One of the casualties of the traumas at 20th Century Fox studios was the film that the future of the company depended upon.
Cleopatra was hit by every calamity imaginable, from Fox's declining fortunes to its star's precarious health to Egypt's refusal to allow the filmmakers to shoot locations in that country because of Elizabeth Taylor's adoption of the Jewish faith after her marriage to Eddie Fisher. The wonder of
Cleopatra is that, when the film is good, it is as good as these rather top-heavy spectacles get. Taylor's verbal skirmishes with Rex Harrison's Julius Caesar in the film's first half are as witty and barbed as anything writer/director Joseph Mankiewicz wrote for
All About Eve. If the second half of
Cleopatra is a disappointment, the same can certainly be said of
Gone With the Wind.
Cleopatra was the most highly anticipated movie of its day and perhaps of all-time. The animosity in Italy, where most of the picture was shot, concerning Taylor's personal life was so potent that snipers were hired and placed on rooftops for the scene when Cleopatra enters Rome in case someone amongst the thousands of extras made an attempt on her life. Many people took issue with Taylor's occasionally strident performance as the Egyptian queen, but even the most vocal of her detractors would have to admit that she is unquestionably the most gorgeous aspect of a visually gorgeous movie. And none of it originated in a computer.
Other VT Tidbits...
Joan Collins was initially cast to play the fabled Egyptian queen.
At roughly $215 million in adjusted dollars, Cleopatra is still the most costly film ever made.
