Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood

The title of the 2001 documentary Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood is a misnomer. No question the movie had an enormous impact on 20th Century Fox and the livelihood of many Fox employees. (Chicago American movie critic Ann Marsters told me she didn’t like the movie but nevertheless gave it a rave in an effort to save her friends’ jobs.) No denying Liz’s contract and benefits became the envy and demand of other stars who followed. But an out-of-control budget was not to become a thing of the past; The Towering Inferno, Heaven’s Gate, Waterworld, Titanic and Gladiator, to name just a few, were colossally expensive. There will be more follies and many movie executive heads will continue to roll. Few, however, as ironic as Darryl Zanuck’s; taking credit for saving Fox, with just a little help in 1965 from something called The Sound of Music, he faced a disastrous 1968 after Doctor Doolittle and Star! and other disappointments created losses exceeding those of the Cleo years and by 1971 he was dethroned as head of the studio, something executive producer and co-director Kevin Burns pointedly avoids. Another irony: Cleopatra probably had less impact on Hollywood in the long run than its titular star had on America socially and culturally. Liz’s second flaunt of adultery—her first the Eddie-Debbie-Liz-biz in 1958 and 1959—was not only a brazen provocation, it was a public act of defiance against norms many found not only fascinating to watch but liberating. She became, via her own release from shackles she never accepted, the ultimate symbol of personal emancipation as well as its accompanying emblem of excess. She didn’t set out to do that; she became accidentally the right star at the right time to smash the taboos by a convergence of circumstances, most of which she had no control over. (She hinted at enjoying the hysteria.) America would never again look at adulterous affairs in the same way, and hypocrites who made them public fodder would eventually make fools of themselves, clearly evident when right-wing Christian politicians attempted to destroy a sitting president for his bjs and later foist a multiple-married whoremongering narcissist to the White House as a gift from their God. If the documentary is short on Liz’s collision course with American hypocrisy, it’s informative about Fox’s pre-Cleopatra financial predicaments, the movie business in general, about producer Walter Wanger (who famously shot his wife’s lover smack between the legs), about all the travails of making Cleopatra. Humorously juxtaposed is the weekly bottled mineral water bill of (unverified) $250,000 with a memo to cast and crew to “share your paper cups.” What’s been left out is the maze of confusion about the movie’s real cost and real profits, how many millions Liz got, the impact of Marilyn Monroe’s death on the studio, Fox’s slut-shaming lawsuit against Liz & Dick in which claims of fact contradict its own accounting information. (See left for more on the money.) Fans of the epic, having waited nearly four decades, finally get to see footage from the aborted made-in-England version. Clips showing Peter Finch as Caesar reveal the hazards of waiting—he’s drunk on set. There are letterboxed shots of the first Alexandria built in the gloomy weather of the English countryside with the imported palm tree leaves drooping, scenes of Roman troops looking like upright insects disembarking from laugh-provoking ships, and a few night shots, one of them of Finch’s horse rather clumsily jumping. Wardrobe tests of Liz are Vegas howlers, especially her arrival-in-Rome getup, all apparently designed by Oliver Messel. The scenes available from this first effort confirm Finch and Liz had legit cause to worry about its puniness; in Rome, the movie got as big as Liz’s knockers. Previously unseen footage from the actual movie might not make you long for what’s missing. For example, absent from the entrance into Rome are the giant mechanical serpent, female dancers gyrating in fake snake skin outfits and Burton sottishly clowning with a skimpily clad extra on an elephant. Narrator Robert Culp’s pleasance of voice smoothes over some factual errors, misrepresentation of others and careless interpretation. One, the movie cost $44 million when Fox would print a brochure for the documentary, accompanying the first DVD release of the movie, stating a revised cost of $35 million. Two, the 246 minute movie earned $24 million in initial release, when in fact it took in that amount during its first six months of its roadshow run, with several months remaining. Three, when the appalling 3 hour version was used for general release, Culp repeats unsupported ad copy of audiences being “unaware of what they were missing (but) they liked what they saw.” The reaction to the abortion was the same as Liz’s when she was pressured to experience it at the London gala. There’s no mention of what happened ten months after Liz’s vomiting—the vindictive lawsuit by Fox. Though Culp assures us the studio has every intention of finding lost footage and restore the spectacle the way Mankiewicz envisioned, the 2012 Blu-ray release updates the probability all unused footage was destroyed. (In all, 96 hours of film were shot. To get an idea of what’s likely gone forever, click The Restored Cleopatra at left.) Martin Landau clarifies his Rufio wasn’t killed, which is what audiences thought for years; he committed suicide. Zanuck, who cut off funds and fired Mankiewicz only to re-hire him to sort out the task of editing, was likewise a sucker: when viewing the pint-sized opening sequence of Pompey’s defeat at Pharsalia, he demanded a re-shoot, done four months before the picture premiered and supposedly costing between two and four million dollars. The commentaries by the director’s sons Chris and Tom Mankiewicz on the movie’s DVD releases add a slight measure of insight, but both make sloppy mistakes: Roddy McDowall, who took the above left photograph of Liz, was neither nominated for nor received an Oscar as best supporting actor, due to, as the documentary clarifies, Fox’s error in improperly categorizing him for nomination consideration, for which the studio ran full page ads in the trades apologizing for the oversight. Included is the long-forgotten TV ad for Revlon’s Cleo makeup, with Suzy Parker the “Sphinx Pink” spokeswoman. A tidbit: Jacqueline Chan, playing the handmaiden/food taster forced to drink the poison she delivers to Liz, was among many lovers of Princess Margaret’s bisexual husband Antony Armstrong-Jones. Though not interviewed for this pretty decent sociological overview, a comment published on an Internet movie forum fittingly capsulizes the affects of her legacy: “I hear Cleopatra and I think Elizabeth Taylor.”

ROLL OVER IMAGES FROM ABORTED VERSION

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