Ben Mankiewicz (0:00)

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The public has always cared about the personal lives of celebrities, but Elizabeth Taylor's marriages were a particular fascination. Hollywood's Wedding of the Year at the Beverly Hills Catholic Church as lovely British born screen star Elizabeth Taylor arrives with her father for her marriage to Conrad Hilton Jr. Crowning a romance everybody's been interested in. Liz married for the first time at 18, Conrad Nikki Hilton Jr. Was the heir to a hotel fortune. Film fans everywhere joined the reception guests in wishing the newlywed good luck, long life and happiness. Hilton was a compulsive gambler and he was abusive. Liz later claimed he kicked her in the stomach while she was early into a pregnancy, causing a miscarriage. They divorced after six months. Just over a year later, Liz married again. All cameras at London airport are focused on two people very much in love, Britain's Michael Wilding and his lovely young bride to be, Elizabeth Taylor. Her second marriage was to the English actor Michael Wilding. Wilding was a lot older than Liz. He was refined, stable. Compared to marriage number one, Wilding was a safe choice, maybe too safe. He was just too passive for her. She craved adventure and strength. Nancy Schoenberger is the author of Furious Love. She wanted a guy who could boss her around. This sounds somewhat sexist by today's standards, but Elizabeth Taylor wanted to be pushed around. She had been calling the shots since she was 12, 13 years old and she wanted and need someone to really be boss. Turns out that wasn't Michael Wilding. Liz and Wilding remained married for nearly five years and had two children. They officially divorced in January 1957 but had separated Months earlier. That's when Mike Todd made his move. The day after my separation from Michael Wilding, Mike called me and said he had to see me right away. He said I was to meet him at MGM at 2:30. Mike Todd came from a working class family. His father was a poor rabbi. He didn't have much traditional education and he worked in construction before landing in Hollywood. He was a tough, conniving, strong character with big, big ideas. Michael Todd, around The World in 80 Days. Todd produced around the World in 80 Days, the best picture winner of 1956. He also invented a widescreen 70 millimeter film format which he named Todd A.O. he was an impresario and kind of an entrepreneur. A great salesman and a powerful, tough personality. So when Mike called and said meet me at MGM, Liz ran in a 1968 television special. Liz remembered waiting and waiting for Mike to show up. Mike charged in, I mean, rather like a bull. He just charged him without saying a word to anyone. And he came over the table and he grabbed me by the arm, still without saying a word. Just dragged me out of the office, down the corridor, shoved me into an elevator. Still not started in on a spiel that lasted about an hour and a half without a stop saying that he loved me and that there was no question about it but we were going to be married. Well, I just sort of looked at him and, well, I guess rather the way a rabbit looks at a mongoose. I was absolutely hypnotized. For those of you who aren't up on their small mammals, a rabbit is prey for the predatory mongoose. Liz and Mike married in February of 1957. Liz had a child with Mike Todd, her third. She often said he was the love of her life, though it wasn't always easy between them. They were stormy people. Mike could be violent, but to Liz it seemed like his temper was merely a sign that he cared. She liked goading Mike Todd into fighting with her. She just needed someone to stand up to her. In March 1958, just 13 months after their wedding, Mike Todd boarded his private plane, the Lucky Liz, for a trip back east. Elizabeth had planned to go but stayed home with a fever. The plane crashed in New Mexico, killing Mike Todd and three others on board. Liz grew sick with grief. She stopped eating, almost dropped out of the movie adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. As Liz mourned, she sought comfort in the arms of Mike's best friend, Eddie Fisher. Sing, May I sing. And that's where Richard Burton found her three years later, through the worst of her grief, biding her time in a marriage that didn't excite her. Liz was again the rabbit. This time, Richard was the Mongol. Foreign I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. This is season six of the Plot Thickens, a podcast from Turner Classic Movies. Each season we bring you an in depth story about the movies and the people who make them. This season, Cleopatra. How an epic production pushed my uncle to his breaking point. This is episode four, Lescandal. Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her 30th birthday in Rome on February 27, 1962. Eight days after her stint at the hospital from swallowing sleeping pills. Liz was on an emotional rollercoaster. One day she was elated, the next, a wreck. On good days, she and Richard referred to their secret affair by a French word, lescandale. On bad days, they fought. Like when Richard started spending time with another woman. He imported a Copa Girl girl who danced in the Copacabana line nightclub in New York. Fox publicist Jack Brodsky said Richard even brought her to the Cleopatra set. And Taylor finally made a remark that Burton didn't like, where he pushed her a little bit and said, don't get my Welsh temper up. So you can see that we were sitting on a powder keg while all of this was going on. This was no love triangle or even a love square. This was a love pentagon. Liz's husband, Eddie Fisher, joked about it years later. Not only was he cheating on his wife, he was also cheating on his girlfriend. I'm sure it was great for his ego. Some days, Liz would intentionally delay filming to punish Richard. Ms. Taylor feigning flu. My uncle Joe Mankiewicz wrote in his diary, part of her war upon Burton. After a while, Richard grew bored of the Copa Girl and she disappeared from set. He went back to Elizabeth and he told Mankiewicz that I fall more in love with her each day. On Liz's 30th birthday, she should have felt great. She loved a party. Instead, she remembered it as one of the most miserable days of her life. 8:30 Go to Liz party at the Costa Rica. Eddie was the host, which was nervous and overbearing. The producer, Walter Wanger, was there that evening. About 15 or 20 of us there. Burtons, of course, were not at the party. Joe was there too. In his diary, he wrote a single word, ghoulish. Eddie was still fighting for his marriage. He gave Liz a diamond ring. He also had Bulgari make a folding mirror that opened into an emerald studded snake. On the mirror, Eddie had inscribed in his handwriting, I'll always love You. This was another effort of Eddie to try to handle the situation. It was a macabre affair. Quite unhappy. Liz didn't care about the gifts or the party or Eddie. All she could think about was Richard. He hadn't even sent flowers. Meanwhile, the press was on the hunt for a photograph of Richard and Liz. Some confirmation of the affair. Papers were full of gossip. Brodsky says Richard didn't understand all the attention. He said to me one day, I don't know why all this fuss. I always sleep with my leading ladies. Except for Julie Andrews, Richard had always been able to keep his affairs separate from his life with Sybil and their two kids. But this was different. This was Liz Taylor he was rumored to be having an affair with. She was better known than most world leaders. He said, this is the most outstanding thing that's happened to me. It's like sleeping with Khrushchev. Richard was eager to put an end to the speculation and gossip. He was quoted in the press saying he had no intention of divorcing his wife. Liz was furious. Forgive me, Divine Majesty. There has been a marriage. For the movie, though, the timing was perfect. They were filming a scene where Cleopatra finds out Antony has deserted her for another woman. Leave me. Cleopatra begins to tremble and goes into Antony's bedroom, picks up a dagger and slashes all of his clothes. She stabs the drapes and his bed sheets, then collapses onto his bed and sobs. Liz nailed the scene in only a few takes. That night, my uncle Joe wrote a rare phrase in his diary. Finished early. But Liz had stabbed so violently she hurt her hand and needed an X ray. She was out of work yet again. More money down the drain. In mid March, a photographer named Elio Sorci made his way over to the film studio Chinichita. He crouched under a car with his camera. What Sorchi wanted was a single shot. Richard and Liz together. Sorchie waited, gripping his camera all day under that car. His patience finally paid off. The photograph he captured shows Liz and Richard kissing outside Shinachita. Elio Sorchi sold the photograph for a reported $8,500. The shot went to press on March 26. Soon the photo was on the front pages of almost every major newspaper in the United States. Patrick Humphries wrote a book about Cleopatra. You cannot over exaggerate just how fascinated the world was in this affair that was going on under the eyes of the world's press. Fox publicist Jack Brodsky had to deal with the fallout. It became an absolute insane asylum in Rome around The time the photo hit the papers, the entries in my uncle's diary stopped entirely. Joe's last full entry came two weeks earlier. Wednesday morning, March 16th. Slow, laborious start, much heaving and sighing by Ms. Taylor. And then toward the bottom