was a party for a young medical student going on
and at that party was one of the top resuscitationists in London,
and he rushed up and tried to resuscitate her.
As the actress slipped in and out of consciousness,
she was rushed to The London Clinic
where doctors struggled to revive her.
It was even reported in papers that she had died,
she was given an hour to live.
Skouras called up sobbing, "My God, how did it happen?"
The ailing actress did not die,
although during one close call,
surgeons had to perform an emergency tracheotomy to save her life.
Faced with a long recovery, Taylor returned to the United States.
It was the kind of news that made headlines,
even though Fox executives could only see more red ink.
NEWSREEL: Back in the United States
after her brush with death in London,
Elizabeth Taylor is carried from her plane in a wheelchair.
The arrival at New York of the actress, who was in England
to play the title role in Cleopatra, is graphically filmed.
She takes the excitement like the true trouper she is,
though she's still weak from her bout with
an exceptionally virulent form of pneumonia.
And now representing a triumph for the will to live
she's off to California for a long rest in which fully to recuperate.
In a certain way her illness caused Dad to go on with the script.
He thought, "I have enough time," which of course he didn't.
Instead of patching and polishing Rouben Mamoulian's awkward script,
Mankiewicz decided to start from scratch.
As he wrote, Taylor's brave struggle to recover her health
earned her the forgiveness of her harshest critics
and the recognition of her peers.
On April 17, 1961, Elizabeth Taylor received
the year's Best Actress award for her performance in Butterfield 8.
BREATHLESSLY: I don't really know how to express my gratitude
for this and for everything.
Some critics speculated that the statue was given more for
her ailments than her acting.
You've now got an Oscar-winning talent.
That's as close to a sure thing as you are going to get in an industry
where there's almost constant anxiety and terror about
what the next disaster is going to be.
Taylor's Oscar offered Skouras further hope
that Fox's investment in the actress would pay off.
But the studio chief's improved outlook vanished
when insurance companies refused to cover the chronically ill actress.
They suggested alternate stars to the studio,
including Marilyn Monroe.
Often when a star is uninsurable it means your potential for trouble
is that much greater
and obviously there's a huge risk in going forward.
But with over $12 million dollars already committed to the project,
Fox had no choice but to press on.
As Taylor prepared to return to work,
Mankiewicz began echoing sentiments expressed months earlier
by Rouben Mamoulian -
London could NOT double for Rome OR Egypt.
Elizabeth Taylor's husband, Eddie Fisher, also pushed for a change.
He felt a warm climate would bolster his wife's fragile health.
Fox gave in.
The London set was closed
and the studio agreed to consider other, warmer locales.
NEWSREEL: Now as the film is not to be made in England after all,
the set is being dismantled.
But the fall of Alexandria here is not the end of the story.
The film must be made.
This ancient city must rise again elsewhere.
It was all for Cleopatra.
They weren't sure where they were going to shoot it.
Was it going to be in Hollywood? They thought about that for a while.
Would they build the whole thing on the Fox back lot?
That was scrapped. They felt that by going to Rome, I think
Elizabeth wanted to have it done in Rome too, so we went to Rome.
As it had 2,000 years earlier,
Rome once again played host to Cleopatra.
The production moved to Cinecitta studios,
located just six miles outside the city.
Here, Mankiewicz worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
overseeing every facet of pre-production,
including the massive construction of sets
by production designer John DeCuir.
My father called him The City Planner.
And Johnny loved to build big.
And he was a brilliant man.
Johnny built a Roman Forum which I think is
three times the size of the real Roman Forum.
Because it was just thought that
the real Roman Forum was just not impressive enough.
The scope of construction was so vast that Cleopatra caused
a country-wide shortage of building materials in Italy.
The sets weren't only grand in scale.
Every detail was attended to, no matter the cost.
They had used actual gold leaf,
to create the figures of the weird birds
and mythological characters in a deep blue.
So this glittering gold and the deep blue was breathtaking.
Adding to the pressures of pre-production,
casting changes became necessary when after nearly a year of waiting,
Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd bowed out of the revamped project
citing previous obligations.
Laurence Olivier was the next thought for Caesar,
but he had a commitment with the National Theatre.
Then came Rex.
He had done several films with Rex and he loved Rex as an actor.
Rex Harrison jumped at the chance to work with Mankiewicz again.
The 53-year-old actor had been a disciple of George Bernard Shaw
and it was Shaw's Caesar And Cleopatra
that would serve as the basis for the first part of the story.
With Taylor's health recovered, and Harrison on board,
the only principal role left to cast was that of Mark Antony.
Mankiewicz turned to 36-year-old Richard Burton
who had starred in Fox's 1953 hit, The Robe.
The Welsh-born actor was known as a gifted performer
with a dynamic screen presence.
Richard was playing King Arthur in Camelot on Broadway.
So Fox then approached the management of the musical
and said we are prepared to buy Richard's contract.
And the management of Camelot, being no fools,
quoted some absolutely gigantic sum of money.
After spending a quarter of a million dollars to pry Burton loose
from his Camelot contract, the international cast was rounded out
with established character actors, including Roddy McDowall,
Martin Landau,
Caroll O'Connor and Hume Cronyn.
There are very few dates I remember, but that one, I remember.
We arrived together on September the 19th.
I was signed for ten weeks.
It turned out that I was there ten-and-a-half months.
Added to the mix were dozens of production technicians from England and the United States.
Thousands of extras were hired to prepare for
the massive battle scenes and intricate choreography.
Over 20,000 different costumes were issued,
only a fraction of which had been salvaged from the Pinewood Studios production.
Almost immediately, producer Walter Wanger faced yet another labour dispute,
when the female extras complained about their overly tight
and revealing costumes.
By June 6th, the production was spending nearly $70,000 per day.
Cleopatra was already $3 million more expensive than Ben Hur.
When I first got there the picture was going to cost $11 million
and Spyros Skouras was flying back and forth
and every time he went to New York it went up a million.
By the time he came back, it went up another million.
So then it was 13 million, then it was 15 million.
Wanger and Mankiewicz suspected Skouras was hiding
the escalating cost from Fox shareholders,
for fear of being blamed,
or perhaps being removed from power.
Joe and Skouras were having a meeting
and he wanted a budget.
And he'd looked at it and said,
"I can't go back to America with this budget. It's too much."
Joe said, "No, it's going to cost much more than you have down.
