Trivia / Cleopatra

• Actor-Shared Background: Mark Antony was a heavy drinker. So was Richard Burton.
• All-Star Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Hume Cronyn, Roddy McDowall, Martin Landau... need more?
• Billing Displacement: One that was just a clerical error. Roddy McDowall was mistakenly listed as one of the leads, which accidentally disqualified him from getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Elizabeth Taylor reportedly threw up when she saw the finished product for the first time.
  They had cut out the heart, the essence, the motivations, the very core, and tacked on all those battle scenes. It should have been about three large people, but it lacked reality and passion. I found it vulgar.
  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz tried to have his name taken off the credits, claiming he only did the film as a favour to his friend Elizabeth Taylor.
• Creator Killer:
  • Barely averted. 20th Century Fox nearly went bankrupt as a result of this film's bloated production; it rebounded only because The Sound of Music was such a phenomenal success, as well as sell its 200-acre back lot (which is now Los Angeles district Century City) to real estate developer William Zeckendorf, and managed to stay afloat for another 56 years before being acquired by Disney, losing its major studio status in the process.
  • More importantly, it proved to be one of the final nail in the coffin of the post-studio system era.
  • The film ultimately did lead to at least one victim: Walter Wanger, the once-successful Hollywood producer, never made another film again after this. Joseph L. Mankiewicz' career also went into a spiral until he directed Sleuth 1972, a critical and commercial success. Mankiewicz retired immediately after, allowing him to rest on his laurels.
• Deleted Scene: Originally intended by Joseph Mankewicz as a six-hour film to be Divided for Publication until Executive Meddling ordered it to be released as a single four-hour film. Since the mid-1990s, Fox has been hunting down the remaining two hours to create a Director's Cut.
• Fake Nationality: Like most Western works set in Ancient Rome and Egypt, not a single Egyptian or Italian (Roman) is cast in this film, and Elizabeth Taylor is not Greek (Cleopatra VII was actually Greek, not Egyptian, and was descended from Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander the Great's generals).
• Genre-Killer: The film is one of the last of the Epic Movies of the The Golden Age of Hollywood, and its box office failure along with that of The Fall of the Roman Empire the following year made it unsustainable for studios to pursue more costly Sword and Sandal projects. Further smaller scale attempts such as 1970's Julius Caesar and 1972's Antony and Cleopatra weren't successful despite packing star power, albeit the genre would survive on television with a few examples standing out such as I, Claudius and Masada. It wouldn't be until 2000 that the genre would be truly revived on the big screen, with Gladiator.
• Life Imitates Art: In the second part of the movie, there is hardly a scene where Mark Antony is not drinking. Richard Burton had serious problems with alcohol, including on the set. Elizabeth Taylor, whose character kills herself at the end of the film, also attempted suicide during production.
• Money, Dear Boy: Elizabeth Taylor jokingly said that she'd only do the film for $1 million. To her surprise, Fox paid it.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: Michael Hordern describes the filming of the 9-minute sequence where Cleopatra enters Rome in his 1994 autobiography. He remembers that the doves that were supposed to fly out of the miniature pyramid when it opened had grown very drowsy in the Roman heat and remained inside, so a crew member had to hide inside to shoo them out at the right moment, not a pleasant job as the birds defecated liberally.
• The Other Marty:
  • Originally Peter Finch was cast as Julius Caesar, Stephen Boyd as Mark Anthony and Keith Baxter as Octavian. The film's turbulent production in England, the switch in directors and move to Italy led to all three being replaced due to scheduling issues.
  • The young actor playing Cleopatra's son had to be recast because the sequence of her arriving in Rome took so long to film - that he had grown quite a bit.
• Prop Recycling: According to Rex Harrison's autobiography, 20th Century Fox custom-made his Julius Caesar boots while Richard Burton's boots were hand-me-downs from the previous attempt at making the film. Harrison was amazed that Burton did not complain.
• Recycled Set: Sets that were originally built at Pinewood Studios in England, only to go unused when production moved to Italy, would later be used by the makers of the parody Carry On Cleo.
• Romance on the Set: Elizabeth Taylor's and Richard Burton's romance on set was one of the most famous and scandalous in movie history. Not in the least because they were both still married but not to each other.
• Those Two Actors: This was the first of six movies that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made together.
• Troubled Production: One of the most infamous in film history, as it took years to finish while ballooning its budget, having cast and crew changes, a location change once Elizabeth Taylor got gravely ill with pneumonia in England (and in Italy things got even worse, including a shortage of building materials), the Taylor-Burton romance bringing in unwanted attention, and Fox intervening to cut short Joseph L. Mankiewicz's plans for two three-hour films, Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra, instead leading to a single four-hour film that upon release nearly killed the company, who had to sell parts of its studio lot to remain afloat.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Planned as two three-hour epics, the first one dealing with Cleopatra and Caesar and the second with Marc Anthony. As noted above, the studio decided instead to cut it down into one film.
  • Also noted above, a big battle sequence was planned to end the film. The film had run so over budget they couldn't afford to film it, so it had to be rewritten to take place offscreen.
  • Marlon Brando was heavily courted for the role of Marc Anthony, having played it already in 1953's Julius Caesar. He was committed to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), so it went to Stephen Boyd instead. Boyd left the role due to the extensive Troubled Production as he was cast in The Fall of the Roman Empire, and it eventually went to Richard Burton. Peter O'Toole was also seriously considered, while Kirk Douglas, Laurence Harvey and Jason Robards were also considered.
  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz originally wanted to have either Laurence Olivier or Trevor Howard as Julius Caesar. Olivier was running the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Howard was caught up in the protracted filming of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).
  • When it seemed like Elizabeth Taylor wouldn't recover from her illness, Audrey Hepburn was considered to replace her. Also considered were Brigitte Bardot, Susan Hayward, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak.
  • Yul Brynner, Noël Coward, John Gielgud, Cary Grant, Curd Jürgens, Fredric March and Peter Sellers were considered for Julius Caesar. John Gielgud went on to play Julius Caesar in a screen adaptation of the Shakespeare play in 1970.
  • A then-unknown Oliver Reed's agent tried to get him a part in the film.
  • After firing Rouben Mamoulian as director, Walter Wanger and Darryl F. Zanuck approached Alfred Hitchcock to take over the project. Hitchcock refused and chose to make The Birds instead. Taylor, whose contract gave her director approval, would only approve two possible replacements: George Stevens and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Stevens was already at work on The Greatest Story Ever Told.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: In keeping with the chaotic production, there was no shooting script. Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote as he was shooting. At one point, he was fired and then rehired because he was the only one who could put the film together.

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