of the entry he wrote, direct right, hotel alone. Hume Cronin played Cleopatra's advisor. Cronin saw how stressed his friend was. The picture I remember most vividly of Joe in those dark days with the telephone ringing every few minutes with a new crisis where him sitting with white gloves on. White cotton gloves. These were editor's gloves made for people handling film reels to keep the strips safe from oily fingers. Vanity Fair writer David Camp says Joe needed them for a different reason. Red, itchy welts. His fingers were too raw and pulpy and exposed from the stress of this experience. The skin on his fingers started cracking and causing intense pain. Agony is the only word I can use. Joe suffered the agonies of hell. Walter Wanger had a front row seat to the madness and wrote about it in his diaries. He refers to my uncle by his initials, JLM for Joseph Leo Mankiewicz. I get home early with a message from JRM. He's upset about Liz Burton situation. He was so involved in this psychiatric romantic situation that he neglected his script again. On set, Joe needed to appear calm and in charge. He relied on his wit. Like one time when the phone rang and Joe said to me, answer, let's see who it is. Erna Mankiewicz was my great aunt. She worked in the publicity department for the film. An Italian reporter was on the phone. The newspaper men were on our necks night and day. This one was trying to find out if Elizabeth truly was having an affair with Richard. Or get this, if she was sleeping with my uncle Joe. Erna went back to Joe, who was on set directing Richard in a scene. And I said once the lowdown, is it you that she's in love with or is it Burton that she's in love with? So Joe said, goddamn it, I've had it up to here. Now he says, you go back and tell him, as a matter of fact, she's not in love with Burton and she's not in love with me. If you want to know, Burton and I are in love with each other and we use Elizabeth as our patsy, so to speak. Joe then turned to Richard and kissed him on the lips. The entire crew broke up laughing. Most of the time, though, Liscandal wasn't funny. Joe had a part time job keeping the paparazzi away from his set. They even started Hiding in the trees. Martin Landau spotted them. I mean, they were hiding in the dark and shooting. Richard and Elizabeth, we were shooting in Ispia. We were just sitting there. And one of the lights was directed at a cliff which had some shrubbery on it. And it unveiled about 20 photographers hanging with long lenses. A couple of them fell maybe 15 and 20ft. Patrick Humphries says le Scandal was all anyone could talk about from Hollywood to Washington. The White House was hosting an event for, I think, film personnel and President Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, graciously receiving them. This is with the Cold War at its height, you know, nuclear war on the horizon. Jacqueline Kennedy took one of the executives aside and said, do you think Elizabeth Sater will marry Richard Burton? But the bigger problem for Joe was closer at hand. The Vatican. The Vatican denounced it. And we're in Rome. That's Joe's youngest son, my cousin, Tom Mankiewicz. The Pope didn't weigh in himself, but the Vatican newspaper published an opinion piece that criticized the affair and called Liz immoral, using a very creative turn of phrase, erotic vagrancy. In those days, the Vatican really did hold a lot of sway in Rome and in all of Italy. So the pressures were enormous. Liz received death threats mailed to her villa. It was awful. And awful timing, too. An important shoot was coming up. Joe's showpiece, a scene that made Liz extremely anxious. Cleopatra's arrival in Rome. The procession. The Queen has given instructions for the procession to move as slowly as the people wish for their full enjoyment. I would say the procession is actually, to this day, the best scene in the film. That's Vanity Fair writer David Camp. There is no CGI at all. This is all real. It's all as captured on film. It's incredible. This wasn't the first time Joe had tackled the procession. Remember, they tried to film it six months earlier, but were rained out. Back came the acrobats, the dancers and the elephants, along with thousands of extras. Joe planned for close ups, medium shots and crane shots. The Vatican editorial had come out a few days before the shoot. Those Italian extras were on Elizabeth's mind. She's worried that they're all going to be pelting her and screaming at her because these are Roman extras. She thinks they're all going to hate her because the Vatican has condemned her. Joe sat on the crane so he could see above the crowd. He took his pipe out of his mouth and at 10:52 in the morning, calmly called action. The elaborate procession began making its way into