"And if you want to call...
"I think you should call the production off right now.
"Here. Spyros, here's the telephone."
Well, of course, he didn't.
The wily studio chief did, however, pressure the production accountant
to draft a budget that appeared smaller,
so that he could take it back to the Fox shareholders in New York.
The production accountant said, "I cannot give you such a budget",
so he said, "Fine, you're fired."
So he was put on the next plane back
and, presumably, another accountant was obtained
who was far more flexible.
Before leaving Rome on September 21st 1961,
Spyros Skouras pressured Mankiewicz to begin filming immediately.
The Fox president needed footage
to show board members that progress was being made.
But Mankiewicz hadn't even written half of the new screenplay.
My father was not a quick writer,
and he wrote very long and in longhand as well,
and he never had a chance to cut the script.
He never had a chance to go from a first draft to a second draft,
much less a third draft.
The director begged Skouras to give him more time to write,
but the studio president couldn't afford to wait.
On November 17, 1961, Elizabeth Taylor would go into overtime
at a rate of $50,000 per week.
The temptation is pretty strong,
especially if you need a big movie and time is running out,
you say, all right, let's just go
and solve this problem as we're going.
It's like the worst possible scenario.
Roll 'em!
On September 29th, 1961,
more than a year after the false start in London,
Joseph L Mankiewicz rolled cameras on Cleopatra.
Elizabeth Taylor showed up for work in good health and in high spirits.
We've gotten off to a bad start, haven't we?
I've done nothing but rub you the wrong way.
I'm not sure I want to be rubbed by you at all, young lady.
Over the following weeks, most of the scenes
focused on the relationship between young Cleopatra
and her mentor, Julius Caesar, played by Rex Harrison.
Oh, it's you.
You, erm, wanted to see me?
I summoned you yesterday to an audience in my throne room.
I was told I was not permitted to go there.
For one thing, it's too close to the quarters
occupied by your brother, Pothinus, Theodotus and the rest.
I will not be told where I can go and where I cannot go.
Since there's obviously nothing that you want of me...
Except my throne!
Rex was an ideal Caesar, in many ways.
He had the authority,
he had the charm.
And in the situation that he was put in as Caesar, in the film,
of being the older lover,
I think he would have all the qualities required.
I've had my fill of the smug condescension
of you worn-out pretenders, parading on the ruins of your past glories.
It's the future that concerns me. If it is, keep out of my affairs and do as I say. Do as you say?
Do as you say? Literally?
As if I was something you had conquered.
If I chose to regard you as such.
Am I to understand then
that you feel free to do with me whatever you want,
whenever you want?
Yes, I want that understood.
Watching the dailies in New York, Spyros Skouras was reassured.
Cleopatra would be worth all the money he was pouring into it.
On the other side of the globe, Mankiewicz squeezed every minute
out of his exhausting production schedule to work on the script.
He even scribbled new scenes between takes.
But with so little of the screenplay finished,
scenes were shot in the order written,
not the order that maximised the use of actors, locations or crews.
Sets that had been built on overtime sat vacant and unused.
The chaotic schedule even caused many actors
to sit around waiting for work.
I'm always amazed.
Actor and crew alike spent months at high salaries
and prodigal expense accounts doing nothing.
To relieve their boredom, many cast members toured Rome's sights
and indulged in luxurious get-aways available in the countryside.
I was obviously going to be there for a long time
and I bought a car and on weekends I would escape,
either up or down the coast, and hope to regain my sanity.
As Fox executives read the daily shooting schedules
they began to worry that Cleopatra was spiralling out of control.
Wanger and Mankiewicz defended their actions,
claiming they were making a ground-breaking motion picture
that would bring audiences back into theatres.
I find...
one can tell more about the quality of merchandise
by examining the backside first.
He thought that, whatever it cost, it would be worth it,
because the film would eventually, you know, make the money back.
But the truth was, much of the money being spent
was not making its way to the screen.
Waste was tremendous, just simply tremendous.
Everywhere you looked was waste.
We had a mineral water bill
that was like a quarter of a million dollars a week or something.
I mean, it was phenomenal.
Minor hand props crafted to the finest detail at tremendous cost
were tossed aside at the actors' convenience,
including a walking stick made for the character of Theodotos,
played by Herbert Berghof.
It was beautiful.
Anyway, Herbert, at the end of, you know, a couple of run-throughs
walked up to Joe and said, "Joe, do I need this stick?"
And Joe said, "No, get rid of it."
Herbert came up to me after the scene was shot and he said,
"That's what's wrong with this picture, Martin."
I said "What?" He said, "This picture is full of such sticks."
For her dressing room, Elizabeth Taylor was given an entire building
outfitted to meet her every need.
And although she wasn't in Hollywood, Hollywood came to her.
The chilli from Chasen's, air-expressed to Rome,
all the stuff that went on.
But Taylor wasn't the only actor to be given the royal treatment.
I think at one point we looked
and there were something like 40 or 50 cars and drivers.
I mean, it was just...
You were nothing if you didn't have a car and driver.
When the company attempted to cut back on drivers,
including Rex Harrison's, the actor threatened not to show up for work.
His chauffeur was quickly reinstated.
I think as a star he probably felt obliged to compete at that level
and I think anybody who didn't fight for the appropriate car,
the appropriate villa or the appropriate billing
probably got kicked around.
The set of Cleopatra became a mecca for Rome's social elite
and for visiting dignitaries from around the world.
The big event of the season was the film getting made there.
I mean, there was a regular sort of squadron of visitors all the time,
watching what was going on and parties were given for everybody.
And the local press, you know, was following everybody's every move.
Art Buchwald came onto the set.
He wrote, when you're in Rome, you have to see the Coliseum,
you have to see the Roman Forum, you have to visit the set of Cleopatra.
Unfortunately the first two are readily available,
the third is very difficult.
And he would go through the machinations you had to go through to get on the set.
Back in Hollywood, Fox executives loved the attention
the press had begun lavishing on the film.
They began fuelling the flames
by inviting reporters from around the world
to witness the spectacle that would be Cleopatra.
But what many of the reporters witnessed instead
was a lesson in mismanagement.
Fox president Spyros Skouras' concerns grew
as he read the daily budget reports.
Executives were dispatched to Rome with orders to trim costs.
They scoured Cleopatra's budget and offered suggestions.
