Q&A
Patrick Humphries explains how Cleopatra’s scandal-hit production marked the decline of the old studio system
Does Cleopatra act as a pivot between old and new Hollywood?
I think it does. I mean, it’s a terrible film, but the backstory is fantastic, which is what really appealed to me. I think Paramount did a drama series about the making of The Godfather, and I think they could do one about the making of Cleopatra because just the scale of it, even now, it’s unbelievable.
Patrick Humphries is a civil servant turned journalist, writing for NME, Melody Maker, Evening Standard, Guardian, The Times and many more. His previous books include A Little Bit Funny: The Elton John Story, Rolling Stones 69 and With The Beatles.
Did it really do so much damage that it brought the Hollywood epics of the age to an end?
It’s not the one film that sank the studios, but it’s certainly one of the first nails in the coffin. Cinema was fighting a rearguard action in the 1950s with television. Why pay to go out when you can stay at home and see movies? So, the way Hollywood fought back is by producing big, spectacular epics in colour, stereo sound. They would be roadshow presentations to try and make it as much of an event as possible. So, there would be two performances a day and you’d get a souvenir programme like going to the theatre. These were big, big productions, which you couldn’t possibly expect to see on television. And the biggest of them all was Cleopatra.
What was the landscape Cleopatra was developed against?
Hollywood had a good run in the 1950s. They found the Bible delivered good box office numbers. There was a series of very successful films during the ‘50s, The Robe (1953), Demetrius And The Gladiators (1954), Quo Vadis (1951), etc. They were big-budget films that really filled the screen. The biggest of them all, of course, was Ben-Hur (1959), which came in at $15 million, which was an awful lot at the time. Now 20th Century Fox, like all of the studios, was struggling. For some inexplicable reason they thought they could do a version of Cleopatra based on an earlier version that the studio had done. They needed something big and Elizabeth Taylor was a huge star at the time, and they got in touch with her. Originally it was going to be a $2 million, 60-day shoot with contract player Joan Collins as Cleopatra to be filmed in Hollywood, around Los Angeles, in the deserts around California to replicate Ancient Egypt. That never happened. So, they wanted a big star; Taylor had just won an Oscar, so they told her we want you to play Cleopatra. Apparently she’s in the shower and she told her then husband, “tell them I will do it for a million dollars” expecting the
