Revisiting ‘Cleopatra’: The epic love story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ “Cleopatra,” which opened in New York on June 12, 1963 and in Los Angeles a week later, was not a flop. In fact, the 243-minute film was a box office champ making $26 million at the box office, $6 million more than the Cinerama epic “How the West was Won.” But being the most expensive movie of its time — the budget ended up being around $44 million which would be around $429.5 million in 2023 — it took a long time to recoup its staggering costs. The film was such a drain on Twentieth Century Fox, the studio ended up having to sell nearly 300 acres of its backlot. That acreage was transformed into Century City.

The budgets started to soar when the original production with Elizabeth Taylor, who asked for and received $1 million for her services, Peter Finch as Julius Caesar, Stephen Boyd as Marc Antony and veteran filmmaker Rouben Mamoulian as director, stopped production in England when Taylor got sick. After she recovered from pneumonia which nearly killed her, the production moved to Rome with a new director, multi-Oscar-winning writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“A Letter to Three Wives,” “All About Eve), and two new leading men: Rex Harrison as Julius Caesar and Richard Burton, fresh from his Tony Award-winning turn as King Arthur in “Camelot” as Marc Antony. Of course, this new production meant new sets and costumes.  But there still wasn’t a completed script.

Mankiewicz ended up doing both jobs. He wrote all night and directed all day. No one knew what was going to be shot until they arrived each day on the set. Martin Landau told me in a 2001 L.A. Times interview: “I would come into work-I had a nice relationship with Joe and a good rapport-and I’d say, ‘This scene-what happens after this?’ And he would say ‘It’s either going to be this or that. I don’t know yet,  but make a choice that works for both’ It was an interesting challenge always.”

The production problems had already received an extraordinary amount of press, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. No one was prepared for the hot-and-heavy affair between Taylor, who was married to fourth hubby Eddie Fisher, and Burton, who was hitched to Sybil Burton. One morning, Landau, who played Julius Caesar’s right-hand man Rufio, arrived in the make-up room. Only he and Burton were set to work that day, so he was shocked to see Taylor relaxing in the room.

“I’m sitting there looking in the mirror and Burton comes in in a half-tunic, goes to Elizabeth and kisses her on the forehead and then says ‘good morning’ to me. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God. They had not gone to their respective homes that night.’ Around 11 a.m. Eddie Fisher shows up.” And 30 minutes later Sybil Burton arrived. “They came to see what happened to their spouses,” noted Landau who spent a year on the film. “Mankiewicz and I were rolling our eyeballs a little bit. “

The paparazzi went into high gear, following Liz and Dick’s every move. The Vatican took notice of their affair; an open letter appeared in the Vatican newspaper rebuking the four-time married Taylor for “erotic vagrancy.”

Audiences clamored to “Cleopatra” to see the couple. The actor’s daughter, actress Kate Burton told me in 2013: “I think what happened is that the movie came out and it was so overwhelmed by the relationship. It basically became “we are watching them fall in love for the first time.”’

Jess Walter, who wrote the acclaimed novel “Beautiful Ruins,” which revolves around a young American actress who becomes pregnant by Burton during the filming of “Cleopatra,” told me in 2013 that he wasn’t interested in the mystique surrounding Liz and Dick but the “train wreck” of the production. “In my research, there is where modern celebrity began-the Kardashians…you can trace it to this moment where a kind of Hollywood decadence reached a peak. It destroyed in one fell swoop the old studio system an brought in its place the kind of celebrity which doesn’t distinguish between good and bad.”

A Vanity Fair piece noted that Fox cast producer Walter Wanger as the fall guy for the production’s woes: “he was released from his contract, stripped of his expense account and not invited to the films’ premiere.” And Darryl F. Zanuck ousted studio chief Spyros Skourus and would take over the film’s editing. He would cut the film with Mankiewicz’ approval down to 219 minutes.

Reviews for “Cleopatra” were decidedly mixed, though the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was smitten with the epic describing it as a “stunning and entertaining film.” The film ended up earning nine Oscar nominations including best picture and actor for a scene-stealing Rex Harrison, who had previously worked with Mankiewicz on the 1947 romantic fantasy “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” winning for its drop-dead gorgeous cinematography, special effects, art direction and costume design.

The filmmaker’s son, the late writer/director Tom Mankiewicz (“Dragnet”) noted in a 2001 L.A, Times interview that his father’s health suffered during production and even worse, the release version didn’t reflect his father’s vision. “He was so doggedly determined during this film he was going to make it work in spite of everything,” said Mankiewicz who was a second assistant director on the film. “Then at the end of all of that…only 50% of what he wanted ever made it to the screen.”

Mankiewicz made three films after “Cleopatra”: the 1967 comedy drama “The Honeypot,” with Harrison; the underrated 1970 Western “There Was a Crooked Man” with Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda; and the terrific 1972 murder mystery “Sleuth,” which earned him his final Oscar nomination for best director, as well as best actor bids for Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.”

“Cleopatra” wasn’t the only movie starring Liz and Dick that opened in 1963. The also headlined the ensemble cast of the drama “The V.I.P.’s.” The following year they married and during their decade union appeared in several films together including the 1966 classic “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”,” for which Taylor won her second best actress Oscar and Burton earned his fifth nomination. They divorced in 1974; remarried in 1975 and divorced again in 1976.

But their love never ended.

In 2010, Taylor told People Magazine: “Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word. From those first moments in Rome we were always madly and powerfully in love.” And Taylor was buried in 2011 with the final love letter he sent her three days before his death in 1984. Though she always refused to divulge exactly what the contents were of the letter, the Daily Mail reported that “she did reveal a small part of the letter to her biographers Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger: She told them “In it he told me what he wanted.’ Home was where Elizabeth was, and he wanted to come home.”

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