A letter appeared. pinned to the notice board
in the dining room in the studios.
This notice said,
"To the cast and crew of Cleopatra,
"in the interests of economy,
"we would encourage you
"to share your paper cups."
As a former executive, I can inform you,
executives never have a positive effect.
They have a negative effect.
On the other hand, they have a job to do.
But for some, the micro-management
and budget pressures proved too much.
Dad had a wonderful, wonderful production manager
who had been with him for years
and done many pictures with him, named Johnny Johnston,
who unfortunately died of a heart attack,
principally, I think, from the strain of this movie.
Johnston's job - tracking costs - would remain unfilled for months.
In the meantime, money poured out of the production virtually unchecked.
When you have a film of that size budget
the money goes somewhere,
and not always on screen.
Some of it went into private hands.
We would have production meetings in the morning,
corruption would be discovered,
schedules, as they used to say, completely ignored,
and oh, yes, it'll all be taken care of.
And, of course, nobody ever followed up.
Hunting down corruption fell to Walter Wanger,
but the producer wasn't even aware of what was going on, on set,
let alone in the ledger books.
Walter would take me gently by the arm and lead me away and say,
"Now, tell me, what does Joe really feel about blah-blah-blah?"
Or what did Elizabeth say that...
I didn't know what Elizabeth said.
What Joe really felt I did know, but I wasn't about to reveal it,
so I would double-talk,
and he recognised this as an evasion tactic
and so I became the bearded hypocrite.
What Cleopatra needed was the A-type personality in the role of producer
and he just did not have the health to carry it off.
And so, consequently, he retired from the fray
and let Mankiewicz do the battling.
Wanger became a figurehead,
while Mankiewicz, in addition to his other duties,
became the de facto producer.
He, generally speaking, wrote at night
after we had wrapped at the end of the day.
By that time, of course, he had been the producer in the morning
and the director during the rest of the day, and was frankly exhausted.
I've never seen a man work harder in my life.
He was so determined to make this a good movie.
I am the Nile.
I will bear many sons.
Isis has told me.
My breasts are filled with love and life.
My hips are round and well apart.
Such women, they say, have sons.
While Mankiewicz toiled over the script,
many of the film's key actors continued to remain idle.
After working one day in four months,
Roddy McDowall decided to take matters into his own hands
by placing a call to former 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F Zanuck.
I called Darryl up in Paris and said,
"Please, give me anything.
"I want anything! I have to work."
Zanuck offered both McDowall and Richard Burton cameo roles
in his production of The Longest Day,
which was then shooting in France.
Have you ever killed a man? I mean, face-to-face?
No.
Neither had I.
Face-to-face.
Compared to Cleopatra's staggering budget,
The Longest Day's $8 million bottom line
seemed almost minuscule.
But Zanuck was beginning to feel the financial pressure from Fox.
When he asked the company for $2 million more
to complete his masterpiece,
he was turned down by Fox president Spyros Skouras.
Zanuck was angered at the refusal.
He was also fearful that the company he'd co-founded
would sink under the weight of the runaway production in Rome.
Zanuck was also getting reports from the set
suggesting that Cleopatra wasn't only taking a toll on Fox,
it was all but killing its director.
It got to a point where, quite literally, I thought he might die.
I thought one day on the set
with people grabbing at him in all directions.
"What should we do about this? How would you like that?
"What colour should this be?
"How do I get there?
"Where have I been?"
The endless questions that came from the crew, and the cameraman,
and the actors, you know, and you're pulled in ten different directions,
it becomes almost impossible to concentrate.
Then you have to go home and sit down and write,
and the turmoil was, erm... Uh!
He finally wound up getting an injection in the mornings
to get him going, sometimes another one after lunch,
and a shot at night to get him to sleep.
But in spite of exhaustion, chaos and intense pressure -
Mankiewicz was proud of what he was accomplishing.
He considered many of the filmed scenes to be among his best work.
In the name of the senate and the people of Rome
and by their will.
Isis herself would surrender her place in Heaven
to be as beautiful as you.
You're not supposed to look at me.
No-one is.
If they aren't looking, how do they know I am?
You should be kneeling.
Would that do, before all these visiting kings?
Making believe that they're not watching us.
You have such bony knees.
Not only bony, but unaccustomed to this sort of thing.
On October 16th, the director prepared for what he hoped
would be the biggest spectacle in cinematic history,
Cleopatra's entrance into Rome.
Every detail was attended to by craftsmen -
from costumes to elaborate props,
and intricate dance routines,
the sequence would be the most complex to date.
The script called for the Queen of the Nile
to ride through the Arch of Titus
atop a 28-foot tall Sphinx as thousands of extras cheered.
But as cameras prepared to roll,
a woman riding one of the elephants slipped and fell to the ground.
An elephant's skin is not silky smooth.
In fact, it's like rough sandpaper.
And the girl had practically no clothing on. So as she...
She went down and it took most of the skin off her bottom
and the back of her legs.
After the injured extra was given medical attention and replaced,
the director finally called, "Action!"
And as they came along,
Mark Antony was to grab the girl, embrace her,
and place her on the next elephant that came by.
And what he didn't know was, he grabbed her...
She weighed 40 pounds more.
And he staggered back
and suddenly found himself up to his navel in azaleas.
The bad luck continued
when the director of photography announced a problem of his own.
A critical problem
that would send the entire production into a tailspin.
Leon Shamroy, the very crabby cameraman,
said, "No, no, we can't shoot this, we can't shoot this.
"The light's coming from the wrong way, the shadows are wrong,
"everything else is wrong."
To the untrained eye, the footage shot looked stunning,
but to Shamroy's eye the sequence was filled
with slight imperfections.
Cleopatra's entry to Rome would have to be delayed six months,
until the Roman light would properly fill the mammoth set.
Luckily, there was enough of the scene shot
to help Spyros Skouras defend himself
to the Fox board of directors.
Skouras entered the meeting fearing for his job.
But after screening selected portions of the procession sequence,
the board's attitude toward Skouras and Cleopatra had changed.
Cleopatra was the film that would save 20th Century Fox.
But one of Fox's major shareholders,
former studio chief Darryl F Zanuck, disagreed.
He warned the board that Cleopatra was likely to sink the studio
and he let it be known that he was not about to let that happen.
By the end of 1961, there was plenty of reason to be optimistic.