the Forum. Liz sitting on top of the Sphinx. In her gold headdress, she recounted the story years later in front of a Hollywood audience. And the crowd started going totally insane. They broke like the ropes that were supposed to be protecting the Apache. And they brought rushed toward the Sphinx. And they were screaming. And they were screaming my name. Not Cleopatra, but they were going, bacca Leeds, Bacc. Bacia. That's Italian for kiss. Those extras were blowing Elizabeth kisses. It was totally amazing. And I started crying. She was crying from relief. But then it dawned on her. The shot was ruined. And I thought, oh, God, poor Joe. Because it cost about $100,000 just to turn this whole thing around so, you know, you couldn't really make mistakes. And I thought, oh, God, I didn't look at Joe. What am I going to do? And I looked over and there he was up on top of one of the cranes and he was crying. And that really touched me so much. There was big old gruff Joe and he was. He was as moved as I had been amid all of this. The long procession shoot, Sorchie's photograph. The welts on Joe's hands. The Vatican. A marriage ended. Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher told the world they were done. Eddie was already home in New York when they released a joint statement. He was trying to restart his singing career. Three weeks later, he recorded a new single. Arrivederche Roma. We'll be right back after a short break. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down, down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing Mint Mobile Unlimited premium wireless. Everybody get 30. 30. Betty get 30. Get 20. 20. 20. Better get 20. 20. Better to get 15. 15. 15, 15. Just 15 bucks a month. Sold. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow. After 35 gigabytes of network's busy taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com prime delivery is fast. How fast are we talking? We're talking puzzle toys and lick PA get this puppy under control fast. We're talking chew toys at your door without really waiting fast. Pads, cooling mat and peg hammer Fast and fast. And there's training T R E A T s faster than you can say sit fast. And now we can all relax and order these matching hoodies to get cozy and cute. Fast. Fast. Free delivery. It's on Prime. I'd like to take a moment Here to give some background on 20th Century Fox, one of Hollywood's biggest studios at the time. Because it's a real question. How could a studio of this stature find itself banking on just one big film Cleopatra with just one big star, Elizabeth Taylor? 20th Century Fox resulted from a merger in 1935 between 20th Century Pictures and. And the Fox Film Corporation. Fella ain't got a soul of his own, just little piece of a big soul. They signed actors from Henry Fonda to Shirley Temple, Gun, Honor the Queen, Shoot Straight and Keep Clean and started churning out hits. Much of that success was thanks to this man, Fox co founder Darryl Zanuck. The basic success or failure of any company has got to be in the knowledge of the head man or men. And they've got to know about making motion pictures. It's picture making, that's our business. Zanuck oversaw all of production at Fox. Zanuck always sensed where the audience was going to be before the audience even knew it. Scott Eyman wrote a history of Fox. He says Zanuck did everything from green lighting projects to. To making sure they got made without going over budget. But by the mid-1950s, things were changing in Hollywood. Studios were starting to lose some control. Big name actors were becoming independent producers. They were taking control of the means of production. They were commissioning scripts, they were hiring producers, line producers, they were hiring directors. And Zanuck thought they were amateurs and he resented them. By then, Zanuck had been running Fox for 20 years. He was burned out. Basically he said, I'm out of here, I'm quitting. I don't like the way the business is going. I don't like dealing with actors who are making more money than I am. And you can't, you can't argue with that. In 1956, Darryl Zanuck resigned and left for Paris. Suddenly, Fox was a very large ocean liner without a rudder. The president of the company at the time was Spyro Skuros. After Zanuck left, Skuros took on more responsibility for production. Skuros had been at Fox for as long as just about anyone. Here he is hosting a luncheon. My two brothers and I came from one of the smallest villages of Greece and from a very poor family. Now I'm fortunate to be president of 20th century father. Skuros started out owning a Single Cinema in St. Louis. Eventually he owned more than 500. He knew a hit film when he saw one. But Skouros didn't understand the day to day process of making a