My Life with Cleopatra (14 page)

Weather beautiful. Rehearsed for the procession, which will be one of the most spectacular scenes ever filmed.

The sequence as planned is long, but JLM is writing under pressure and can’t find time to cut. So he is shooting a little long and planning on cutting later. This is an expensive way to work, but we are forced into it.

O
CTOBER
14, 1961

Big party at the Grand Hotel given by the Kirk Douglases with Liz and Eddie to celebrate the first anniversary of
Spartacus
.

Liz wore a clinging white gown with an ostrich feather fringe which touched the floor. While doing a rhumba with JLM she stepped on some matches that had fallen on the floor, and they
ignited. The feathers caught on fire. Only quick thinking by one of the Italian musicians, who leaped off the bandstand and put out the fire with his bare hands, prevented a new disaster.

Dino DiLaurentis warned me about one of our Italian production men whom we had been having problems with. This man seemed to have relatives all over Rome ready and willing to supply us with anything from elephants to equipment. We suspected that he boxed us into making certain choices or decisions because they were economically beneficial to him.

He was very resourceful. For weeks we wondered how he was able to know everything that went on daily on the Forum set when he wasn’t even there. For example, he knew just what shots were taken and when they were finished on the Forum set, which was a quarter-mile from his office. Finally we found he had taken a pair of our walkie-talkies and had a stooge on set who phoned him after every shot.

O
CTOBER
16, 1961

Good weather. Finally started with the procession scene, which will require weeks to prepare and film. It calls for almost 6,000 extras plus animals ranging from horses to painted elephants.

The Italian extras are marvelous. They are paid $10 a day and are both enthusiastic and well organized. They work directly under group leaders. By phoning a few leaders we can summon an army of extras on very short notice. On the set, when they are required for a scene, a group leader holding a large wooden stick with his letter stands in the middle of the street and his extras fall in like well-trained soldiers.

Tony Martin was in Rome. He and Eddie started to sing during dinner, and the whole restaurant started applauding, so they went from table to table with a plate collecting tips for the waiters. They were very cute about it. Everyone enjoyed the party.

O
CTOBER
19, 1961

Received word that Lloyd’s settled out of court for two million dollars—which doesn’t nearly cover the money lost in England.

O
CTOBER
20, 1961

Rain, rain, rain. No shooting.

JLM is finished with the first half of the script. It’s 197 pages long and I am excited by what I have read. It’s not budget that counts on a picture like this—it’s what people see and hear on the screen.

Shamroy fuming about the operation.

Shammy has photographed many Todd-AO pictures, and JLM has never made one before. JLM, however, refused to change to fit this different kind of picture frame. He wants to shoot our picture as a personal story, not a spectacle. Shammy, who is a visual man, wants to shoot for size and scope—with less emphasis on dialogue and intimacy.

During the rushes Shammy talks over the dialogue so much, saying things like “Isn’t that beautiful?” “Isn’t that great?” that we invariably have to tell him to be quiet. He is interested only in what he sees visually and what his camera captures. Inspiration does not impress him as much as mechanical perfection, action, and getting a full day’s work according to production standards.

JLM thinks Shammy is wrong, and Shammy thinks JLM is. Actually, however, they work beautifully together and both of them are expert at handling Liz—they know just what she needs.

O
CTOBER
23, 1961

Beautiful day at last. Still rehearsing and photographing the procession.

I sometimes feel as though I am living in a scene from
The Snake Pit
. Every time I turn around there are grinning, leering, shouting photographers—the paparazzi. They are everything
and everywhere. They are like the cats of Rome, hiding on rafters, hiding under beds, always screaming for a morsel.

They were like birds, too, with nests in the most unlikely places. The lovely trees surrounding Elizabeth’s swimming pool were alive with photographers with long-lens cameras fighting to get pictures.

Liz has always been subjected to spies. Her London chauffeur during
Suddenly Last Summer
wrote a scandalous story about her. She sued the paper and won the case.

Before she moved into the villa here, the news was leaked to the press, and pictures published of the bedrooms, even the bathrooms.

I suspect that half the servants—carefully screened as they were—are working for some magazine or newspaper.

Bitter because they are not getting the shots they want, the paparazzi report that Eddie is a slave to the whims of “Cleopatra,” that he waits on her like a handmaiden.

This brought forth a lot of editorials and mail in the Italian newspapers. The Italian daily
Il Giorno
commented typically, “Miss Taylor must have her children and husband around her every free moment she has. She treats Eddie like a slave but acts madly in love with him.”

The American reporters who have visited us thus far have not been much better. They all seek an “angle”—anything detrimental to the picture fits in that category. Our problem is not getting people to write about us. It’s getting people to leave us alone.

O
CTOBER
24, 1961

Rex and Richard Burton started their scenes together, and they look great.

O
CTOBER
26, 1961

The new elephants imported from Britain are “jolly” fellows. Doing a fine job.