Cleopatra was at last on a steady schedule,
almost half of the film had been shot,
and Mankiewicz was writing a rich, visually compelling story.
On January 5th, 1962,
Cleopatra's cast and crew returned from a brief Christmas hiatus.
Mankiewicz filmed this sequence,
where Julius Caesar confides his desire to become Emperor
to both Cleopatra and Mark Antony.
They resent me. To flaunt me like this.
They'll use it to keep from you that which is already yours.
By divine right, is that not so?
Yes, it is.
By divine right.
We shall have the senate, in its deliberations, deliberate that.
It marked the first time during the long production
that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton worked together in a scene.
Are you quite sure what it is you want...so desperately?
I've always been sure.
And Caesar?
Does anyone speak him?
No. Good night.
The Hollywood star
and the Welsh-born actor had met years earlier.
At that time, Taylor had found Richard Burton brash and offensive.
But when Burton showed up for work on Cleopatra that first morning,
Elizabeth was shocked to discover another side to the actor.
The first day on the set, Burton arrived
absolutely brutally hung-over.
So hung-over that he had the shakes.
And Elizabeth had to help him
raise a cup of coffee to his lips.
And she described him as all giggly and boyish and childlike
and helpless and needy,
and it brought out the mother in her.
She found it... Her word was "endearing".
That here was this titanic actor, intellectual...a needy child.
Tell me how many have loved you since him? One, ten? Anyone? No-one?
Have they kissed you with Caesar's lips, touched you with his hands?
Has it been his name you cried out in the dark?
And afterwards, alone, has he reproached you
and have you begged forgiveness of his memory?
You come here then running over with wine and self-pity
to conquer Caesar.
So long now you filled my life.
Like...
Like a great noise that I hear everywhere in my heart.
I want to be free of you.
Of wanting you.
Of being afraid.
Then Caesar would not permit it.
Then I will never be free of you.
The electricity, both on-screen and off, was instant and palpable.
The pair soon became secret lovers -
a situation not unfamiliar to Burton,
who, despite his 13-year marriage to Sybil Williams,
boasted of frequent affairs with his leading ladies.
Richard was the quintessential husband about whom people say,
"Yes, he fools around but he always comes back to her in the end."
That had been true. He was famous for having supposedly slept with
every leading lady he'd ever played with.
But he always went back to Sybil.
But secrets don't last long on film sets
and as the affair intensified,
it became known to everyone in the cast and crew.
I got to work that morning early
and Elizabeth was in the make-up department.
And no sooner did I sit in the make-up chair
than Richard came in,
gave her a big old smooch and sat in the chair next to me
and I saw all of this in the mirror and I said,
"Oh, my God."
Lovers always want so much never to have loved before.
It's possible, you know.
It becomes a game. Who loved whom first? I did.
If you noticed me at all in those days,
you were probably terrified of me.
SHE LAUGHS And with good reason.
Everybody knows Romans cut up little children
and feed them to their horses.
We'll make this our beginning.
Beginning with tonight, we must never envy Caesar.
Or anyone.
Anything, again.
One thing that happened was in one of their first love scenes
it ended and Joe Mankiewicz said, "Cut!"
He said, "Cut!" And then he finally had to go, "CUT!"
And then they got up and everybody of course laughed
and you know everybody knew by then what was going on.
What I feel I should have felt long ago when I was very young
and I could say to myself that this was how love was
and how it would be.
But to have waited so long,
to know so suddenly, it's like...
How it hurts.
How love can stab the heart.
In spite of the lovers' openness on the set,
their spouses seemed oblivious to the romance.
But Fox executives did notice.
They feared news of the illicit affair would repel audiences
and hurt any chance the film had of recovering its mammoth costs.
We were supposed to try to keep it quiet, which was ridiculous.
Once it broke, and broke wild,
there was no stopping it.
When news of the liaison leaked out,
Taylor and Burton became prime targets for Italy's eager paparazzi.
Gossip was bought, sold and published everywhere.
And any photo of the two lovers was worth a small fortune.
Even the mainstream news outlets began to print the story.
One day Joe was so fed up he said, "Look boys, I'm going
"to give you the real scoop.
"Elizabeth's a beard. Richard and I are in love!"
So there was a big scuffle for a few minutes.
And the next day Richard came into the set and kissed him on the lips.
Eventually, the mushrooming press coverage
took a terrible toll on Burton's marriage.
In March 1962, Sybil Burton left Italy for England -
although the move only served to fan the flames.
Reports of the affair
degenerated into personal attacks on Elizabeth Taylor.
She was now being accused of everything
from irresponsibility to immorality.
The Vatican got into the act too,
saying that she was a bad influence on the world in general
and that her children should be taken away from her.
She was denounced on the floor of congress
because she had been born in England and had dual citizenship,
as such, and several congressmen wanted to take away her passport.
The affair was talked about, joked about and parodied,
not only in the press, but even on prime-time television.
You're always forgetting my birthday!
I'm still wearing last year's snake.
What do you want - new snake every year?!
Who do you think you are? Liz Taylor?!
How about it?
You and I'll take that night boat on the Nile, just the two of us.
Sure, just the two of us, and a thousand slaves rowing.
Just my luck, one of them will be Eddie Fisher.
For Eddie Fisher, the public humiliation was devastating.
Eddie Fisher was in really poor shape.
She described him wandering the villa, not bathing,
staying in his pyjamas all day long.
Dad advised Eddie to go back to New York.
He said Eddie's really out of his league here with this romance.
I mean, these two people will eat him alive -
they're so in love with each other.
On March 19th 1962, Eddie Fisher fled to New York.
There, the public seemed to have forgotten
his messy divorce from Debbie Reynolds.
They now sympathised with the singer.
But despite the off-screen problems,
Mankiewicz still had a film to complete.
And one pivotal and costly sequence was still unfinished -
Cleopatra's triumphant procession into Rome.
On May 8th 1962,
six months after the aborted first attempt to film the scene,
cameras rolled, as an endless parade of extras in exotic costumes
swarmed through the Arch of Titus.
She got on top of this 30-foot sphinx,
was drawn through the arch and instead of yelling, "Cleopatra!"
like they were supposed to, they went wild and screamed, "Liz!"
"Liz!"
That's when the sexual revolution of the '60s was truly born.
Liz had conquered the Pope.
Despite endless delays and millions of largely wasted dollars,
Cleopatra's procession would become
one of the most impressive sequences ever captured on film.
