Wildly Successful and Much Maligned

Summary

The Plot Thickens – Season 6, Episode 6: "Wildly Successful and Much Maligned"

Podcast: The Plot Thickens by TCM
Host: Ben Mankiewicz
Episode Date: August 21, 2025
Season Theme: The saga of the 1963 epic film Cleopatra and its tumultuous impact on director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, his family, and Hollywood.

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Brief Overview

This episode concludes the season-long examination of Cleopatra, one of Hollywood’s most notorious productions. Host Ben Mankiewicz draws on archival materials, family memories, and critical commentary to trace how Cleopatra’s chaotic making, notorious press, and polarized reception changed lives, careers, and the film industry. The episode explores the premiere, reactions, aftermath for the film’s key figures, and the enduring myths versus reality of Cleopatra’s legacy — ultimately centering on the personal and professional fallout for Ben’s uncle, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

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Episode Breakdown & Key Insights

1. Cleopatra’s High-Stakes Premiere

Timestamps: 00:40–07:09

• Joe Mankiewicz’s Pre-Premiere Nerves: He distracts himself with golf and multiple haircuts (00:40), signaling mounting anxiety.
• “I still feel strongly that Cleopatra could use more running time. The finished product, he said, is a compromise.” — Joe Mankiewicz to Newsday, cited by Ben Mankiewicz (01:36)
• Premiere Night at the Rivoli Theater (1963) was spectacle-driven: streets closed, police supervised, and a Tonight Show broadcast fanned the fervor (02:08–02:29).
• Notably absent: Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton, both “tied up with projects in London and no doubt sick of the circus” (02:50).
• Audience and Press: No cast had seen the finished film before the premiere; Fox had skipped test screenings (03:38–03:58).
• “No, I think everything connected with Cleopatra is beyond my control at the moment… I feel as though the guillotine were about to drop.” — Joseph L. Mankiewicz, at the premiere (04:39–05:15)

2. Mixed Critical Reception & Immediate Aftermath

Timestamps: 07:10–11:35

• Initial reviews varied: some critics praised the spectacle and Rex Harrison’s Caesar; others lambasted length, script, and performances.
  • “Caesar, played stunningly by Rex Harrison. He is a statesman of manifest wisdom, shrewdness and magnanimity. Mr. Harrison’s faceted performance is the best in the film.” — New York Times, Bosley Crowther (08:15)
  • “Heavy, slow moving, and generally unexciting. Mr. Joseph Mankiewicz is a fine director, but he is neither Shakespeare nor Shaw. Spectacles are bloodless. The script is literate…everything is for the eye, very little for the mind or heart.” — Seymour Peck, quoted (08:58–09:32)
  • Taylor and Burton’s performances received particular scorn: “The trouble with Ms. Taylor seems to be that of immaturity and a lack of vocal authority” (09:47); “Burton…seems all too Welsh for a Roman warrior.”
• Joe is devastated by the backlash, particularly criticism of his screenplay (10:14), and feels the reviews are “professional assassins.” His agent: “When you open the morning paper and you are Joe Mankiewicz…and you read…some terrible review about your writing…it’s not cheerful” (10:53).
• Mankiewicz defends his actors on the Today Show, decrying critics for confusing “the personal antics, personal life of the artist with his work” (11:11).

3. The Fallout: Personal and Professional Impact

Timestamps: 11:36–14:38; 32:18–43:02

• Joe blames Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck for cutting the film from two parts to one (11:24) and laments that much of his work was never seen (11:52).
• Family and colleagues describe his ensuing depression, sense of public humiliation, and creative paralysis:
  • “Joe was pretty much a broken guy after Cleopatra.” — Ben Mankiewicz (13:46)
  • “It took a tremendous amount out of him…he was never again going to be the same man.” — Nick Davis, cousin (13:55)
  • “He wasn’t used to public opprobrium. This felt like a failure to him. And he was also so run down physically as well as psychologically.” — Sydney Stern, biographer (32:28)
  • “He pretty much had a writer’s block for close to 20 years.” — Alex Mankiewicz (36:30)
• Professionally, Mankiewicz manages to direct post-Cleopatra (teleplay, a western, a comedy), but nothing is successful until Sleuth (1972), which is “an unalloyed success” (33:59), earning Oscar nominations. Thereafter, he ceases making films.

