So what was the reason? “Elements,” said 62-year-old Mr. Mamoulian vaguely. “Dreams have to be translated into flesh and blood. All manner of things, internal and external, get in the way.”
JANUARY 23, 1961
Liz called. Wanted to know if she’s in or out of the picture. Am I in or out?
Mamoulian is looking for support from Liz, who likes to stand up for the underdog, but it is too late. Skouras knows she will quiet down if he brings in Mankiewicz, whom she trusts and believes in.
Meanwhile, I am at my wit’s end. There is still the problem of the script, and our overhead piles up—around $45,000 a day. We have only about ten minutes of film, some of it beautiful but none of it with Liz. And Liz refuses to do anything until the director hassle is settled.
JANUARY 25, 1961
Mankiewicz is hired as writer-director. Skouras wants JLM to run the show. There is already conflict between Skouras and JLM over JLM’s insistence that I continue to be producer of Cleopatra.
Where Rouben is slow moving and a chain cigar-smoker, Joe is mercurial and a pipe-smoker. JLM is intelligent with a wonderful sense of humor. Rouben is also intelligent, but has less sense of humor. The main difference between these two men is their ability to adapt to situations. Mamoulian is unbending as is JLM, but JLM is much more adept in handling touchy matters.
FEBRUARY 1, 1961
Mankiewicz begins to take over.
He has arrived in London with an entirely new, modern, psychiatrically rooted concept of the film. It is one with which I can agree entirely and I believe it can lead to a great picture. Mark Antony lived always in the shadow of Caesar—Caesar’s trusted lieutenant, Caesar’s loyal friend, Caesar’s right hand—but never a Caesar. JLM sees Antony as a bad replica of Caesar, following desperately in Caesar’s footsteps, but rattling loosely in them on the battlefield, in the Senate and in Caesar’s bed. He sees this inability to match Caesar as the cause of Antony’s excessive drinking and eccentric behavior. Antony’s conquest of Cleopatra is his only triumph over Caesar. Then he realizes he has not conquered but has been conquered—and this leads to his ultimate self-destruction.
JLM sees Cleopatra as one of the very first women to rule in a man’s world—a woman who wanted it all and picked off the Number One and Number Two ranking men of that world in succession. Cleopatra is not a wide-eyed child in his concept. She is an artist of consummate femininity, a genius in the art of attracting men. His overall approach is through the story of the woman who nearly made it.
It is his plan to stay very close to history. The lives of our chief protagonists, as chronicled in Plutarch, Suetonius, Appian and other ancient sources, are crammed with dramatic event and structure. He is going to start the script with the battle of Pharsalia.
JLM comes in the midst of a crisis: the cast is in open rebellion against being required to play the original script, which conceives of Cleopatra as a virgin who could be deflowered only by a god. JLM says he cannot salvage anything from the original, and he plans to disregard it completely in favor of his own concept. In this case he has my enthusiastic OK, as well as Skouras’. But more will have to be discarded than the script and the 10½ minutes of film already shot—all the footage made during these disastrous ten weeks.
We must also pay off all the contract people like Peter Finch, who will receive $150,000 for the role he was not able to complete. We are recasting the entire production as well as replanning and rebuilding. And we need enough screenplay ready to enable us to start shooting here again as close to March 15 as possible.
A hurried call has gone out to writers to help organize and set down a story line which can be translated into a screenplay as quickly as possible.
FEBRUARY 5, 1961
Sidney Buchman and Lawrence Durrell, both of whom like the Mankiewicz concept, made themselves available for enough time to get us started at any rate. Durrell is to be paid $2,500 a week.
The modus operandi is to hold conferences plotting the story line section by section. Buchman and Durrell then prepare separate “story-step outlines” which Mankiewicz adapts and expands into his screenplay outline. The outline has to be detailed and as close to the eventual screenplay as possible because of the pressure of time.
FEBRUARY 9, 1961
Received a copy of budget report from Rogell. Total cost to date: $4,998,000. Estimated further cost to complete the picture: $4,866,000. The grand total is almost ten million dollars. What we have spent so far is, I am sure, wasted, and I doubt that we will ever finish the picture within this estimate.