But back in Hollywood, 20th century Fox wasn't doing nearly as well.
The studio was almost bankrupt
and, in order to generate quick cash,
executives began rushing films into production
whether they were ready or not.
One of these was a Marilyn Monroe vehicle entitled
Something's Got To Give.
But on June 8th 1962, after weeks of endless production delays,
aggravated by Monroe's poor health and chronic absences,
Something's Got To Give was shut down.
It was another $3 million loss that Fox couldn't really afford.
Fox was in the worst financial shape of its life -
no film, except Cleopatra, was in production,
and that meant that the movie's already swollen budget
was about to explode.
They had no place else to put the overhead.
And Dad always used to joke, we'd be driving out to the set,
and he would say, "Right now, the head of Fox in Hong Kong
"is taking two hookers to lunch and it's being charged to my picture."
I mean, there was no other place to put it.
Studio executives ordered Wanger
and Mankiewicz to quickly wrap their costly lead actress.
In a rush to complete the intricate barge scenes,
the production company relocated to Anzio -
a small coastal town in Southern Italy.
On June 23rd, the cameras rolled...
Capturing clouds of purple incense rising from burners,
and a gilded rigging that had cost $277,000 to build.
By sundown that day, Taylor was finished.
At last, the actress could return home -
having earned a final fee of $7 million.
But with several key battle scenes remaining to be filmed in Egypt,
Fox executives once again lowered the boom.
We were still at Anzio finishing up some sequences there one day
when Walter Wanger was given the word
that he was no longer on the picture
and that his per diem is cut off and so on.
Wanger was crushed and humiliated.
In an effort to save face, he begged Skouras to let him stay on in Rome,
at his own expense, to the very end.
Being taken off the payroll of the film didn't trouble him.
He was going to finish this film come hell or high water.
Desperate for revenue, Skouras and the Fox executives
next set their sights on The Longest Day,
Darryl Zanuck's epic World War II film
about the Allied invasion of Normandy.
They thought that if they cut the film's running time
and rushed it into theatres,
they could raise the dollars they so badly needed.
In a bid to save his film and the studio he founded in 1935,
Zanuck armed himself for the battle of his life.
On June 27 1962, Darryl F Zanuck arrived in New York
for the quarterly meeting of the Fox Board Of Directors.
It was one of the most amazing...
performances I've ever seen in my life.
He hit them on an emotional level, as the founder of the company.
And absolutely attacked them.
And after a couple of hours of this tirade,
they were totally wiped out.
And he took over the company. And that was as simple as that.
When the smoke cleared, Skouras was out and Zanuck was in.
Joe Mankiewicz now had three months to complete Cleopatra
before Darryl F Zanuck took over.
With time running out,
Joe Mankiewicz moved his remaining cast and crew from Rome to Egypt,
where the story's battle scenes would be filmed.
But the production's money was also running out
and for the first time, Fox refused to open its chequebook.
The battles scenes that were planned, pressure was put on Joe
to somehow trim them back, to save time and money, which we did.
Is there no-one who would grant Antony an honourable way to die?
Rex Harrison believed in the director's vision so strongly
that he even offered up his own pay cheque, but Mankiewicz refused.
The director was now a physical wreck,
dependent on injections to keep him going.
They had given him so many shots. Looking for a new place,
they accidentally hit his sciatic nerve, and he couldn't walk.
And he would be dragged through the sand and I thought, "Geez,
"God, this thing is going to kill him."
Despite his intense pain,
the director completed principal photography on July 24th 1962.
But, for the first time since the production began,
the footage being shot betrayed the last-minute lack of money.
Returning to Los Angeles in August,
Mankiewicz began the massive task of editing Cleopatra.
For nearly a month the director worked
largely without supervision from the studio.
But as Zanuck began asserting his power,
he shut down all but the most necessary departments.
He also installed his son, Richard, as head of production.
Cleopatra literally closed the doors of that studio.
Everything was closed down.
They didn't have any scripts that were worth anything.
Nothing.
Leaving his son to oversee daily operations,
Zanuck concentrated on rebuilding the studio's empty treasury.
One available source of revenue was The Longest Day.
And despite the studio's desperate finances,
a big, splashy premiere was considered critical to the film's success.
'The man responsible for the gala premiere,
'Darryl F Zanuck attends with Irina Demick,
'who plays the part of the underground heroine in The Longest Day.
'Now president of 20th Century Fox,
'The Longest Day was Mr Zanuck's ultimate production
'before assuming his duties as chief executive,
'a final effort which elevates Miss Demick to stardom.'
I was with him the night of the premiere,
and I was sitting right next to him, in Paris.
He had Edith Piaf singing from the Eiffel Tower.
What a night. What a showman he was.
Zanuck's epic was hailed as a monumental achievement in film-making
and The Longest Day would go on to gross over $18 million dollars
in its first year of release.
But as Fox accountants waited
for the badly needed money to trickle in,
the Hollywood studio remained a ghost town.
There were no cars. The commissary was closed.
Only the administration building had a few offices that were working.
And there was the unit, editing Cleopatra, that was it.
There was nothing on the lot. No pictures in preparation.
Nobody under contract. No, nothing.
And it was really eerie to look at.
In one of the few buildings that remained open,
Mankiewicz diligently continued to cut Cleopatra.
Originally Joe Mankiewicz wanted two movies -
Antony and Cleopatra, Caesar and Cleopatra,
as indeed William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw saw it,
and they would have been three hours each.
Your gods and mine go with you, Caesar.
The world, except for you, is filled with little men.
Anthony, how will I live?
The same as I.
One breath upon the other.
Each bringing us one breath closer.
But when word of Mankiewicz' ambitious editing strategy
reached Darryl Zanuck, the studio chairman ordered the director
to combine the two movies into one.
More than two hours of script, story and expense
would have to be left on the cutting room floor.
I think the major rationale from a studio head's point of view
was that Taylor and Burton,
this was the biggest romance in the history of film.
And Zanuck said, "Look if I put out Caesar and Cleopatra,
"in which Richard Burton appears for about five minutes,"
for, OK, seven minutes, "and then we wait another six or seven months
"and put out Antony and Cleopatra,
"what if these two people aren't with each other any more?"
Mankiewicz was bitterly disappointed,
but he had to bow to Zanuck's inarguable logic.