4. The Ripple Effect: Others Involved

Timestamps: 15:26–31:15

• Rex Harrison: Career surges via Cleopatra praise, leading to My Fair Lady and an Oscar (16:15). Believes, however, that Caesar was his most satisfying role: “Of all the parts that I’ve played, I’ve enjoyed Caesar the most” (16:37).
• Walter Wanger: After being ousted, writes a tell-all memoir (17:14) that’s “one of the first of its kind” and stirs controversy; still, Wanger suffers deep depression, describing his life as “like a prison cell” (18:12–18:20). Dies five years after the premiere.
• Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton: Marry post-production, enjoy tabloid superstardom, but their marriage is volatile and their films together frequently panned. Taylor’s second Oscar is for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (20:04). Their excess and public image come to overshadow their careers.
  • “There was a kind of vulgarity about it.” — Alex Mankiewicz (21:41)
  • “He himself felt that he had, in a sense, sold his soul to the devil…He saw himself as Faust.” — Alex Mankiewicz on Richard Burton (23:50)
  • Their tumultuous relationship ultimately ends in divorce; Burton dies in 1984, Taylor keeps his final letter (24:11–24:25).

5. Debunking the Cleopatra Myths

Timestamps: 26:32–28:08

• Did Cleopatra bankrupt Fox? False. By 1966, with TV rights sold, the movie turned a profit—largely due to Spiros Skouras’s exhibition prowess (26:45).
• Was it a cinematic disaster? False. Despite bad press, it was 1963’s top box office hit, collected nine Oscar nominations, and won four.
• Was it “the movie that destroyed a studio”? False. It served as a “bridge movie,” and Fox survived, in part due to subsequent hits (notably The Sound of Music).

6. The End of Old Hollywood / Rise of a New Era

Timestamps: 28:19–30:20

• “I think Cleopatra was one of the nails into the coffin of the old Hollywood.” — Patrick Humphreys (28:19)
• The Cleopatra debacle signaled the end of the studio system and birth of New Hollywood: smaller, grittier films for a new generation, e.g., Bonnie & Clyde, Easy Rider, The Graduate (28:32–29:19).
• Closing image: Liz Taylor, symbol of the old guard, awarding Best Picture to Midnight Cowboy—an X-rated, new wave film (29:58–30:20).

7. Personal Reflection and Epiphany

Timestamps: 34:35–44:25

• Joe’s final years: A family man, still haunted by professional disappointment, suffering from writer’s block, feeling pressure from his father’s legacy (portrait of Franz Mankiewicz in his study as a symbol of the family’s complex relationship with Hollywood).
• Late-life realization (epiphany) brings inner peace:
  • “I’ve done well with my life. I’ve made some really good films. I’ve touched a lot of people with them. I’ve done well.” — Joseph L. Mankiewicz, as recalled by daughter Alex (42:05)
  • “The tragedy would have been, had he been dead, without that realization. And just such a clear example of how you have to make peace with yourself.” — Alex Mankiewicz (44:10)
• Legacy: Obituaries focus on Joe as “one of Hollywood’s most literate and intelligent filmmakers,” not just on Cleopatra (43:02).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Attribution & Timestamps)

• On losing creative control:
  “No, I think everything connected with Cleopatra is beyond my control at the moment… I feel as though the guillotine were about to drop.” — Joe Mankiewicz at premiere (05:06)
• On criticism:
  “Joe called the critics professional assassins. The guillotine had dropped…” — Ben Mankiewicz (10:14)
• Wanger’s despair:
  “My mind is like a lot of mush. Good God. In two years, if I’m not dead, I’ll be 70 years old. How ridiculous can a human comedy be?” — Walter Wanger diary, read by Alex Mankiewicz (18:20)
• On the industry shift:
  “I think Cleopatra was one of the nails into the coffin of the old Hollywood.” — Patrick Humphreys (28:19)
• On self-acceptance:
  “I’ve made some really good films. I’ve touched a lot of people with them. I’ve done well.” — Joseph L. Mankiewicz, recollected by Alex (42:05)
• Clarifying Cleopatra’s legacy:
  “Wildly successful and much maligned.” — Roddy McDowell on Cleopatra (39:31)
• Alex on the Mankiewicz inheritance:
  “That portrait looked down upon Dad every day of his working life… watching over his work or non-work.” — Alex Mankiewicz on Franz’s portrait (40:08)
• On public and private life:
  “Elizabeth used to have a kind of private veil that she put on in public…” — Richard Burton reminiscing on Elizabeth Taylor (22:58)

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The Episode's Language & Tone

Throughout, Ben Mankiewicz blends personal warmth, wry humor, and candid sadness. Family interviews bring an intimate, conversational feel; critical and industry perspectives are woven with context and reasoned skepticism.

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Useful Segment Timestamps

• Joe’s pre-premiere jitters: 00:40–01:30
• The chaotic premiere: 02:00–05:15
• Immediate reactions and reviews: 07:09–10:53
• Joe’s on-air defense: 11:11–11:35
• Taylor/Burton tabloid aftermath: 19:18–24:25
• Industry shift and Cleopatra myths: 26:32–30:20
• Joe’s late-life realization: 41:08–42:45
• Episode closing reflections: 43:02–44:25

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Final Thoughts

This moving finale of The Plot Thickens: Cleopatra reframes one of Hollywood’s most infamous “failures” not just as a debacle, but as a testament to creative ambition, human frailty, and survival in an industry—and family—beset by titanic expectations. The episode underscores that history’s judgment is mutable and that peace sometimes comes not from accolades, but from personal reckoning.