FEBRUARY 14, 1961
The London Evening Standard reported that Fox is claiming almost twelve million dollars from the forty insurance companies and ninety syndicates of Lloyd’s underwriters that insured us on the picture.
The paper also reported that Liz had won her libel suit against the Daily Mail for claiming Cleopatra had been held up because she was overweight.
FEBRUARY 16, 1961
I have seen the first pages of Mankiewicz’s screenplay outline. Excellent!
JLM has begun dictating his screenplay outline to Elaine Schreyeck, who was his script girl on Suddenly Last Summer. She transcribes her shorthand notes in rough form. He corrects and edits them in longhand. Then the material is mimeographed. Luckily for us, JLM is including long passages of dialogue in his outline, but I have no idea when he is going to find time to write the actual screenplay.
Sidney Buchman has another assignment and can give us only a limited amount of time. Lawrence Durrell, who I consider a brilliant writer, seems a little baffled by the technique of screen-writing and dramaturgy, but he is whipping along on a shooting script based on the early pages of the JLM outline.
FEBRUARY 19, 1961
Visited Eddie at the London Clinic. While he and Liz were on holiday in Zurich he had an attack of appendicitis. In the rush of coming back for his operation here Liz caught Asian flu.
FEBRUARY 27, 1961
JLM told me about Liz’s birthday. Liz was in bed at the Dorchester, still suffering from Asian flu, but she had a party for the children. JLM, who dropped in to see her, said she put on a brave show for the children though she seemed ill.
MARCH 1, 1961
At last everything is going along beautifully. The plan is to start shooting in London April 4, then to Egypt for the exteriors.
MARCH 3, 1961
9:30 A.M. JLM called me about Liz. He is beginning to worry. He has talked with Dr. Goldman, who said she is “quite ill.”
MARCH 4, 1961
Eddie called this morning, distraught over Liz, who he said is seriously ill. She is being attended by eleven doctors, including the Queen’s physician. She has staphylococcus pneumonia.
Eddie called back to ask if I could possibly find a portable toilet! I rushed to Harrod’s, got one, and hurried back to their hotel. There I learned that Lord Evans had been able to supply one—reportedly the same one used by her Majesty the Queen on tours to the more primitive corners of the Empire.
At the hotel I heard that doctors have given Liz only one hour to live unless surgery is performed to open her windpipe and ease congestion. Eddie called Hollywood for Dr. Kennamer.
In the evening Liz was rushed in an ambulance with Eddie by her side from the Dorchester to the London Clinic. A tracheotomy was performed. I hurried to the clinic and fought my way through the crowds of press people but was unable to see Eddie. A reporter told me Liz was in an automatic respirator, something like an iron lung, to make breathing easier.
MARCH 5, 1961
A sleepless night with the telephone. My own doctor came to my home at 9 A.M. He gave me a sedative because he doesn’t think Liz in her condition has a chance to survive the operation and he wants me prepared for the worst.
The excitement and tension is incredible. The hospital issues health bulletins every fifteen minutes, so I am staying near my radio.
MARCH 6, 1961
There was a news report today in America that
Liz had died. Skouras called: “My God, how did it happen?” He sounded beside himself. I told him it was not true and the news report had been denied.
We are all very frightened and, it appears, so is the world. The streets around the hospital are crowded with reporters and cameramen checking everybody going in and out of the hospital. People crying; flowers and gifts and cures are coming in from all over the world.
JLM was at the hospital last night from 2 to 6 A.M., when the situation was critical. He had been sent for, as he is very close to Liz and Eddie. Sid Rogell called Skouras from my house to give him a personal report that she was improving.
I spoke to Eddie in the afternoon, who said the news was a little better—thank heavens. I went to the hospital but was unable to see Liz. Dr. Goldman said she has a tube in her windpipe to help her breathe. It may leave a scar about an inch long, he said, but it can be covered by plastic surgery later.
The picture, of course, has been postponed for the present.