On October 13th, 1962, Mankiewicz flew to Paris
to screen his cut of Cleopatra for Zanuck.
The film ran five hours and 20 minutes.
As the studio chief watched the film unfold,
he was not pleased with what he saw.
You will kneel.
I will what?!
On your knees.
You dare ask the proconsul of the Roman Empire...
I ASKED it of Julius Caesar. I DEMAND it of you.
Darryl just looked at him and said that Antony is a weak man.
And Dad said, "Yes, he is, Darryl."
And Zanuck said to him, "If any woman did that to me
"I'd kick her right in the balls."
Zanuck didn't only hate Antony's character -
he was disgusted at what he felt were excruciatingly long scenes
and amateurish battle sequences.
What Cleopatra really needed
was a Zanuck at the helm from the beginning.
He was courageous about decisions. He knew what he wanted.
He could rein in the egos.
He considered it his duty to rescue Cleopatra.
Mankiewicz believed, "What needs rescuing?"
Darryl F Zanuck believed that movies were motion,
were moving pictures, they were supposed to move,
so he hated length.
And he cut the film, and he brought it into some usable length.
Soon Zanuck and Mankiewicz were locked in a bitter struggle
over the nature and extent of the cuts and revisions required.
The relationship between the two men had never been a good one,
but now it was clear that one of them would have to go.
On October 21st, 1962,
Darryl Zanuck shocked Hollywood by firing Mankiewicz.
The press had a field day
and Mankiewicz played upon their support.
He had this wonderful statement when he was removed saying,
"Old Joe's worked in the cotton fields for a long time
"and he knows when Marse Darryl speaks."
I mean it was just dripping with,
with Addison DeWitt out of All About Eve.
The studio boss and the dismissed director were now embroiled
in a public brawl played out via letters and newspaper columns.
But even an experienced storyteller like Zanuck
could not make the jumbled bits and pieces of story fit.
There had never been an actual shooting script.
Frustrated, Zanuck found he needed help to salvage Cleopatra.
He needed Joe Mankiewicz.
By the end of November they were crawling back
to have him come and do the rest of the thing.
He was persuaded that somebody was going to do it,
so better he should do it and save, you know,
save the film from being disembowelled
by someone who had never been there
and didn't know what the attempt was for the various scenes and so forth.
For weeks, Zanuck and Mankiewicz collaborated on cut after cut.
But, despite their differences,
there was one thing on which both men agreed -
the film's opening battle scenes looked cheap and unconvincing.
Reluctantly, Zanuck ordered the sequence re-shot.
In February, 1963,
Mankiewicz reassembled his cast and crew in Almeria, Spain.
Thousands of extras were cast, costumed and put into position.
Zanuck made the trip too, overseeing every aspect of the re-shoot.
The smoke of burning Roman dead is just as black,
and the stink no less.
It was Pompey, not I, who wanted it so.
Let what I have said be set down.
With the new footage under his arm, Mankiewicz returned to Los Angeles
to complete the painful task of cutting his epic film.
SOBBING: Antony!
But the process was a disheartening one for the director.
Cleopatra would never be a great film, he concluded,
but at least it might be a good one.
He was very upset and it was really a very sad thing for him.
But he did the best. He went on to the very end.
He wanted to put as much as he could into it.
He's coming around broadside!
We've got him!
Collision course, we'll ram him, board and destroy him!
By May, 1963, the film's projected running time
was a mere four hours and three minutes.
Still an epic length by any standard.
The pacing was so different.
You'll also find two characters that were almost totally cut out -
Egypt and Rome.
There was a lot of location that just simply didn't make the final cut
because all of the action was around the principals.
Rufio. Tell the guards, please.
I am to be awakened just before dawn.
Of course.
And, Rufio.
If, for whatever reason, the guard should forget
or misjudge the time,
will you yourself awake me?
The guards will wake you.
But if they don't?
Then I will, never fear.
I never fear.
My death scene wasn't in the movie, the actual killing,
because I assure Mark Antony the men will not desert.
Wake up in the morning and the men have deserted.
And you actually see me run the sword through me.
And because I have long arms, I had little trouble with the sword.
Richard's arms were shorter,
so when he committed suicide, there was a line added...
I always envied Rufio his long arms.
In the final version, you find me dead.
You're not sure why I'm dead,
whether I was killed by the men, or the enemy or did myself in.
So there was a little confusion.
Rufio!
But Darryl Zanuck didn't have time
to mourn the lost subtleties of the story line.
Fox was eager to get the film finished and into theatres.
'Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, siren of the Nile.
'Her stunning beauty and notorious intrigue
'turned the tide of civilisation.'
Remember, remember.
I don't want you to forget me. Please.
Forget? How?
I can never be more far away from you than this.
The studio wanted to strike while the public interest
in the Taylor-Burton affair was still at its peak.
The premiere of Cleopatra was scheduled for June 12, 1963.
As the film entered its final phase of postproduction,
Fox began to craft a marketing and promotional campaign
unlike anything seen before.
Motion picture history in the making as Seymour Poe,
20th Century Fox vice president in charge of distribution,
meets the press in New York.
The Rivoli Theatre in New York
has presented to 20th Century Fox Corporation yesterday
a certified cheque,
which is the highest sum of money ever paid
in the history of the entire entertainment business,
for any attraction to be exhibited by any means.
A $1,250,000 gesture of faith that Cleopatra,
starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison,
will be an all-time favourite.
Even at reserved seat prices,
advance sales of Cleopatra tickets did phenomenal business.
By opening day, the film was sold out for four months.
'This spring, Revlon brings you the new Cleopatra look,
'brilliantly translated
'into the most exciting and wearable look today.
'Today's Cleopatra wears a combination of Sphinx pink,
'a vividly light pink for lips and fingertips,
'and Sphinx eyes, a new idea in eye make-up.
'Together, the most exciting look in 2,000 springs.'
You know, this isn't the most civilised look.
It says plainly that you're still pretty basic.
Like this pink, Sphinx pink,
makes all other pinks look positively pallid.
The studio's publicity machine continued to make press
by churning out everything from behind-the-scenes stories
to historical pieces and articles on fashion.
'A collection of chiffon evening gowns by Ceil Chapman,
'inspired by the costumes of ancient Egypt
'in the time of Cleopatra.'
I used to spend hours drawing on these incredible Cleopatra eyes.
I can't believe it when I look at photos.
