Ben Mankiewicz Interview on TCM The Plot Thickens ‘Cleopatra’ Podcast

It was an ordinary spring day in 1962 Italy… ordinary outside of a warm greeting between the very married superstar Elizabeth Taylor and the very married actor Richard Burton that a photographer happened to catch. The “kissing picture,” as it would become known, caught like wildfire, and the paparazzi never let up. Richard Burton dubbed the ensuing press storm “Le Scandale,” and the judgement of the world swiftly followed — included a condemnation from the Vatican newspaper calling it Taylor’s “erotic vagrancy.”

At the center of Le Scandale — one which TCM host Ben Mankiewicz calls the “biggest in the history of American celebrities” — was a mammoth film, perhaps the biggest in the history of American cinema: 20th Century Fox’s “Cleopatra.”

“The first photograph of them kissing as the rumors were circulating that they were involved was [taken by] a paparazzo hiding under a car, under like a Fiat… lying on the ground, taking a picture of them,” Mankiewicz said in an interview with IndieWire. “[Fellow ‘Cleopatra’ star] Martin Landau [said] there were photographers in the trees. This had never happened on a movie before.”

The film was always going to be a giant undertaking, but an almost comical series of unfortunate events had curtailed it into becoming one of the most expensive pictures Hollywood had ever produced… long before Burton even joined the project. By the time of their steamy tryst began, “Cleopatra” had been in production — in fits and starts — for roughly four years. Taylor had signed on for the unheard sum of $1 million in 1959 (a salary she reportedly asked for only in jest).

Then she had health problems (she almost died).

The original Marc Antony and Julius Caesar dropped out (Stephen Boyd and Peter Finch, respectively).

The first director Rouben Mamoulian dropped out.

Footage was scrapped.

Numerous drafts of the script were rejected.

The entire production moved from London to Rome, where sets had to be reconstructed.

By the time cameras were rolling on “Cleopatra” scenes that would actually make it into the bloated four-hour epic’s final cut, it was not just over budget — it had blown past any semblance of a budget. For a time, it was the only production 20th Century Fox had going. That studio lot back in Century City? Virtually empty.

It would be thanks to the perceived failure of the movie — notoriety it perhaps should not have earned — that the kind of studio system the American film industry had operated under since the ’20s would largely die. New Hollywood came in swiftly after with an era that would be defined by maverick filmmakers and stars with increased financial agency and power.

Almost everyone and everything involved with “Cleopatra” survived and thrived after its release. Taylor and Burton outlived the scandal and appeared together in the all-timer “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” Fox eventually released “The Sound of Music” and financially recovered. Co-star Rex Harrison led in the biggest movie of 1964: “My Fair Lady,” and won an Academy Award for it.

But then there was Joseph L. Mankiewicz — the one-time boy wonder of Hollywood, who set an Oscar record by winning back-to-back trophies for both writing and directing (1949’s “A Letter to Three Wives and 1950’s “All About Eve”). The man came into “Cleopatra” halfway, and he seemed up to tackling the gargantuan responsibility. He had enjoyed great success a decade earlier with his Marlon Brando-starring “Julius Caesar,” so he knew the time period. He had directed Taylor in the big 1959 hit “Suddenly, Last Summer,” so he knew the talent. When he joined the film, he was 51-going-on-52, very squarely in his prime.

“Cleopatra” would break Joe Mankiewicz.

By the time the movie was wrapped, in theaters, and finally sending some money back to Fox, Mankiewicz was a shell of the powerhouse he had once been. He would direct just three more narrative features, only one of which would receive any real critical or commercial success (the brilliant “Sleuth” in 1972). At one time the most lauded writer/director combo, he’d never pen another screenplay, though he lived another 30 years after the release of “Cleopatra.” Not only that, but the filmmaker struggled to write anything at all, including personal letters and Christmas cards.

“The Plot Thickens,” Turner Classic Movies’ podcast series that tackles various aspects of Hollywood history, will explore the troubled history of this unwieldy Egyptian epic in its new season — out July 17 — through a uniquely personal lens. Released first for IndieWire, TCM has unveiled a trailer, narrated by Joe Mankiewicz’s great nephew, Ben, who serves as the series host.

“[Joe] would have said his biggest professional regret certainly would have been ‘Cleopatra.’ He said it was an act of ‘whoredom.’ He did it for the money. But I mean, a lot of people in Hollywood do things for money, and then make something great,” Ben Mankiewicz said.

“Cleopatra” became an albatross for Ben’s uncle… a nightmare he was never able to escape and something he never again wanted to discuss. Through personal diaries that Joe’s grandson Nick Davis also utilized in his dual bio of Joe and Herman “Competing With Idiots” in 2021, “The Plot Thickens” reconstructs the history of the complicated production through the eyes of its writer/director.