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For anyone interested in Hollywood history, artistic ambition, family legacy, and the true story behind a mythic movie, this episode offers a nuanced, revelatory ending to a remarkable podcast season.

Transcript

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's the Smucker's Uncrustables podcast with your host, Uncrustables. Okay, Today's guest is rough around the edges. Please welcome crust. Thanks for having me. Today's topic, he's round with soft, pillowy bread.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Hey. Filled with delicious PB and J.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Are you talking about yourself? And you can take them anywhere. Why'd you invite. And we are out of time. Are you really cutting me off? Uncrustables are the best part of the sandwich. Sorry, crust. In the months leading up to the premiere of Cleopatra, my uncle Joe Mankiewicz took a break from the drama. According to his diary, he went golfing. Thursday, April 4, Ojai, California. Nine holes after lunch. The next day, Friday, April 5. Nine holes in a.m. nine holes in p.m. saturday, April 6. Crowded golf course, but still 9 and 9. Dinner in room read, Edward Albee plays. Clearly, Joe needed a break, and at least on the fairway, no one meddled with his shot. In May, a month before Cleopatra's premiere, Joe had to meet with reporters to prepare. He got a haircut. And then, suggesting he might be a bit on edge, he got another one. Eight days later, he sat down for interviews with the New York Post, the New Yorker, the New York Times. Joe told Newsday, I still feel strongly that Cleopatra could use more running time. The finished product, he said, is a compromise. That's Joe making nice with Darryl Zanuck in the press.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

We are originating part of our broadcast from the Rivoli Theater here in New York City in Times Square, where Cleopatra.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Is premiering June 12, 1963. Opening night for Cleopatra.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

It's. It's quite a mob scene over there.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Johnny Carson's Tonight show did a broadcast from the premiere. Johnny played to his studio audience, while Bert Parks, the popular TV announcer, beamed in from the scene.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Hey, John Yabbert. A car door is opening, but nobody's in it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Outside the theater, four out of six lanes on Broadway were shut down. Limos idled while thousands of spectators pressed against barricades. More than 100 police officers on foot and horseback patrolled the streets.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Rex Harrison's on the outside there, Bert.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Yes, I see.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

And you know this is going to take a while.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Clearly, Johnny's studio audience was enjoying this. Believe it or not, the movie's two biggest stars didn't show for the premiere. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were tied up with projects in London and no doubt sick of the circus. The movie had become the third star. Rex Harrison was there.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Mr. Harrison, sir. Burt Parks. A great pleasure to welcome you here, sir. Nice to have you with us. Would you come in please and face our cameras, which are right here. Yes, always. I want you to meet Johnny Carson, our host of the Tonight Show. Mr. And Mrs. Carson, I understand that you are just magnificent in the picture. Thank you very much. I don't. I haven't seen it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Actually. None of the actors had seen the film. Cleopatra hadn't even been test screened with an audience. Zanuck wanted it in theaters. So quickly Fox scrapped the test screenings, which meant Joe had no idea how an audience would react to his movie.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Mr. And Mrs. McKiewitz, they are right here and I want to introduce them to you.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe arrived with his new wife, Rosemary.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

May I just ask you, have you seen Cleopatra?

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Yes, I have seen Cleopatra.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Are you expressed impressed as everyone else is? Very much so. You sort of have to say that.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Rosemary wore a pearl necklace and matching earrings. She looked polished, at ease. Next to her, Joe was kind of a mess. His tuxedo was rumpled, his bow tie lopsided.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

You, sir, congratulations. Thank you. A wonderful, wonderful achievement. Well, you must know something. I don't, but that's. I must tell you, I do. Come in, please. Come in, please. Don't go away. Don't go away. That's the microphone. I want to say, first of all, ask you whether or not you are personally going to control the sound on the showing of Cleopatra tonight. That's been the rumor. No, I think everything connected with Cleopatra is beyond my control at the moment. How does it feel now that the film is in the pan? Is some of the tension gone? Is some of the. You feel a little more at ease now? No, I. I feel as though the guillotine were about to drop.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I'm your host, Ben Mankiewicz. You're listening to 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 six. Wildly successful and much maligned.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

How strangely awake I feel, as if.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Living had been just a long dream. On premiere night, Cleopatra clocked in at 4 hours and 3 minutes. At the time, the longest running film ever released by a Hollywood studio.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

But now will begin.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

A dream of My Own. Joe spent most of the movie pacing in the lobby. Inside the theater, Cleopatra finally said her last lines.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Anthony. Anthony, wait.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

