‘Cleopatra’ in the words of the people who made it
Joseph L Mankiewicz’s lavish 1963 historical romance Cleopatra was no small undertaking. Due to Elizabeth Taylor’s ill health, the gargantuan production was moved from London to Rome and started from scratch. The shoot was, by all accounts, utter bedlam. Here, Elizabeth Taylor, George Cole, Jacqui Khan, Mankiewicz and more recall disruptive on-set romances, budget problems and being bullied by Rex Harrison.
Jacqui Khan was only cast as Lotos, Cleopatra’s devoted handmaiden, after the production had been moved to Rome, by which time the script had been rewritten and much of the original cast replaced. “I was unaware of all that behind-the-scenes chaos, but being on set was bedlam,” she told The Guardian. “There were hundreds of extras, who had to be lumped together by nationality so the assistant directors could address them en masse in their own languages. It was all a bit crazy.”
Sadly, the weather was just as bad in Rome as in London. Taylor became ill as a result and requested an IV drip, which was fitted to her leg and concealed behind faux-Roman furniture. “She refused to continue shooting until they’d installed proper heating on the huge sets,” Khan said. “That was a relief to all of us, who had been shivering through our scenes. She was extremely pleasant to us all, despite the arduous filming. I never understood why we would frequently shoot the same scenes over and over from endless angles, but I don’t recall her making a fuss.”
George Cole, who played Flavius, was less forgiving: “Filming was very boring because there was a lot of hanging around, and I had no lines to learn,” he said. “The romance between Taylor and Burton was a headache for us all because every day’s shoot depended on whether they’d got on well the night before. If they hadn’t, one or the other wouldn’t show up. The director had to have an alternative filming schedule every day that he would revert to if his stars were at loggerheads. The rest of us never knew if we were going to work or not.”
That uncertainty was especially troubling for Cole because he’d already been on set since five getting his fake beard plastered on. “Eventually, I got fed up and asked why they couldn’t ready one for me,” he said. “The Italian makeup artist replied that he knew we actors like to feel our faces move when we talk – at which point I had to explain I played a deaf-mute man. When we had to reshoot scenes in Spain just before the film premiere the makeup man was a Brit; he just reached into an M&S carrier bag full of beards and fished out one that would suit.”
To be fair to them, Taylor and Burton were being hounded at all hours. “There was a certain…madness to it all,” Hume Cronyn, who played Cleopatra’s scholarly adviser, told Vanity Fair. “It wasn’t anything as clear as ‘Richard Burton is moving out on his wife, Elizabeth is leaving Eddie Fisher.’ It was much more complicated, more levels than that…Paparazzi in the trees…We were weeks behind… Hanky-panky going on in this corner and that…There were wheels within wheels within wheels. God, it was a messy situation.”
That’s to say nothing of the various on-set rivalries. “I have very few happy memories of the production because of the difficult personalities,” Cole said. “And Rex Harrison was horrible. He’d choose someone to pick on every day; the cast and crew started a sweepstake on who that day’s victim would be. In one scene Caesar had to appear before a crowd, and I was to follow behind with a ceremonial bowl. Unfortunately, I trod on his frock. He swung round and was vile to me and insisted on a reshoot. Mankiewicz realised what was going on and stuck his head round the door and said humorously: ‘George, stay off his fucking skirt!'”
Taylor would later describe the making of Cleopatra as “probably the most chaotic time of my life. That hasn’t changed. What with le scandale, the Vatican banning me, people making threats on my life, falling madly in love…It was fun, and it was dark—oceans of tears”. Director Joseph L Mankiewicz put it more succinctly. His main recollection of Cleopatra – that it was “conceived in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in a blind panic” – is known throughout Hollywood and serves as warning to all directors biting more than they can chew.