movie. Under Skuros. The Fox production arm suffered. He made all the wrong choices at all the wrong times. He greenlighted a couple of pictures that had no possible audience except Greeks. I'm told the Greeks are holding some sort of assembly at current that were pure vanity productions, just totally irresponsible vanity productions. In 1961, just as Cleopatra went into production, Fox hit rock bottom. Their losses totaled 22 and a half million dollars. A year later, Fox tried to make Something's Gotta Give with Marilyn Monroe. Other than Cleopatra, it was the only movie Fox had in production. But Monroe rarely showed up to set. She was sick and weak, riddled with anxiety. Fox fired her and canceled the picture, but later changed their minds and brought her back. One of the most famous stars in Hollywood history is dead at 36. Marilyn. Before they could resume filming, Marilyn Monroe died by suicide. She turned in performances that kept her among the greatest box office favorites in motion picture history. They had just reached a point where they couldn't win for losing. They couldn't catch a break. Everything they touched turned to lead. Zanuck watched the ship go down from Paris. I frankly want to vomit, he said. This is the ground Cleopatra was built on. It wasn't exactly fertile, as we know. When Joe came on board, Cleopatra was already in the red. The London shoot was plagued by mishaps, each with its own price tag. Italy wasn't much better. Martin Landau was there from day one. I remember when we first got to Rome, they were saying that the film would cost 11 million. And then it kept accelerating and it just never stopped. For starters, movies in Italy were mostly shot without sound. The dialogue was dubbed in later. That meant Italian crews were used to working in different conditions. There was no tradition of quiet. My cousin Chris Mankiewicz, Joe's son, was on set. The result is that all the people are hammering and banging and building sets at all time. And people was a, you know, silencio, silencio per favore. Sigira. And they'd expect every carpenter to, of course, put down their hammer and nails or whatever, and I don't know how many hundreds of hours were lost because of noise. Joe was the one who'd wanted to shoot in Italy, believing the Italian film crew's six day work week would save the company money. He turned out to be very wrong. The comparsi, the Roman extras, were hard to wrangle. Patrick Humphreys said they had figured out a way to get paid twice. You had these incredible scenes, lavish scenes, thousands of extras, and what they did was they'd sign up to be an Extra run to the back of the queue of the other thousands queuing and do it all over again. Expenses ballooned in other ways. At one point, the prop department handed a walking stick to Herbert Berghoff, an Austrian actor with a bit part. The stick was designed after an artifact and was inlaid with mother of pearl. Martin Landau remembered Herbert complaining about it. He said, joe, do I need this stick? It's cumbersome. And Joe said, no, get rid of it. And that prop must have cost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars to duplicate a worker. And he just tossed it aside. And afterwards I remember Herbert coming up to me, says, that's what's wrong with this production. I said, what? He said, it's filled with such sticks. Believe it or not, Cats became another expensive line item in the budget. Film historian Matthew Bernstein says there was a morning where they were delayed an hour because there were killers cats under the Roman Forum set and it took an hour to get them out. That cost the production $17,000. Because of all the delays, actors who were hired to shoot only a few weeks were kept in Italy on salary for months. David Camp, again, think of all these people intermingling with a lot of idle time. It stands to reason that there's going to be some rumpy pumpy or hanky panky, if you like. Rumpy pumpy is not a phrase I have ever heard. David Webb, right up in the six yard box. One actor was flown back and forth to London every other weekend to watch his favorite team, Chelsea, play football. The big stars lived even larger. Liz had her favorite chili shipped in from Chasen's, a famous Hollywood restaurant that was more than 6,000 miles away. And Rex Harrison, who played Julius Caesar, was not above diva behavior of his own, though he disputed that in a 1963 interview. When you were doing Cleopatra, I understand that there were some concessions you ask, and that you were among the difficult stars. Tell me, who did you hear from whom did you hear that I was difficult in Cleopatra? It seemed to me, I read recent article in one of the magazines. I think I would say I was the least difficult star in Cleopatra. Certainly