She lay across her tomb in gold phoenix wings. The camera zooms out and the Roman.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Asked, was this well done of your lady? As befitting the lust of so many noble rulers.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Then credits and the closing score. The lights flickered on. The audience applauded, then stood to file out.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

We're speaking to people at random here as they come out. David, how are you? What do you think of the movie?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The radio announcer, William B. Williams, was outside the theater.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Ma', Am, did you like the movie? I thought it was the biggest bar I'd ever been to. The biggest bar you had ever been to. All right, there's a woman.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The New York Times didn't find it boring. Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic, had seen Cleopatra at a press screening the day before his review went to press in the middle of the premiere.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Mr. Harrison, may I borrow you for a second? I've just read Mr. Crowther's review in the New York Times. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it yet. No, I haven't yet. We've just been seeing the film. But I must say he raved about the film and in particular raved about your performance as Caesar. Mr. Crowther said, Caesar, played stunningly by Rex Harrison. He is a statesman of manifest wisdom, shrewdness and magnanimity. Mr. Harrison's faceted performance is the best in the film. Well, that's wonderful. I'm very happy about that.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

More newspapers chimed in with positive reviews. The LA Times called Cleopatra magnificent and Liz Taylor a revelation. Variety ran the headline, Cleopatra Conquers New York. A few good reviews, brisk ticket sales. Maybe Cleopatra wouldn't be a catastrophe after all. Then came the rest of the critics.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Our own reviewer, Seymour Peck, he calls it a major disappointment. Heavy, slow moving and generally unexciting. Mr. Joseph Mankiewicz is a fine director, but he is neither Shakespeare nor Shaw. Spectacles are bloodless. The script is literate. Joseph Mankiewicz is more interested in his characters than in the action. Some choppy battle scenes leave us longing for more. Although the pace of the film sags badly in the last two hours, the actors have few real scenes to play. Everything is for the eye, very little for the mind or heart.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Words like dull, gaudy and disappointing cropped up again and again. Rex Harrison earned praise, but the critics were not kind to Liz and Richard.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

The trouble with Ms. Taylor seems to be that of immaturity and a lack of vocal authority. A little girl quality which is amiss in the role. Burton has trouble with his role and seems all too Welsh for a Roman warrior.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

But if you're looking for something special as the result of five years of.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Fuss and fury, you'll find, as I.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Have, that the mountain of publicity has produced a mouse.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Judith Crisp, New York Herald Tribune.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe called the critics professional assassins. The guillotine had dropped, I think, the most. What's the word? Devastating moment came when reviews were terrible. Joe's agent, Robbie Lance, says the critiques of the screenplay in particular, deeply depressed Joe. When you open the morning paper and you are Joe Mankiewiczen, well known for being so arrogant, so concerned with the quality of language, and you read in the Herald Tribune some terrible review about your writing, it's not cheerful, not cheerful, definitely not cheerful. But Joe put on his game face. He went on the Today show where he defended Liz and Richard against the critics.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

What some of the critics have done, what to me is almost an unforgivable sin as far as the role of the critic is concerned, which is to confuse the personal antics, personal life of the artist with his work.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

In a later interview, Joe took aim at Fox studio head Daryl Zanuck. Joe blamed Zanuck for the decision to make Cleopatra one film instead of two.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I made two rather good films that no one ever saw or ever will see. He always felt that, in a way, had been cheated.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

That's Joe's son, Chris Mankiewicz. He had been cheated and the public had been cheated because so much of.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

The wonderful work that he had done.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

On the film was not seen. To some, all that cutting to get Joe's six hour version down to four had hollowed out the movie. Where was the energy, the passion? Or as the actor Martin Landau put it, that trademark Mankiewicz wit? Unfortunately, a lot of the clever dialogue that usually permeates a Joe Mankiewicz film was removed, because when you take two hours out of a movie and it's a big spectacle, something has to suffer. David Camp, who wrote about Cleopatra for Vanity Fair, says Liz Taylor eventually saw the film in London.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

She went back to her suite at the Dorchester and as she told me, I threw up. They just made it into a parade of costume changes. It had such potential of being a classy film.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

In the months after the premiere, Joe's son Chris got married, actually, to one of the actresses from the film. She played one of Cleopatra's handmaidens. Joe relaxed in Sands Point, a village on Long island that inspired the Great Gatsby. Joe participated in the March on Washington and saw Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech. And apparently he did a lot of nothing. Many pages in his diary are blank or they have just one word, golf. The fact is, after Cleopatra, Joe couldn't shake the feeling of humiliation.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I'd never been ridiculed in my life, and that was something I just couldn't take. And that completely immobilized me. But withdrew. I wouldn't didn't want to see people.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe was pretty much a broken guy. After Cleopatra, my cousin Nick Davis says Joe entered a particularly dark period. It took a tremendous amount out of him, Cronin said that he was really worried that Joe was actually going to die. He didn't die, but there was a sense afterwards that he was never again going to be the same man, that his career had taken a unrecoverable hit. That's coming up after the break.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

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[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

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[Ben Mankiewicz]

Build money, confidence and skills in fun ways. Start your risk free Greenlight trial [e-mail] Spotify that's greenlight.com Spotify the ripple effect from Cleopatra hit the others, too. For better and for worse, critics continued to praise Rex Harrison, the forgotten man.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Mr. Rex Harrison brings to Caesar dignity, strength, a world weariness and a sense of irony and humor.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Rex rode the wave of those reviews all the way into a hit movie the next year. My Fair lady the indisputable first choice.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

For the role of Professor Henry Higgins was Rex Harrison, the man who created the character.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It won the Academy Award for best picture of 1964 and earned Rex an Oscar for playing Henry Higgins.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I'll make a duchess of this draggle tailed guttersnipe.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

We'll start today. Now this Rex, however, never stopped being proud of his work in Cleopatra. Here he is in a 1971 interview.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

What is the part that's given you most satisfaction? I think really, of all the parts that I've played, I've enjoyed Caesar the most. I think Caesar gave me more satisfaction than Higgins.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The producer, Walter Wanger, the man who came up with the idea for a Cleopatra movie and put the entire production together, didn't fare so well. After he was fired in 1962, Wanger didn't know what to do with himself. So he put together a tell all memoir. He called it My Life with Cleopatra.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Walter writing my life with Cleopatra, publishing.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It, that it was unheard of in the early 60s. Matthew Bernstein, who wrote a biography of Wanger, says the memoir was the first first of its kind from a movie producer.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He didn't even wait till the film premiered. He published it like a month before the film opened. People were stunned that he was willing to tell all this.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The book made waves in Hollywood. Spiroscurus sued Wanger for libel. But the director, John Ford, wrote Wanger a fan letter thanking him for telling the truth about studio meddling. But even with the book, Cleopatra left Wanger feeling like a failure.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Must I, at my age again start at the bottom to proclaim my independence and to have some self respect?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Wanger sank into a deep depression. In his diary entries, he described it as a prison cell.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

My mind is like a lot of mush. Good God. In two years, if I'm not dead, I'll be 70 years old. How ridiculous can a human comedy be? I suppose there are no limits. No limits at all.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Five years after Cleopatra, Walter Wanger died of a heart attack in New York. He was 74. And the lovebirds of the production, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, they got married. Elizabeth asked Cleopatra costume designer Irene Sheriff to design her gown, a modern take on the outfit Cleopatra wore in the first scene Liz and Richard shot together.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

What are you gonna do in Mexico?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Several months into their marriage, a reporter stopped the newlyweds at the airport on their way to Mexico.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

How do you feel, Dick? What about Liz? Says she's never been happier in her life than with you. Yeah, I feel like. Same way. It'll last a while. A while, yeah. Watch.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Was a 10 year marriage, but a chaotic one.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

All right, George, what do you want?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

An equal battle, baby.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

That's all.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He'll get it.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I want you mad.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I'm mad.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Get madder.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Don't worry about it. It's not a stretch to say they played out aspects of their relationship on screen.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

It's easy to talk about Warner Brothers new motion picture, who's Afraid of Virginia Wool. It's hard to tell about it, who's.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Afraid of Virginia Wolf? In 1966, Liz and Richard starred together in who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, an adaptation of the Edward Albee play. It traces a rowdy night in the home of a drunken, volatile couple.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Stop it, Mother.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

I hope that was an empty bottle, George. You can't afford to waste good liquor.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The film was a hit. Liz's performance earned her a second Best Actress Oscar. David Camp says Liz's next films were disappointments by comparison. She even starred in a few less than memorable movies with Richard Burton.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

These kind of cheesy international jet set movies.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

VIPs and boom. And the comedian.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Titles alone, Ben, say it all.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Yeah, once. Divorce. His divorce, Hers.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Yes, yes. A match set of films about divorce.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Why did we get married?

[Alex Mankiewicz]

No, seriously, why?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

We were in love.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I thought Elizabeth and Richard might have been making films about divorce, but their star power as a married couple was unmatched and they relished it.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

What does 69.4 carats really mean? I mean, do you want to see? What it means is the most expensive diamond in the world. That's what it means. You're always giving Elizabeth presents, like that bit of ice cube you have on your finger there, dear.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

What's to keep me cool?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

That's a beauty. That's the big one, isn't it?

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's not small, is it?