“[When] most people think of Cleopatra, they think about the about the affair and the scandal, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and then these sort of myths [about] the movie that destroyed a studio,” Ben Mankiewicz said. “We dispatch a lot of those myths in the podcast, but we probably wouldn’t have done [the podcast] without the family angle… Joe was broken by it in really substantive ways. And he had been one of the truly finest filmmakers of the 1950s. But it did a number on him and that was worth examining.”

The Mankiewicz family is true Hollywood royalty. Joe’s brother Herman won an Oscar for some overlooked gem called “Citizen Kane.” Joe’s son Tom wrote three James Bond flicks. Herman’s son Don wrote a score of features in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Ben’s father Frank was president of National Public Radio, was Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.’s press secretary, and headed up George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign. Frank’s other son Josh is a journalist on NBC’s “Nightline.”

“There was a line I heard a lot growing up. Family members used to say it,” Ben Mankiewicz says in “The Plot Thickens” promo. “The line was that my grandfather wrote the best movie ever made — ‘Citizen Kane’ — and that my great uncle directed the worst movie ever made.”

Through its reframing in “The Plot Thickens,” it becomes clear that the efforts at the center of “Cleopatra” were that of passionate film professionals — people who cared about the movies. If Joe Mankiewicz had his way, in fact, it would’ve been two epics instead of one: one part focused on Julius Caesar, the other on Marc Antony.

“This sort of historical costume drama is not my kind of movie, but… one of the myths is that it’s the worst movie ever made. It’s not even one of the 3,000 worst movies ever made. Some of it’s pretty good. And I think that if Joe Mankiewicz, my uncle, had gotten his way and released it as two three-hour movies, that some of the issues — the pacing problems, where it actually seems slow — would have been better, because you would have had two tighter, three-hour movies,” Ben explained. “It’s funny. Now, if you say, ‘Listen, I know you asked me to shoot one movie, but I’ve actually shot two. Do you want both?’ Every studio would be like, ‘Is this a trick question? Yeah, we’ll take two, sure.’”

As it stands, though there have been various versions presented over the years, “Cleopatra” exists as one 243 minute film. But it would eventually be a success on the books. It scored a Best Picture nomination, and though it did not actually turn a profit for a few years due to its reported $44 million budget, it was not the total financial disaster some later claimed — in reality, it was the top grossing movie of 1963.

“Spyros Skouras had been the president of the company prior to Darryl Zanuck coming back. Spyros quit, but basically got fired,” Ben explained. “But his time had come to an end, and he and the board sort of blamed him for the fiasco of ‘Cleopatra,’ and then Zanuck came and blamed Joe. Spyros Skouras… what he really [was good at was] his relationships and [setting] up deals with theater owners, and he had set up a deal where they had prepaid for ticket sales of ‘Cleopatra.’ And so, right off the bat, ‘Cleopatra’ had $20 million come in very quickly… and then more after that at the box office, to where — okay, it lost a lot of money — but still brought back, let’s say, $25 million. And obviously, Fox doesn’t get all that, but they get a lot of it. And by the time 1965 rolls around, when they sell it to network TV, it’s in the black.”

So this particular “The Plot Thickens” season is a little bit different for TCM’s resident savant. More than the narrator of a fascinating chapter in film history, Mankiewicz is recasting his own family’s heritage and the reputation of a film whose impact, while great, is perhaps unfairly perceived.

“What you get from this podcast is [that] Joe threw everything into this. I mean, he poured his heart and soul into this movie. Because of the money, [there was] this perception that he came in, he wasn’t the right director, [and] he didn’t know what he was doing. He definitely knew what he was doing,” Ben said. “He just tried to do too much, among the other things, tried to do too much. First of all, he was a therapist to Elizabeth and to Richard and to Rex and to everybody else on the cast.”

Joe Mankiewicz used speed, Ben explained, to help him through the grueling shoot days. He actually ended principal photography in the wheelchair after mistakenly shooting up and hitting a sciatic nerve.

“He’s in a wheelchair, and he’s got to get over sand. So they carried him out to the shot on a stretcher. And he’s like writing on the stretcher, while a bunch of guys carry him out so he can sit and and direct the scene,” Ben recounted. “[His] diaries reveal a guy who was a director in the day, and then frequently would go home [and] write the screenplay at night… He needed help.”

This, along with the controversies surrounding Le Scandale, weather delays, the recurrent health issues of cast members, the haggling over the film’s final cut, and, of course, the movie’s legacy as the film that changed Hollywood… all will be explored when “The Plot Thickens: Cleopatra” begins dropping weekly episodes starting July 17, wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out the trailer, released first exclusively to IndieWire, below: