When Liz met Dick...

Cleopatra is a 1963 American epic historical drama film chronicling the struggles of Cleopatra VII, the young Queen of Egypt, to resist the imperial ambitions of Rome. It was directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and shot in the 70 mm Todd-AO format, with a screenplay adapted by Mankiewicz, Ranald MacDougall and Sidney Buchman from a book by Carlo Maria Franzero. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, Roddy McDowall, and Martin Landau.

It was the highest-grossing film of 1963, earning box-office of $57.7 million in the United States (equivalent to $451 million in 2016), yet made a loss due to its production and marketing costs of $44 million (equivalent to $344 million in 2016), making it the only film ever to be the highest-grossing film of the year yet to run at a loss.[5]Cleopatra later won four Academy Awards, and was nominated for five more, including Best Picture (which it lost to Tom Jones).

Joseph L. Mankiewicz hoped that the film would be released as two separate pictures, “Caesar and Cleopatra” followed by “Antony and Cleopatra.” Each was to run approximately three hours. 20th Century-Fox decided against this, and released the film we know today. It runs just over four hours. It is hoped that the missing two hours will be located and that one day a six-hour ‘director’s cut’ will be available.

The filming of Cleopatra’s entrance into Rome was delayed for months due to lighting problems. The American child actor who played her four-year-old son got taller during the delay. He was replaced by an Italian boy, complete with accent.

Egypt initially refused to let Elizabeth Taylor in because she was Jewish. They changed their minds when they realized the film’s presence would put millions of American dollars into the economy.

And now let’s talk about the main reason I made this post. Elizabeth Taylor had met Richard Burton several years prior to their working together on the film, and had found him to be brutish and boorish.

As Burton remembered the story, Elizabeth was not impressed. He explained, “A girl sitting on the other side of the pool lowered her book, took off her sunglasses and looked at me. She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud … she was unquestioningly gorgeous … She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largess. She was, in short, too bloody much, and not only that, she was totally ignoring me.”

However, when Burton showed up for work on this film on his first day, it was with a hangover so severe that he had the shakes. Taylor had to help him around and administer to such basic needs as helping him drink a cup of coffee. This time, she found him to be very endearing.

Elizabeth and Richard’s affair caused a huge sensation. Both were already married – she to her fourth husband Eddie Fisher, who she had famously ‘stolen’ from Debbie Reynolds. The Vatican condemned their union, calling it ‘erotic vagrancy’, and the world’s press closely monitored their relationship from then.