[Alex Mankiewicz]

They became so famous, so rich, so photographed, there was a kind of vulgarity about it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Nancy Schoenberger wrote Furious Love, a book about Liz and Richard. She said the couple became tabloid celebrities, the public more interested in their private lives than their performances.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

At one point, they were so famous they had to live on their yacht. They were too famous to live on land.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

In a way, Richard had been asking for celebrity life. The minute he pursued Liz, somehow he knew she'd make him millions. That's what he told my Uncle Joe. Here's Joe In a 1988 documentary, Burton.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Said, when he got very drunk, I'll use her.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The phrase. I'll use her. She's gonna make me millions where she did.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I think that as a result of my marriage to Elizabeth, I became a far more important actor than I was before. Though it's not very easy for me to say that.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Liz was used to having cameras in her face. She grown up with them years after Cleopatra. In a BBC interview, Richard marveled at how immune she was to the paparazzi frenzy.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Elizabeth used to have a kind of private veil that she put on in public where she didn't seem to notice photographers or journalists or whatever. She walked through them all as if through a vacuum.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Richard never quite figured out how to handle the Attention.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Burton was really a kind of quiet, bookish man. He traveled with a suitcase full of Shakespeare's plays. He liked his solitude, and he did not know, in his words, he didn't know how to be private in public.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

At one point, the great actor Lawrence Olivier sent Richard a telegram. It said, make up your mind. Do you want to be a household name or a great actor? Richard replied, both. They may not be mutually exclusive, but in Richard's case, they were.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He himself felt that he had, in a sense, sold his soul to the devil. He was drawn to the Faust myth. He saw himself as Faust. Faust sold his soul for riches, fame, knowledge and the most beautiful woman in the world. And so Richard totally identified with that character.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Richard's critics said he wasted his talent, failing to live up to his full potential as an actor.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

How does he handle it? Well, he was a big drinker, and the drinking got worse and worse throughout their marriage.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

In 1974, Liz and Richard divorced. Then a year later, they married again, followed soon by a second divorce. Still, they remained close for the rest of Richard's life. In 1984, Richard Burton died from complications caused by a lifetime of alcoholism. He was only 58. Just days before he died, Richard wrote Liz a letter. The contents have never been made public, but we know that Liz kept it in her bedside drawer until the day she died. I want to be free of you, of wanting you, of being afraid that Caesar would not permit it. Liz finally watched Cleopatra in its entirety in the 1970s. She watched it with her kids. After the movie ended, she apparently shrugged, then said, the film's not all that bad. The story of Cleopatra, the bloated budget, the affairs, the illnesses and setbacks. Those stories have been told and retold, and with each retelling, every detail gets tawdrier, every tale taller. Now it's the stuff of legend and myth. Some of what gets repeated about Cleopatra just isn't true. I ran some of the myths by David Campbel so he could tell me which were true and which were false. First, Cleopatra was a failure because in the end, it cost the studio $40 million.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

False. Cleopatra actually ended up turning a profit. And this is where Spiros Skuros deserves credit, because his background was as an exhibitor, he was good at drumming up enthusiasm for it.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

So much enthusiasm that moviegoers paid a premium price for exclusive screenings around the country. By 1966, three years after the premiere, the movie broke even when Fox sold the TV broadcast rights to ABC for $5 million, a record. @ the time, the Other narrative is that Cleopatra is not a good film.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

False. I think Joe Mankiewicz had his worst experience on Cleopatra, but the movie is not a bad movie.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Despite the reviews, Cleopatra became the number one film at the box office for 1963. It earned nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, plus a Best Actor nod for Rex Harrison. It ended up winning four Oscars, Best cinematography, best art direction and special effects, as well as one for the elaborate costumes. And the final narrative that I think sticks with a lot of people who, even movie fans, people who love movies, is that Cleopatra is the movie that destroyed a studio.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

False. It was kind of a bridge movie in terms of turning a profit to 1965, two years after its release, when the Sound of Music came out. And when the Sound of Music came out, that kind of saved Fox, and that's why Fox is still around today.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Patrick Humphreys says Cleopatra did mark a shift in the movie business. The transition from old Hollywood to new Hollywood was underway.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I think Cleopatra was one of the nails into the coffin of the old Hollywood.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's like a kind of beached whale.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

You know, it lies there. It's sort of somehow symbolic of the end of an era.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Old Hollywood thrived on a system where the studios called the shots, controlling everything from casting to editing. They could make or break stars. But by the mid-1960s, the landscape had shifted dramatically. Independent filmmakers were gaining ground and the studio system was changing. They put out movies like Bonnie and Clyde, we rob banks, Easy Ride. You got a helmet?