MARCH 6, 1961
Still can’t get into the hospital without being photographed and interviewed, so I found a back way. Eddie was in an awful state. Dr. Goldman told me Liz is making progress and is much better. She is being fed intravenously and receiving blood transfusions.
JLM said she wrote a note asking to see her mother. Eddie is the only other person who has seen her.
MARCH 7, 1961
News about Liz is a little better. I went to the clinic with Sid but was unable to see Liz. Her parents arrived, which is good.
MARCH 9, 1961
Liz nearly out of danger. Eddie fine.
The messages to Liz from all over the world are unbelievable. The mail is stored in huge laundry baskets. Most of it is touching. For instance, “Six thousand of us are praying for you at the Boeing plant. We know you’ll pull through.” Wire from a U.S. destroyer saying, “Hooray for you, Liz, don’t give up.” Calls from doctors and wires offering assistance, even from Russia. The clinic has never been in such chaos.
MARCH 11, 1961
The tube is finally out of her throat and she is uncomfortable and irritable. She has trouble breathing and is in a lot of pain.
Liz’s Rolls came by my house to pick up some soup my cook had especially prepared for her. The cook, a great fan of Liz’s, has occasionally made spaghetti for her, which is always picked up in grand style by the Rolls-Royce.
MARCH 12, 1961
Saw Liz at the hospital. She looks marvelous, sitting up in bed drinking champagne and is in great humor. Truman Capote was also there visiting.
Skouras called. He is arriving Tuesday and is still terribly worried about Liz. “Do anything she wants to make her happy, and healthy. That’s all that counts—forget about the picture,” he said on the phone. No doubt about it, in his typically expansive way he is deeply concerned about her.
MARCH 13, 1961
Skouras is not coming to London but called and told Sid Rogell and JLM they are to go to New York without me for conferences about the future of the picture.
MARCH 14, 1961
Dr. Goldman says Liz is eating her first solids and custards. It will be August or September before she can go back to work. This is the news we are waiting for.
Skouras okays pulling down $600,000 worth of sets in London and has given us a starting date in Italy in September.
MARCH 24, 1961
Sid Rogell called to say Eddie is insistent we film the picture in Hollywood. Eddie said he is taking matters into his own hands, as he is responsible for Liz and must protect her. It’s his duty not to expose her to any more bad climate and he wants her near her Hollywood doctors. He said Liz is now walking and in good humor.
MARCH 24, 1961
Met JLM and our staff at Pinewood to decide what to do about the English sets, props, and costumes. JLM and I are going to Rome in a few days to look for locations, and, following the week of surveying in Rome, JLM and production members will go to Egypt and all the way up the Nile looking for locations.
MARCH 29, 1961
Liz and Eddie flew home to Hollywood.
There was a riot at the clinic today when they left on their way to the airport. The door was almost torn off her Rolls-Royce and she had to be moved from one car to another. Airport authorities told me Queen Elizabeth never had such a send-off as Elizabeth Taylor—an interesting contrast to her arrival in England, when she had such a ghastly reception from the press.
The picture is still up in the air waiting for doctors to confirm our new starting date. The only thing definite now is our return to Hollywood for the time being. I must get rid of my house in London and take Shelley, my youngest daughter, out of school. I thought I would be here for the rest of my life and gave out stories of that nature to the press. But here goes.
By evening, I was able to call Liz and Eddie in California. They had a good trip and are rarin’ to start Cleopatra again. They are going to buy a house in California and settle there. “It’s the only place in the world for us,” Eddie said.
APRIL 15, 1961
Talked with JLM. The writer situation is acute. We discussed the possibility of Lillian Hellman, to give it the woman’s touch, or Paul Osborn. I think JLM should do it himself if it is at all possible.
APRIL 19, 1961
Called Liz in California to congratulate her on the Oscar she won last night, which was big news here in London in the papers and on radio and television.
She was elated. “My legs are still a little wobbly,” she said. “I haven’t walked much since we’ve been home.”
She told me she was so weak that Eddie and Dr. Kennamer had to help her up on stage to receive her Oscar and she said she and Eddie are still searching for a home in the Beverly Hills area.
