When you’re in my business, you get asked all kinds of meshugganeh questions, about everything from the sex lives of the stars, to your own experiences in the business. But, finally, last week, I heard, for the umpteenth time, a question I’ve been asked ad nauseum, for almost forty years. The question was, “Why did the (1964) version of “Cleopatra” cost so damned much, and was it, in fact, the most expensive movie ever made?”

The answer is, “yes” it was the most expensive movie ever made. If you were to attempt a remake of it today, using the same techniques as were used back then, the cost would exceed one half billion dollars, gezunte geldt then and now.

But the “why” is more complicated. For years the common misconception was that it was all Elizabeth Taylor’s fault, her affair with Richard Burton, her incessant illnesses, and a host of other accusations, all untrue. I know…I was there!

The generally accepted total of the film’s production costs are, in fact, the cost of two films. The first, was the brainchild of Spyros Skouras, a Greek immigrant who approached 20th Century Fox with the absurd idea that he could pull off the mammoth production for ten million dollars. He quickly agreed to Taylor’s request for one million to play the role, (a sum she made up mainly because she didn’t want to do the movie, and never thought he’d go for it,) and arranged, for tax purposes, to film outside the United States. But of all places, Skouras chose to film at the then obscure Pinewood Studios, outside London, England. I remember watching them bulldoze millions of cubic tons of sand around, trying to make the lush Countryside of England look like Egypt. The palm trees, imported from Cairo, lost no time dying of root rot in the moist soil, and were fitted out every day of filming with freshly cut and flown in fronds.

Meanwhile, enormous sets were constructed, (never used in the film, but usurped later on for the comedy version, called “Carry on Cleo”, about Cleopatra’s affair with Antony,) and while all the front work was being done, Skouras had Taylor, Peter Finch, (the original Caesar,) and Stephen Boyd, (the original Antony,) holed up at The Dorchester hotel, the Helmsley Palace of London. It was during this period of “Hurry up, and wait!” That Elizabeth developed pneumonia, and had the famous tracheotomy. I can still hear Skouras on the set, ranting that,”…if she dies, who’ll replace her, and if she lives, how in hell are we going to cover the scar on her throat?”

Bottom line? By the time Skouras had squandered the ten million, he had three minutes of film in the can, none of which ever made it into the film that was released.

Fox, (run by accountants in those days), threatened to pull the plug on the whole project. Instead, they relented, pulling the plug on Skouras, who received his walking papers. Finch and Boyd were paid off, and replaced with Rex Harrison, and the then almost unknown, Richard Burton respectively. Taylor, meanwhile recovered, and a new director was brought in.

Joe Mankeiwitz was an intense ,ball-bearing of a man who knew how to get things done. Fox had told him, get the movie made…period. He moved the production to Rome, where again, the city of Alexandria was built, immense concrete facades rising against the coastline. Yes, that’s a real city you see in the opening, where Caesar shops his way to the palace. Also authentic was the enormous barge in which Cleopatra travels to meet with Antony. Remember, this was old Hollywood’s last “Hurrah”, the end of an era of ‘two of everything and twice as big’’. It was long before the time of computer generated backgrounds and effects. In some cases, matte paintings were used, but not too often. Mankeiwitz insisted on realism whenever he could get it. Even the enormous fiberglass sphinx Taylor rode into Rome was full-scale, built on a tractor trailer.
Did the Burton/Taylor romance add to the film’s downfall? Perhaps, but only because Fox wrongly used the publicity. Was Taylor’s constant health issues to blame? Not nearly as much, as Richard Burton’s constant drinking. For him, lunch was a pitcher or two of martinis, and if you didn’t get the work out of him by then, it was either shoot around him, shoot with him, (which they did twice, and oddly, his best scenes were filmed when he was farshnikert out of his gourd,) or shut down for the day. Or, was the real culprit the fact that huge epics were passé, and the public was veering more toward smaller, more earthy productions?

The answer is, a little of all the above. The true cost of the film, (not counting the farblondzet Skouras debacle,) was just over twenty million, not including the cost of the release prints. Was the film the box office disaster it is said to have been? Yes and no. Had Fox not over-publicized the film and its related dramas, it would have done better. Clearly the finished product didn’t equal the mammoth publicity campaign’s promises. And true, it did take almost ten years for the film to make back its production costs, but then, that was back in a day when a film traveled from one theater to another, remaining only two weeks at each for about six months. The three and one half hour running time, not including the intermission, was too long for the average person to sit and remain interested didn’t add to the film’s popularity either. But the real cause of the film’s catastrophe was the heads of Fox who were too beset by financial troubles to think rationally, (the studio had been awash in red ink for two years before ‘Cleopatra’ and, contrary to the popular rumor, had already been negotiating to sell off its back lot to Alcoa for its ‘Century City’ project,) and too stubborn to say, 'genug es genug’ and cease production.

Granted, I remain ‘Cleopatra’s’ most steadfast fans for several reasons. One, I made my film debut in it. Two, I have many fond memories of the people and the experience. But mainly, I love it because it was the last of its kind, the last bow of grand scale filmmaking, and tragically the last nail in the coffin of the old studio system. It would be forty years before such films would reappear,( ‘Troy”, ‘Gladiator”, and the recent ‘Alexander’,) and even they lack the Technicolor magic the old epics exuded. But then, this is a different time and place, an era where it gets tougher every day to suspend an audience’s disbelief. The fact remains, that regardless of its trials and tribulations, and almost a half century of rumors flying about, the film is the most powerful example of a day when bigger was better. And probably for the rest of time, when people talk about huge productions, exorbitant costs, and disasters of ‘Titanic’ (pun intended,) proportions, they will immediately think of one film…”Cleopatra”.

See you next month!