Joe and producer Walter Wanger would disagree. When Rex heard the studio was covering Liz's chauffeur but not his, Wanger said Rex threw a fit and said, God damn it. He said, I don't come here to work tomorrow. I said, why? He said, well, because I'm not going to be treated this way. So I'm biggest stars of this tail. Just because my tits are not a street. I could go on and on. But you get the picture. Spending on Cleopatra was off the rails. Nobody seemed to be able to have the power or the guts to say this is getting out of hand. Because the cost kept spiraling. In the spring of 1962, Fox accountants tallied a new estimate for Cleopatra, $27 million. At one point, Fox publicist Jack Brodsky wrote a memo about Elizabeth and Richard. He laid out the concern. He said if Liz breaks up another family quote, the public would crucify her and picket theaters. Which meant LA scandal put Fox at risk of losing a lot of money. The affair could tank the entire movie. We'll be back after a short break on WhatsApp. No one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there on a Saturday, April 21. At 2:30 in the morning, the Cleopatra company wrapped a night shoot. They weren't due back for three days because of the Easter holiday. Liz and Richard promised Walter Wanger they would keep out of the public eye. But the next morning, Wanger said they up and left. I begged them to let me know where they were going for you so they wouldn't see. But I didn't know. But I couldn't protect them because he didn't tell me in time. They landed in Porto Santo Stefano, a coastal resort town 85 miles north of Rome. Richard's housekeeper Bianca traveled with them. Bianca was dating one of the paparazzi and tipped him off to their whereabouts. David Camp says they were hounded by photographers. They're following them and they get all these photos of them sunbathing in bathing suits on rocks and they just feel trapped. During that trip, they get into some sort of argument. What happened next isn't entirely clear. What we do know is that around midnight on April 23, Wanger received a troubling phone call. Liz was in the hospital with a black eye and bruising around her nose. And the question is, did Burton give her those bruises? Was it a violent fight? There are conflicting accounts about what caused the injuries. Richard told Wanger his version of events. Elizabeth had an accident somewhere, which was described as she got out of the car at the hospital. She fell and blackened her eye. This was the one time when she took an overdose and she was really in danger. Liz had a different story. I asked Elizabeth Taylor myself. She, after one of her blow ups with Burton, hires a taxi to take her back to Rome. And she said, I was stretched out on the backseat taking a nap and we swerved around a curve and my face banged into the ashtray on the door and that's why I had the bruises. That sounds rather like a story that an abused woman would provide, but we don't know. Liz didn't return to work for a couple of weeks so her bruises could heal. Then she shot a scene that, as Wanger wrote, had his heart in his mouth all day. Cleopatra slaps Mark Antony. He then knocks her to the ground. Normally, Liz's stunt double would have handled the action, but Wanger says Elizabeth Taylor insisted on making the fall herself. Joe called action. If he were in your place, would I find Caesar here, do you think? Endless self pity. Self pity again, you repeat yourself. They hit each other, then Liz fell to the ground. They did at least two takes in front of the entire crew. Elizabeth, prone to illness and injury, thought of as fragile by everyone on set, fell to the ground each time. And each time she stood up, determined. When they wrapped at 6:15, Wanger wrote, I was mightily relieved we got through the day. At the end of May, Joe filmed Cleopatra's death scene. Mark Antony has just taken his own life with his sword. Cleopatra then makes a fateful decision. She reaches into a bowl of figs, knowing an asp is hiding underneath. Taste of these, they say, is sharp. Swiftly over, the snake bites her and the poison courses its way through her veins. How strangely awake I feel, as if living had been just a long dream. And then she's gone. By that point, the budget had jumped again to $30 million. And there were still costly scenes to shoot. Spiroscuros was ready for all of it to be over. He sent his lieutenants to Rome. Those were terrible days in Rome. Production designer John decur was remembered. An executive storming the set looking for Joe. And he's up there directing. And some character from the administration comes all the way from New York to talk Joe Mankiewicz and to tell him how to finish the picture. Skuros decided he needed someone to blame for the runaway