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Oh, I've got a helmet. And the gradual, Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. These were made on infinitesimal budgets. Compared to Cleopatra, probably what they spent on coffee on Cleopatra was probably the entire budget for the Graduate.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The content of the movies was also different. These were smaller in scale, gritty and sexy, with stories that reflected a younger generation.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

What people wanted was motorbikes, sex and drugs and rock and roll.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

We who make films, members of the Academy are terribly proud of the filmmakers and their product. Each year, films are more widely accepted as a really true art.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Here's Liz Taylor at the 1970 Oscars. Only seven years after Cleopatra, she was presenting the award for best picture of 1969.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

The winner is Midnight Cowboy.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

That is how the decade ended, with Elizabeth Taylor, a queen of the studio era, presenting the Oscar for John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. It was an X rated film that just a few years earlier would have seemed far too controversial for major awards. This was a brave new Hollywood. Which leads me to wonder, where did Joe Mankiewicz fit in. That's coming up after the break. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses it.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Are you.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

@Mintmobile.Com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

CMN they say to only bring what you can carry. So with the all new 2025 Ford Expedition Tremor, bring a lot like three dirt bikes, a few tents, an entire crew ready to make memories, a panoramic 24 inch display and the confidence to push your limits. The all new 2025 Ford Expedition Tremor. Always consult the owner's manual before outward driving. Know your terrain and trail difficulty and use appropriate safety gear. Max payload varies based on accessories and vehicle configuration. C label and door jam for carrying capacity of a specific vehicle. Always properly secure car. After Cleopatra, Joe was miserable.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He was angry, he was humiliated and he was depressed.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The biographer Sydney Stern says he lost the passion for making movies.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He wasn't used to public opprobrium. This felt like a failure to him. And he was also so run down physically as well as psychologically.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

But Joe did get back in the director's chair. He made three movies in pretty quick succession. The first for tv, then a postmodern comedy and an ironic western. Unfortunately, none of them were hits.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

And this, as they say, is where the plot thickens.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Then in 1970, Joe caught a break. He and Rosemary went to see a play in London's West End called Sleuth.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Immediately this seemed like good material for Joe to make a movie out of.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The story was a mystery thriller. A showdown between a man and his wife's lover. It was safe territory for Joe, a two hander, heavy in dialogue and intrigue.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He had said after Cleopatra, he wished he could make a movie with two actors and a telephone booth after dealing with the cast of thousands. So with Sleuth, he kind of got that.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe cast a couple of top notch actors, Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

It's a good thing I am pretty much of an Olympic sexual athlete. Yes, I suppose these days you are concentrating more on the sprints than on the long distance stuff.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Both were nominated for Academy Awards and.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Joe for best director, Sleuth was an unalloyed success. So it was very gratifying to Joe and very validating to Joe.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe was 62 years old when he directed Sleuth. Arguably he had at least another 10 years to make films, maybe more. But after Sleuth, there was nothing. No more Joe Mankiewicz movies. He stopped cold.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Hello.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Hello, cousin.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Hello, cousin.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

My cousin. Alex was born after Cleopatra in 1966. She only knew her dad in his later years. Alex says she grew up in a cozy home. A fire in the fireplace, Joe in a cushy leather chair surrounded by books and dogs. A golden lab named Brutus, a black lab named Cassius, and a terrier named Portia, all named for Shakespeare characters.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

There were sort of two or three movie nights, probably a year, where the old projector was gotten out and there was a screen came down at the end of the living room or whatever, and a few people were invited over and I was, I got to be the projectionist, which was totally useless skill, but one I still have. Suddenly I've developed a big protective feeling.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Even though Cleopatra was off limits, never to be mentioned, Alex saw evidence of the toll it had taken on her dad.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

I remember wrestling with him as a kid and he had these like absolutely leathery upper shoulders. The outside of his shoulder muscle was just like, like hard leather. And of course, that's where he injected the stimulant.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe's family was a bright spot. Post Cleopatra, he emerged as a family man, the type that his older children rarely saw. Here he is in 1973.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I met and married Rosemary, who was the single best human being I have ever met in my life. I have a 7 year old daughter who I am absolutely doubting about. I'm doubting about both of them. I have the happiest life I've ever had.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

It's comforting to hear that Joe was content in his personal Life.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

The last 20 years was pretty much torture.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

But Alex says her father was unhappy professionally.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He pretty much had a writer's block for close to 20 years, which was largely fueled by a sense that he should have done something other than make movies.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe believed he should write a novel or a play. And in the years after Sleuth, he insisted on trying.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

He never sort of got up and said, you know, I'll just read today. It was, I've got to get to work. There was never letting himself go and go, you know, I don't need to work today.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

For years, Joe would wake up, go to his desk, sit down and stare at his typewriter. Joe's writer's block was something I heard a lot about in my family. My dad told me about it, my cousins talked about it. Now that I have a fuller picture of what happened to Joe during the making of Cleopatra, I wonder if he was suffering from work related ptsd. Like the welts on his hands, the writer's block was kind of a mental symptom of extreme stress. One that haunted him for years. People often see writer's block as a frustrating obstacle, a wall between you and your work. But I wonder if somewhere deep down my uncle thought, the wall isn't only blocking me, it's keeping me.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Good evening, I'm Carl Malden, president of the Academy.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