And... And everybody did that.
It was amazing to think about
how that kind of filtered out everywhere.
Andy Warhol, for one, considered Cleopatra
the most influential film of the '60s for style.
Essentially, you have Vidal Sassoon's geometric haircut coming out of it.
You have the pale lips, you have the heavily made-up eyes.
Playboy Magazine's article on the women of Cleopatra
offered even more proof
that the film had invaded America's pop culture.
But while nearly all the advance publicity
about the film was positive, two books released that summer
did much to tarnish the film's gilded image.
Written by Fox Studio publicists, Nathan Weiss and Jack Brodsky,
The Cleopatra Papers included the authors' private correspondence.
The book shed a harsh light on the chaotic production
and offered backstage insights into the Taylor-Burton love affair.
We got into a lot of trouble with the book.
Nathan got fired by Stanley Kubrick
because he was told that he would be persona non grata.
A second tell-all book, My Life With Cleopatra,
was co-authored by producer Walter Wanger,
who was still bitter over being cut out
of Cleopatra's postproduction process.
I once said to him, "Why do you want to write a book about this, Walter?"
And he said, "Because I think this is going to be
"one of the great films of all time
"and I don't want them to take my name off it.
"I want the world to know that I was the producer of this picture."
But the back-stabbing books were the least of Zanuck's problems.
As the final days before Cleopatra's premiere approached,
the film's publicity campaign now faced a legal crisis.
The contracts were so convoluted
that the huge sign that we put up in Times Square advertising the movie
had the likeness of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,
as you would expect.
And Rex Harrison's contract said equal likeness,
so we had to repaint the sign and paint Rex in there.
'A turnout of 10,000 New Yorkers jams Broadway
'for the world premiere of Cleopatra.'
On June 12, 1963, fans lined up ten feet deep in Times Square
for Cleopatra's world premiere.
In an unprecedented move, the NBC network set up a live remote crew
to tape the event for the Tonight Show's late-night telecast.
You know what? We've arranged it now, finally.
Mr and Mrs Mankiewicz had their pictures taken before.
They are right here and I want to introduce them to you.
Nice to see you. You, sir, congratulations. Thank you.
A wonderful, wonderful achievement.
Well, you must know something I don't, but thank you. LAUGHTER
Well, I must tell you, I do. Come in, please. Come in, please.
Don't go away, don't go away.
Mr Mankiewicz, I want to say first of all and ask you
whether or not you are personally going to control the sound
on the showing of Cleopatra tonight? That has been the rumour.
No, I think everything connected with Cleopatra
is beyond my control at the moment.
LAUGHTER
Now that the film is in the can, about to be presented,
is some of the tension gone? Is some of the...?
Do you feel a little more at ease now? No, I...
LAUGHTER
I feel as though the guillotine is about to drop.
Luckily, the New York Times gave Cleopatra a glowing review
calling the film "surpassing entertainment"
and "one of the great epic films of our day".
But other critics were less kind.
The New York Herald Tribune called the film a "monumental mouse".
Newsweek said at the time
"at six hours, Cleopatra might have been a movie,
"but right now it's a series of coming attractions
"for something that will never come."
But at just over four hours,
Cleopatra could only be run once per evening.
With word of mouth being mixed, it would be next to impossible
for the film to generate enough revenue.
Against furious protest from Mankiewicz,
Zanuck ordered further cuts.
The result was a 3 hour and 14 minute version of Cleopatra
distributed for general release.
He was very unhappy.
If you can imagine taking a movie that's six hours long,
edited six hours long and throwing half of it out and squeezing it
into three and a half hours or whatever it was,
clearly no artist would be happy with that.
And he was sure afraid that it was not... He knew that it was not
going to be anything like what he wanted.
Roles that had already been trimmed down
were now almost completely removed.
I was disappointed that whatever contribution
I had to made to the film,
which was... I can't say was major,
but was creditable,
was diminished to,
at the end of ten and a half months,
to something which I could have shot in two weeks.
CROWD SHOUTS AND SCREAMS
It was this shorter version that
premiered in Great Britain in August of 1963.
Elizabeth Taylor, who had avoided the American premiere,
attended only after great pressure from the studio.
She said the final humiliation was having to go and see it.
And she was forced into it. She went.
She came out of there, rushed to the ladies' room and threw up.
Anything that she was proud of
in the movie had been cut.
She infuriated the studio by going around telling everybody
how much she hated the film.
Nevertheless, whether due to studio hype or morbid curiosity,
audiences around the world flocked to see Cleopatra.
Unaware of what was missing, they liked what they saw.
We seem to have arrived on a market day.
One day each week, they are permitted into the royal enclosure.
Market day or not, where's the guard of honour for Caesar?
Some representative, at least, of the royal military?
TRUMPETS PLAY
'There was a buzz within the audience.'
This was truly the most opulent, most glamorous,
beautifully staged...
GONG CRASHES
'..artistically motivated film.
'A beautiful screenplay, sumptuous sets, lavish music score.
'Everything about it was opulent.'
The prestigious Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
was also impressed.
In January, 1964, they nominated Cleopatra for nine Academy Awards.
Many in the industry thought that Roddy McDowall had given
the best performance of his career as Caesar's nephew Octavian,
one worthy of an Oscar win for the year's best supporting actor.
My Lord, they have found Queen Cleopatra.
She is locked in a building. That is to say, a tomb. Hurry.
Oh, Mark Antony is with her, they say.
He's dead.
What? Lord Antony is dead.
Is that how one says it?
As simply as that?
Mark Antony is dead.
Lord Antony is dead.
The soup is hot, the soup is cold.
Antony is living, Antony is dead.
Shake with terror when such words pass your lips!
For fear they be untrue and Antony cut out your tongue for the lie!
And, if true...
for your lifetime boast that you were honoured
to speak his name even in death!
The dying of such a man must be shouted, screamed.
It must echo back from the corners of the universe.
Antony is dead!
Mark Antony of Rome lives no more!
But sadly, a clerical error shut McDowall out of the running -
a mistake that caused the studio to offer a public apology to the actor.
The fact that he was nominated in the wrong category was
a terrible blow.
I know he was suggested
as a leading star
instead of as a supporting role.
'It was a great, great tragedy.'
On April 13, 1964, gold statuettes were picked up
for best art direction,
best costuming,
best cinematography
and best special visual effects.
