by Gill Paul
Still, one never knew with Elizabeth.
Diana wore her lilac dress, the one Helen had helped her to choose, and when they arrived Elizabeth admired it effusively.
‘You’re so skinny. I can’t wear styles like that with my big momma hips.’ She patted them, with a conspiratorial smile.
They were handed bright turquoise cocktails to drink, and Trevor grumbled in Diana’s ear that he would rather have had a beer. The suite was overflowing with people crowded onto the balconies to admire the sunset, lounging on Elizabeth’s giant bed, or dancing to some 45 rpms playing on a record player. ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’, sang Ray Charles and all heads turned to look at Elizabeth, who pretended not to notice.
Diana had brought a notebook and she took the opportunity to swap telephone numbers and addresses with cast and crew who were leaving the next morning. Everyone was pledging eternal friendship but Diana wondered how many would keep in touch once they were back in California or New York or London. She had known these people for eight months now and some had been working together for over a year. The intensity of the film-making experience made you feel like close friends but it wasn’t the genuine kind of friendship that grew from common interests and long-term loyalty. It was artificial and forced by circumstances.
Trevor was pulled into the circle around Richard Burton, where they were discussing the British writers known as ‘Angry Young Men’ – John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Edward Bond and Harold Pinter. Would their works still be read in twenty years’ time? Trevor argued that they were of the moment and wouldn’t age well but Richard disagreed.
Momentarily alone, Diana decided to sneak out for a look round the hotel, which was considerably swankier than theirs. She toured the grand public rooms then walked through a glass door into a lush landscaped garden, and there, by the swimming pool, was Elizabeth, all on her own.
‘Are you alright?’ Diana called, and Elizabeth turned.
‘Sure. I just wanted a moment’s peace. It’s so beautiful here, don’t you think?’
‘Shall I leave you alone to enjoy the peace?’
‘No, come and talk. Want a cigarette?’
She offered her pack, but Diana shook her head.
‘How are things with you and Trevor? Do you reckon you two are gonna make it?’
Diana was taken aback by the directness of the question and didn’t know what to say.
Elizabeth smiled. ‘No, don’t answer. I think I know. He’s a fascinating man, and great company, but he’s not your lover. So you have to decide whether you are going to settle for that. People do a lot worse. Some make such a mess of everything …’
She took a deep drag of her cigarette and blew out the smoke in a long puff. ‘Richard and I sneaked down to the bay this morning to watch the dawn and it was glorious. There were no photographers around, just us – at least, so I thought. Richard went back to bed and I stayed to watch the sunrise and then suddenly I realised there was an old fisherman sitting there mending a net. He looked about a hundred years old.’
She fingered a chunky diamond bracelet on her wrist. ‘I lost this bracelet somewhere last night and I think it must have been on the beach. Then this afternoon the hotel reception called to say it had been handed in and from their description, I’m sure it was that fisherman. But I don’t understand why he didn’t sell it? Money like that could have turned his life around. Or if he had asked for a reward I’d gladly have paid.’
She gazed out across the pool towards the bay. ‘I suppose he must be content with the life he has. There was a kind of stillness and wisdom about him that made me want to ask his advice. I wanted to ask him what I should do with the rest of my life.’ She gave a hoarse little laugh. ‘Of course, then I remembered that I don’t speak any Italian so I couldn’t.’
‘What do you think he would have said?’
‘Well, he’s probably Catholic so he no doubt believes I’m an erotic vagrant!’ She shivered in her off-the-shoulder décolleté dress. ‘But I think what I would have wanted him to say was “Follow your heart”. Because no matter what anyone thinks of me, that’s what I intend to do. I have no choice. It’s the way I’m made.’
She dropped her cigarette only three-quarters smoked and ground it out under one of her pin-sharp heels. ‘Come on, let’s get back to the party. I need another cocktail.’
Diana followed her back into the hotel building, trying to think of something wise to say in response to the confession, but then she realised it wasn’t necessary. Everything had already been said.