Next month they are going to go to Las Vegas where Eddie will play for four weeks. Eddie got on the phone to quip: “I may work Liz into the act now that she’s won an Oscar.”
Cleopatra is tentatively set to start again in Hollywood this summer with locations in Rome and Egypt. Liz said she was ready and eager but still doesn’t have permission to work yet from Dr. Kennamer. I made a date to meet with her in Hollywood sometime next week.
APRIL 24, 1961
Leaving today for Hollywood—the fiasco in London is ended. We didn’t make the film. We didn’t even settle the hairdressers’ strike. But Liz is still alive, and determined to make this the greatest picture ever made. The question is: when, where and how?
BOOK III
INTERMISSION IN HOLLYWOOD
[1961]
— HOLLYWOOD —
APRIL 25, 1961
The attitude here toward Cleopatra has changed. Bob Goldstein left London to take charge of the studio following Buddy Adler’s death. Now he is behind the eight-ball himself; current product had not been successful, so he is mighty interested in having one good and big picture to the studio’s credit.
Goldstein wants us to succeed, but he is in the middle of a gigantic tug of war between a minority group of shareholders and bankers and Skouras. The minority group, composed of John Loeb, of Loeb-Rhoades, one of the leading investment houses on Wall Street, lawyer Milton Gould, and investment broker Peter G. Treves, are attempting to force a change in management. They want to oust Goldstein and Skouras and elevate Peter Levathes, who is supposed to have done wonders for Fox in the field of television, to be in charge of the studio’s film operation. Later they want him to not only head the studio but eventually become president of the corporation. This power struggle occupies the attention of almost every executive at the studio. Power politics is the order of the day, not picture making.
I was shocked, when I returned, to see the physical change on the lot. More than half of the studio back lot has been sold for a gigantic housing development, and construction crews are already at work on what will soon be Century City.
Also, most of the sound stages are busy with TV series. Only one or two motion pictures being filmed, and it looks as if the studio has decided its fut
ure lies in television.
Happily, however, the studio also seems convinced that the only films successful at the box office are blockbusters. Despite our Dunkirk in London they realize Cleopatra has the look and smell of bigness and potential success.
APRIL 25, 1961
Saw Liz at her bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I bought her a gift—a carved emerald of Cleopatra which came from Czar Nicholas’ collection. Liz adores to have things given to her. She’s like a child with gifts.
APRIL 26, 1961
JLM is finishing the treatment for his version of Cleopatra, and it’s excellent. Bob Goldstein continues to be co-operative and pleasant with us.
APRIL 29, 1961
We have accomplished three things of importance in our first few days at the studio: writer Randall MacDougall was hired to do a new script from JLM’s screenplay outline, for $75,000; Irene Sharaff agreed to design Elizabeth’s costumes; Leon Shamroy was signed as cameraman.
MacDougall is a hard, fast worker and excellent researcher. He used to write documentaries for the BBC, and his work has a crisp, see-it-now flavor, but his scenes and dialogue are not in JLM’s class and I suspect JLM will write his own script eventually.
I first approached Miss Sharaff, who is one of the top Broadway designers, to do costumes for Cleopatra in 1958. Irene, who is tall, sharp-eyed and candid, brushed it off with, “It wouldn’t be possible to do Cleopatra without making it look like a production of Aida.” Now, however, she admitted that some of the excitement of our concept of the picture had reached her and agreed to design Elizabeth’s costumes.
Shamroy, invariably called Shammy, is a top cameraman, three-time Oscar winner and also one of the most colorful characters in Hollywood. A growling, cigar-smoking cynic, he has a wonderful sense of humor and grouses loudest when a picture is going well. When there are problems, he is happy—then he is in familiar territory.
Shammy is not only a trusted friend, but his personal insight is as keen as his camera’s. For me, as well as for many other Hollywood producers, directors, and stars, he often serves as a kind of lay analyst. Also he is one of the best cameramen in the business. He was under contract to me in the Thirties and we made many fine pictures together, including Private Worlds.
My Life with Cleopatra Page 7