Four Oscars in all.
Yet despite the box office receipts and Academy Awards,
bad press during the making of the film cemented Cleopatra's
reputation as a dismal failure.
Cleopatra was notorious when it was released.
Absolutely notorious.
Good, bad or indifferent, it had become a film of...
..such caricature and notoriety that I don't think anybody could
see the forest for the trees.
In truth, Cleopatra went on to become one of the
top-grossing films of the 1960s.
It earned a staggering 24 million dollars in its first release,
although the final production cost of 44 million dollars
kept the film from breaking even for several years.
Eventually, the picture made five and a half million dollars,
but her studio was missing.
Under Darryl and Richard Zanuck's leadership,
20th Century Fox quickly rebounded from its financial struggles.
And, thanks to a string of hits topped by The Sound Of Music,
by 1968, the studio was in the black and debt free.
Things were going good on all fronts
and we were able to re-establish ourselves as
a force in the business,
and a force to be reckoned with.
As for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,
the pair would go on to star together in several films
including The VIPs
and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?,
for which Taylor would win her second Oscar
as the year's best actress.
The couple's personal life also continued to be high-profile
and headline grabbing.
They would marry not once but twice
before splitting up for good in 1976.
For Rex Harrison, Cleopatra did little
to tarnish his sterling screen image.
Soon after the release of Cleopatra,
he appeared in a string of critically acclaimed performances
including My Fair Lady, for which he won an Oscar in 1964.
Unfortunately, director Joseph L Mankiewicz
never regained the power and prestige his career
had enjoyed prior to Cleopatra.
'He was at the height of his fame almost at that time.
'He'd won four Academy Awards.'
He was absolutely...
clear sailing. He could almost have done
anything he wanted to do.
Because of the magnitude of this film and the magnitude
of the perceived failure of this film,
I think it wounded him deeply. Deeply.
Mankiewicz would go on to helm five more feature films,
including 1972's Sleuth
starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.
Well, Olivier and Michael Caine were both nominated for Best Actor.
He was nominated for Best Director.
The film got wonderful reviews and made quite a bit of money.
After Sleuth, Joseph L Mankiewicz never again stepped behind a camera.
But no-one suffered as great a loss as the man who had lobbied to
turn Cleopatra into a big-budget epic.
Walter Wanger, the dapper Hollywood veteran of more than 60 films,
never worked in Hollywood again.
He moved on, but I don't think he ever
had the same sort of energy that he had had
before that, the same kind of enthusiasm about a project.
I mean, it took a huge piece of him, that film.
Cleopatra didn't only change the lives of the people
associated with it, the film helped transform Hollywood itself.
'I think that Cleopatra was the beginning of star power.
'I think it was the first time
'a star really wielded that enormous kind of power'
and commanded that kind of salary.
Cleopatra also demonstrated the folly of betting a studio's
financial destiny on any one film,
a lesson 20th Century Fox learned well.
We knew we had a budget that wasn't probably going to be achievable.
I think that was just that the danger of the picture
was so intense that that was one
that we were just told sell it off,
or sell off half, find a partner for half of it
in case it doesn't work, that you don't cripple your company.
In the nearly four decades since the release of Cleopatra,
a host of technological innovations have exploded across the globe.
Cable and satellite television,
as well as home video sales,
have helped to offset the mounting costs of production.
As a result, classic films that otherwise would have languished in
studio vaults have received greater importance and increased attention,
largely due to high-profile re-releases and restorations.
In 1995, 20th Century Fox executives met with Roddy McDowall
and members of the Joseph L Mankiewicz family
to discuss the possibility of rescuing and
restoring Cleopatra to the epic six hour length its director intended.
'My father asked me to his dying day to help him get Fox to let him
'put back the film the way it was'
intended to be put together.
Fox launched a worldwide investigation to
track down hundreds of missing picture and sound elements.
It's a search that continues even to this day,
although some long-lost moments from both the Mamoulian
and Mankiewicz productions have turned up.
Located in an unmarked box was this sequence showing Elizabeth Taylor
walking through her encampment outside Alexandria.
It was intended by Mankiewicz to be the first scene in which
Cleopatra would appear in the film.
Also located were these long-deleted moments
from Cleopatra's procession into Rome.
This snake dancer sequence was briefly glimpsed in the film's
original trailer, but never made it to the final cut.
DRUMS BEAT
TRUMPETS PLAY
The restoration effort also resulted in the retrieval
and re-mastering of more than two and a half hours
of Alex North's Academy Award nominated original score.
MUSIC FROM NORTH'S CLEOPATRA SCORE PLAYS
I think the music for Cleopatra is extraordinary, in the sense
that it brings to it all of the Machiavellian madness of the period.
The music, which is comprised of many, many overlays
and overdubs, it's layer upon layer of exotic instrumentation...
..that gives you the impression of snakes slithering across the floor.
It's almost in the music, you can hear all of the plots
and counterplots and intrigues.
While the search for Joseph L Mankiewicz's version
of Cleopatra continues, the fresh attention focused on the film
has resulted in a new appreciation
for the four hour and three minute road-show version that survived.
'The drama, the romance,
'the repression, the danger,
'the craziness,
'stripped of all the hubris of publicity and hype,
'looking at it from a distance of 40 years,'
we can see the pure film without all the other stuff.
While the debate continues about what Cleopatra
could have been or should have been, there is one fact that
no-one can disagree with -
Cleopatra is a film that will never be duplicated.
In adjusted dollars, the picture's 44 million dollar cost would
now tally more than ten times that amount.
It would be nice for that picture to be seen in its entirety
and I just think it would be nice to see that
piece of art that has never been seen.
The restoration of Cleopatra will come about eventually.
I believe this missing footage, this
three and a half hours of missing footage...
..will be found.
But that now will begin...
..a dream of my own...
..which will never end.
Antony.
Antony, wait.
Cleopatra. It's a name that conjures
mystery, power and seduction.
It is also a name that has come to suggest
opulence, grandeur and great excess.
It is the name of one of the most
intriguing woman who has ever lived
and the name of one of the greatest and most infamous films ever made.
Was this well done of your lady?
Extremely well.
As befitting the last of so many noble...rulers.
And the Roman asked, "Was this well done of your lady?"
And the servant answered, "Extremely well.
"As befitting the last of so many noble rulers."
SPEECH IS SILENT, MUSIC PLAYS