production. He picked his villain, Walter Wanger. Skuros thought Wanger had been acting more like an observer than a producer, letting Joe do whatever he wanted. So on June 1, 1962, Spiroscuros fired Walter Wanger. He was insulted, he was hurt, he was humiliated. Matthew Bernstein says the decision nearly killed Wanger. He suffered considerable mental and physical stress when this happened. You know, he wrote his lawyer about his blood boiling. He was advised by his doctor. His blood pressure was way up and he had to watch it. Wanger vented about it in his diary. I have been so unsuccessful in turning my ultimate dream into a Petra. What a beautiful picture this could have been. What a dream. Hearing that, it's impossible not to feel bad for the guy. The whole project was Wanger's idea, and now he's been kicked off the film. Except he didn't leave. Wanger just stayed. Even though he was no longer getting paid. He wanted to see it through to the end, which was now in sight. June 23rd was Elizabeth Taylor's last shoot day. Her final scene was an important one. Cleopatra arriving in into the port of Tarsus on a golden barge. The whole crew had moved to the island of Ischia, where they would film the barge sailing into port. Elizabeth Taylor had at her disposal a ship fit for a queen. The barge's gilded rigging cost $277,000. The entire barge cost half a million. Joe wanted this moment to be stunning and historically accurate. Cleopatra's barge was designed to fit closely to this description by Plutarch. She came sailing up the river Cydnus in a barge with a gilded stern and outspread sails of purple. It looked great, but the barge didn't move on its own. It was pulled by a little tugboat that remains remained off camera. After getting long shots from the pier, Joe and the crew moved to the deck of the barge to shoot medium and close up shots. It was midday. My cousin Tom says they were racing against the changing light and shifting winds. I never forget this. It took so long to get the boat in the right position, and everybody's getting a little uptight. And finally, after an hour and a half, they're ready to shoot. Rolling. All of a sudden, one of the assistant directors said, hold it. The sails aren't down. How's this barge moving? They forgot to put the sails down. Everyone turned and looked at Joe. He was fuming. A year of pent up frustration charged to the surface. I thought he was going to blow. And an executive from Fox who was on the boat said, now, Joe, Joe, you've got to calm down. This has nothing to do with you. Somebody. And he turned around and he said, this has nothing to do with me, you son of a bitch. This is me. This is all about me. Every fucking thing that's happened has happened to me. He started screaming. Of all the times I've pictured my uncle on this shoot, this is the most out of character. This is Joe Mankiewicz completely losing control, finally letting it all out. I was thankful that he did. I couldn't believe that he had gone through everything he had gone through without it. But, boy, did he explode. And there were people wanted to dive off them, you know, I don't think I'd ever heard him scream in my life. Joe was so close to finally finishing this movie. Elizabeth was now done. He had only two battle scenes left to shoot. But my uncle was holding on by just a thread. And soon the drugs that were keeping him going became his worst enemy. That's next week on the plot thickens. Angela Caron is our director of podcasts. Story editor is Rob Rosenthal. Yaakov Friedman is our senior producer. Script writing by Jacob Friedman, Natalia Winkelman and Angela Caron. Research and fact checking by the indispensable James Sheridan. Audio editing and sound design by Mike Vulgaris. Mixing by Glenn Matullo. Production support from Liz Winter, Allison Fire, Matthew Ownby, Julie Bettone, Emma Morris, Jordan Chips, Nicole Hill and David Corwin at patches. Thanks to our legal team, Jon Renaud and Kristen Hassell. The following TCM staffers help us get the word out about our podcast. So thank you to Alina Novik, Katie Daniels, David Byrne, Diana Bosch, Caroline Wigmore, Michelle Hite and Stephanie Tames. Our executive producer is Charlie Tavish. And especially special thank you to the archivists at the American Film Institute, the Wisconsin center for Film and Theater Research, and Boston University. We could not make these podcasts without the work of archivists around the country. Special thanks to my family, especially my cousins, Alex Mankiewicz and Nick Davis. I regret that I never got to interview my cousins, Tom and Chris Mankiewicz. They died before we started production. Thomas Avery of Toonweld composed our theme music. I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for listening. See you next time.