Liz and Eddie on the set to watch Burton in a complicated scene in which he lifts a girl off one elephant, kisses her, and puts her on another while the mob cheers.

Every two weeks the nurses would come by the hotel and take blood tests and protein tests, then check my cholesterol and adjust my pills accordingly. I am in fine shape, thank God.

O
CTOBER
31, 1961

Long phone talk with Hollywood today about the Todd-AO cameras, which hum. The studio cabled back “camera noise” when they processed our latest film, which upset everyone. The camera crew is now working over their equipment. This is a most serious problem.

N
OVEMBER
1, 1961

JLM suggests a five-day week so he can have the entire weekend to write.

Elizabeth, Richard, and Rex said they will take a cut in salary so he can have the extra day, but I fear the studio will object. One of the reasons they were enthusiastic about Rome was the six-day week here. However, JLM is terribly concerned about getting the script finished and the strain is telling on him.

N
OVEMBER
2, 1961

Liz worked in the carpet scene. Came off very well.

The scene in which Liz is delivered to Caesar wrapped in a carpet was tricky because the carpet had to be specially made of a lightweight fabric so that she would not be uncomfortable and you could see the outline of her form in it.

N
OVEMBER
3, 1961

President Sukarno of Indonesia requested, through the U. S. Embassy in Rome, that we give a luncheon for himself and his staff.

The lunch took place today in the Cinecitta restaurant and everyone from our cast was present to meet the President and his aides.

An incredible character who carries a marshal’s baton and speaks perfect English, the President soon made it plain to me that he has an eye for beauty. He knows the name of every starlet in Hollywood and is equally familiar with most of the pictures made in Hollywood in the past few years.

After lunch he went on set to be presented to Liz. He gave her some attractive costume jewelry and started to pin one of the gifts on her bodice. I interrupted the President because I was fearful the pin might make a hole in Liz’s dress which would show up in the scene.

N
OVEMBER
4, 1961

Yesterday Levathes cabled JLM to say he was flipping over the rushes, they were marvelous. Today he called me from Hollywood, upset about the operation costs. He is coming here in a few days with Skouras, who is also panicked about the costs.

Levathes said absolutely “No” to JLM’s request for a five-day week.

“We are the laughing stock of the industry; that is the greatest disaster in show business,” he said.

When I reminded Peter of the wire he sent only the day before saying the rushes were great, he ignored me.

I was dismayed by his call though I could understand it. We were drawing about $500,000 a week which is a lot of money to be taking out for operating expenses without putting anything back. And none of the pictures Fox had in release or out were coming up to expectations, so the studio was in a difficult spot.

Later in the afternoon Pete called back saying he was going to send Joe Moskowitz over from New York to represent the corporation and be the top man here. I told him that any heavy-handed direction from the studio would end the picture.

I talked with JLM, who is calm and wise as usual whenever there is a real crisis. “We’ll just give them the best damned picture they ever saw and they’ll quiet down,” he said.

N
OVEMBER
5, 1961

Received a cable from Levathes saying that under no circumstances would we be allowed to go on a five-day shooting week. He pointed out, as I suspected he would, that our original decision to film in Italy was based on the advantages of a six-day week.

N
OVEMBER
6, 1961

Another forty-minute call from Peter about costs.

He is unconcerned over the fact that the phone bill also goes on our budget, as do the frequent trips here of Skouras and himself.

N
OVEMBER
7, 1961

Rain. Everyone says that this is the worst weather in Rome in a century—the same story we heard in England!

N
OVEMBER
10, 1961

Talked with Peter again, who said he was coming next week. He said Skouras figures our budget at $10,000,000 with overhead, which is just impossible.

N
OVEMBER
11, 1961

Here is our current budget, not including overhead. I doubt we can stay inside it.

N
OVEMBER
12, 1961

Nicholas Reisini, head of Cinerama, told me he is interested in taking over
Cleopatra
from Fox and transferring the footage already shot to the Cinerama process.

Now there is a tempest raging outside—the first in the history of Rome. Unbelievable wind and rain.

My apartment is at the Grand Hotel, rooms 57 and 58. Although I face the courtyard, there is, unfortunately, a glass roof over the main salon just outside my window. When it hails or rains the racket is nerve-wracking to me, because I can’t help visualizing this same storm falling on our sets. That means no shooting tomorrow.

N
OVEMBER
16, 1961

Skouras and Levathes arrived. A six-hour conference.

They both took out after me about the cost. They said the limit now is $12,500,000 without overhead. I pointed out that we had already spent that much, but they both seem to get comfort from listening to themselves, not from facing reality.

Then I told them that I had spoken with Reisini, who wanted to buy Fox out of the picture for their investment. They were furious that I even talked to someone about selling the picture to get the studio off the hook. Later, Skouras got me alone in the lobby and said that under no circumstances was I to mention the Reisini offer to anyone. “It will ruin the company if the story gets out that the picture is for sale,” he said.