Epilogue
In mid-July Scott bought a copy of the International Herald Tribune and was stunned to find a piece entitled ‘La Dolce Vita’ with Truman Capote’s byline which was almost word-for-word the same as his. The bastard had stolen everything, from his description of Helen’s dancing style through to Luigi’s shaved hands, and the only difference was that the Ghianciaminas’ name wasn’t even hinted at and the villa in Anzio and the attack on Scott weren’t mentioned. In a rage, he called the paper’s editor but he had no way of proving the piece had originally been his, after Truman claimed he’d hired Scott as a researcher. Scott felt defeated and depressed. His sole achievements after a year in Rome had been some silly stories about movie stars having an affair and a hopelessly mismanaged film running over budget. Big deal!
In early August, Corriere della Sera reported that Alessandro Ghianciamina had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. From the details, Scott sensed it was a professional killing. New Mafia bosses were muscling in on the Rome drugs trade and eliminating the competition. It didn’t make him happy or triumphant that the man who had broken his nose was dead. He felt sorry for poor Gina to be losing a brother. But most of all he felt relief that he had one less thing to worry about.
At the end of September, Scott was transferred to Berlin just as the Cuban missile crisis led the world to the brink of nuclear war. At last he could write serious stories and over the next few years his reputation grew as he moved from Midwest Daily to The New York Times. He married an enigmatic East German girl called Suse, who had escaped from East Germany across no-man’s land and had a bullet scar on her calf to prove it.
In the late 1960s, Scott finally wrote his book about Helen’s death in Torre Astura, drug dealing in Rome and corruption at the heart of Italian government. It was well reviewed but had the misfortune to come out in 1969, the same year as Mario Puzo wrote The Godfather, which massively outstripped him in sales. In 1971, Scott’s book about the Cold War was published and won the Pulitzer Prize. It was this, alongside his incisive reporting from the front line in Berlin, that made him a household name.
His father died suddenly in 1973 without ever telling Scott that he was proud of him; but by that time it didn’t matter anyway.
* * *
On the 15th of July 1962, Trevor went back to London and Diana flew to Alexandria with a skeleton crew and a few members of the cast. Richard was there but Elizabeth couldn’t join him in Egypt; it was thought she might become a target for protests because of her prominent support of Israeli causes.
It was a difficult shoot, at a small village in the desert called Edkou. The chaos was worse than in Rome, with missing shipments of wigs and makeup, mutinies by the extras, and everyone exhausted and debilitated by the dry, unforgiving heat, but by the 24th of the month their work was done. Diana said her final goodbyes to Richard, Joe, Walter and Hilary, then flew back to London.
On her return she began sending out letters of application to film and television companies, asking if any of them needed historical advisors and, to her delight, she received a reply from a BBC producer asking if she would help on a series they were shooting that autumn. It was about Richard the Lionheart and the Crusades, not Cleopatra, but she reckoned she could help, and her career change was effected rather smoothly and easily.
In the newspapers, she read that Elizabeth and Richard had holidayed together after shooting finished then attempted to go their separate ways.
He returned to Sybil and the girls – but only temporarily. Within a couple of months he was being photographed with Elizabeth again. They just couldn’t stay apart.
Diana and Trevor spent the autumn rubbing along together in their Primrose Hill flat. Neither raised the topic of their marriage but neither attempted to initiate marital relations either. They weren’t unhappy and there was no one else in the picture so there seemed no urgent necessity to clarify or redefine their marriage in words. In January 1963, a flat came up for rent just two doors along and Diana tentatively suggested that she might take it. She could afford the rent with her new BBC salary, and they needed more space. Neither admitted it was a step closer to the end for their marriage. It didn’t need to be said.
In June 1963, Diana and Trevor travelled together to New York for the premiere of Cleopatra at the Rivoli Theatre on Broadway. Their expectations weren’t high and Diana was disappointed to hear that Elizabeth and Richard weren’t attending, but realised it was unlikely Elizabeth would have had time for a cosy chat. They had moved into an entirely different stratosphere, one in which they had little room for a couple of historians who once dined with them in Rome.
Diana bought an extravagant new dress for the premiere and was glad she had because the photographers were out in force. Joe was giving press interviews at the entrance to the theatre with Rosemary Matthews by his side and Diana was able to have a quick word congratulating them on their recent marriage. They looked very comfortable together. After all the chaos, the astronomical budget, the backstabbing and betrayals, at least one Cleopatra love story had ended happily.
Making Cleopatra
It wasn’t the first film in the world to overspend and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was certainly the most memorable – and entertaining.
‘Conceived in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in blind panic.’ That’s the director’s famous verdict on the filming of the 1963 Cleopatra. What began as a two-million dollar potboiler designed to hoist Twentieth Century Fox out of a financial black hole, ended up as one of the most expensive films ever made even by 21st Century standards. Back then it nearly bankrupted one of Hollywood’s most famous studios.
They tried to pin the blame on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, saying their antics had brought the film into disrepute and suing them for fifty million dollars. Taylor counter-sued and they settled out of court. But when you look at the facts, it’s clear she bore some of the responsibility for the budget chaos.
Miss Taylor always claimed she was joking when she told producer Walter Wanger that she’d play Cleopatra for a million dollars – an unprecedented amount for any actor at the time. Wanger took her at her word though, and even caved in to her other demands, such as ten per cent of gross, massive overtime payments, and the promise to use a type of film – Todd AO – pioneered by her late husband Mike Todd on which she held copyright. At the age of twenty-eight she was already wealthy but she was about to get a lot more so – and the pattern was established that what Miss Taylor wanted, Miss Taylor got.
The plan had been to film on a Hollywood back lot, but she insisted they shot overseas because it suited her for tax reasons. Extravagant sets were constructed at Pinewood Studios outside London and real palm trees flown in from LA. Rouben Mamoulian was hired as director and shooting began on 28 September 1960 – only to stop three days later when Elizabeth Taylor caught a cold.
Everyone waited as gusty rain destroyed the gold leaf on the outdoor sets and lashed the poor trees. Then it was rumoured that Miss Taylor didn’t much like the script. There was a change of director to Joe Mankiewicz, with whom she had worked on Suddenly Last Summer, and shooting resumed after Christmas.
But before long Elizabeth developed pneumonia and on 4 March she collapsed in her suite at the Dorchester. An emergency tracheotomy was performed, and she had to be resuscitated four times after her heart stopped. A month later she flew home to recuperate in LA and the film appeared to be completely on the rocks.
La Dolce Vita
Walter Wanger would not give up on his star though. He had new sets built in Cinecittá studios on the outskirts of Rome, found an almost entirely new cast and crew, and once again filming started on 25 September 1961. The original Caesar and Anthony (Peter Finch and Stephen Boyd) were replaced by Rex Harrison and up-and-coming theatre star Richard Burton, and Joe Mankiewicz was rewriting the script.
But Mankiewicz hadn’t finished his rewrite by the time filming started. Every night he sat up till the early hours, sometimes scribbling scenes that would be shot the next afternoon. This meant they were shooting more or less chronologically and couldn’t plan ahead – so all cast and crew had to be kept in Rome on full salary, all expenses paid, for a shoot that was originally envisioned to be sixty-four days but which eventually took almost two years. As just one example, Richard and Sybil Burton arrived in Rome on 19 September 1961 and he didn’t shoot his first scene until January 1962. You can see where the budget was being spent!
There were dramas on set even before Taylor and Burton started sneaking off for secret assignations in each other’s trailers or her private secretary’s office. Problems with elephants, problems with an army range next to the Alexandria set, World War Two land mines were found on the beach – and the special film stock Miss Taylor insisted they use had to be flown back to Hollywood for processing so the director couldn’t see the ‘dailies’ until about two weeks after they’d been shot. Meanwhile the star’s weight fluctuated, making her sixty-five costume changes fraught with difficulty.
Once word leaked out that Anthony and Cleopatra were having an affair in real life, the press went crazy. The term ‘paparazzi’ had been coined by Fellini in his 1960 film La Dolce Vita but the Vespa-riding photographers in Rome in 1962 went much further than the ones he’d portrayed. They would jump in front of Taylor and Burton setting off flashbulbs in their faces, ran their car off the road, yelled lewd insults, and besieged them when they went to the island of Santo Stefano for an Easter break. (Burton gave her a black eye on that occasion and filming was delayed for three weeks while her bruises healed.)
The movie lurched from crisis to crisis, the budget escalating every day, and by June when they decamped to Ischia to shoot the sea battle of Actium (staged with real boats, some 200 feet long), Walter Wanger had been sacked as producer – but told to stay on and finish the film anyway. The president of Twentieth Century Fox, Spyros Skouras, was forced to resign and Darryl F. Zanuck was appointed in his place. He in turn sacked Joe Mankiewicz then realised he needed him to make sense of the hours and hours of footage, so bribed him to come back and help with the edit.
The New York première
Mankiewicz had always seen it as two films – Caesar and Cleopatra, followed by a sequel, Anthony and Cleopatra – but Zanuck wanted it cut down to one. It scraped in at just over four hours long, but a huge number of scenes were left on the cutting room floor, including many of Burton’s best ones. Taylor and Burton declined to come to the New York première in June 1963 citing ‘other commitments’, but she claimed when she saw the film in London she was physically sick. The critics were generally scathing, and particularly cruel to Elizabeth – ‘Miss Taylor is monotony in a slit skirt’ – while Richard was described as ‘looking like a drunken sot on a campus’.
Joe Mankiewicz married Rosemary Matthews, his assistant, so that at least brought him a happy conclusion on the domestic front, but his career never recovered. Walter Wanger never made another film. Richard Burton slowly, painfully extricated himself from his marriage to Sybil and married Elizabeth on 15 March 1964. They divorced ten years later and remarried in 1975 but only for nine months.
Despite a final cost of forty-four million dollars, Cleopatra went into profit in 1966 and it won four Oscars (although none were for acting or direction). It’s worth watching, but it’s very, very long.
Did Walter Wanger ever reflect on Spyros Skouras’s advice when he first suggested casting Elizabeth Tay
lor?
‘Don’t do it,’ the studio president urged. ‘She’ll be too much trouble.’
But for those cast and crew who didn’t have to shoulder the financial blame, the consensus was that their ten months in Italy was the holiday of a lifetime.
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have written this book without the help of John Gayford, an actor who played a centurion in the 1963 Cleopatra and is frequently seen standing behind Richard Burton in the finished movie. He has been unbelievably generous with his time, answering my questions by telephone and email and going through the text in minute detail. His knowledge of the making of the film and life in Rome in the early 1960s have been invaluable, while his witty emails brought colour to the working day! I’m incredibly grateful.
Thanks also to Francesca Annis, who played one of Elizabeth Taylor’s handmaidens in the film, and who answered my questions about life on the set. And my gratitude to Aurelio Cappozzo and Laura Ronchetti for information on legal processes in Rome at the time.
For those interested in learning more about the making of the film, I recommend Walter Wanger’s book My Life with Cleopatra and Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss’s The Cleopatra Papers, both published in 1963, as well as the documentary Cleopatra: The Film that Changed Hollywood. And do watch the film: it’s enjoyable, and certainly much better than the critics said at the time.
Huge thanks as always to Karen Sullivan, my number one reader, who has extraordinarily good instincts for story and character. Anne Nicholson also had some very wise advice. Thanks to Karel Bata for his wisdom on technical aspects of filming and to Luke Sullivan for help with Italian dialogue. And grateful thanks to all the team at Avon: Caroline Ridding, Sammia Rafique, Helen Bolton, Lydia Newhouse, Becke Parker, Claire Power, Cleo Little, Tom Dunstand and Cicely Aspinall, as well as the amazing Claire Bord, whose editing is always spot-on.