On May 6, 1991, the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills was sold out. A packed house.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

On behalf of my fellow governors and the members of the Academy, I'm pleased to welcome you to tonight's special tribute to one of the true legends of American filmmaking, Joseph L. Mackiewicz.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe was 82 years old when the Academy of Motion Pictures honored him for his work. He watched from the audience as scenes from his films played on the big screen.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I believe in myself and I am answerable to myself. I will not live according to printed mottos like the directions on a medicine.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Bottle, the witty dialogue.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

But whether or not she thinks she's listening, she.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

She's being penetrated. A good thing she didn't hear you say that.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

The sharp humor and the sophistication.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

It's about time the piano realized it has not written a concerto.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Friends and colleagues took the stage to salute Joe and to thank him. At one point, Roddy McDowell, who played Octavian and Cleopatra, walked to the stage. He praised Joe's career and described their most famous collaboration. The last of the truly great film.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

Spectacles, the subsequently wildly successful and much maligned Cleopatra.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Since starting this project, that line, wildly successful and more much maligned is perhaps the best summation I've ever heard of Cleopatra. For the last decades of Joe's life, a portrait of his father Franz hung on the wall of his study. Alex remembers Franz's disapproving eyes.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

That portrait looked down upon dad every day of his working life. In his personal study, watching over his work or non work. I have no idea where it is now.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

I know where it is. It's in my house.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

Oh, you've got it now.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

One of my cousins passed the portrait on to me a decade or so ago. I thought of it only as a family heirloom, a testimony to my great grandfather's. Proud but judgmental personality. Looking at the Franz portrait now, I can see what it might have represented to Joe, a feeling of inadequacy about a career in movies, which is at.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

The root of what has now become kind of the infamous distillation of our entire family, that Hollywood was not enough.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

My father died before I did anything, really.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

In an interview later in Joe's life, he opened up about his relationship with Franz.

[Podcast Host/Interviewer]

I'd like to hurt somebody. You know, you wrote that well, you know, or you wrote that well, or you did a good job, or, you know, whatever the hell it is.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

If Joe wanted to hear that, man, I wish I'd gotten the chance to tell him. I said as much when I spoke to my cousin Alex. Then she told me this story about Joe.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

I walked into his study. I can see him. He was sitting at his typewriter, staring at it. His writer's block had gotten to the point of not only could he not type anything, you know, he couldn't write a Christmas card anyway. So he's sitting at his typewriter and he said, I'm having an epiphany. And I said, what? I'll come back later. And I did. And I came back with my mother, not necessarily expecting any elaboration, because he. Sometimes we talked in that way, but certainly he wasn't someone who just, you know, constantly opened up his inner thoughts. And he said, you know, I've been sitting here and I've been thinking and looking out at this property and these beautiful trees and, you know, the house and. And he said. He said, you know, I've done. I've done well with my life. I have this house and this life, and my mother and I are just sort of. We don't want to move at this point. And he said, you know, I've made some really good films. I've touched a lot of people with them. I've done well. The next morning, with his assistant, he started answering correspondence. They started working on notes for his memoir.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

Joe Mankiewicz died three months later, on February 5, 1993. He was 83 years old. I looked up Joe's obituary, fearing he'd be remembered for the nightmare that was Cleopatra after all. My family so often framed it that way, comparing Cleopatra with Citizen Kane, written by my grandfather, Joe's older brother, Herman. I was relieved by what I found. This is the first line of Joe's obituary in the New York Times. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a writer, a director and producer who was one of Hollywood's most literate and intelligent filmmakers. Died yesterday at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, New York. Cleopatra isn't mentioned until the ninth paragraph. To this day, Alex is grateful for her father's epiphany. So am I.

[Alex Mankiewicz]

The tragedy would have been, had he been dead, without that realization. And just such a clear example of how you you have to make peace with yourself.

[Ben Mankiewicz]

After two decades of struggle. It's pretty remarkable to think the turning point for Joe Mankiewicz happened on just an average day at home, a breezy afternoon on the farm, and my Uncle Joe sitting at his desk ready to work. Angela Caron is our director of podcasts. Story editor is Rob Rosenthal. Jakob Friedman is our senior producer. Script writing by Jakob 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 Betton, Emma Morris, Jordan Chips, Nicole Hill and David Corwin in patches thanks to our legal team, Jon Renau 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 Height and Stephanie Tames. Our executive producer is Charlie Tabish. And a 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 Tune Welders composed our theme music. This has been season six of the Plot Thickens, a podcast from Turner Classic Movies. I'm Ben Mankiewicz. All of us at TCM are so glad you found us and really glad you listened. This episode is brought to you by FX's alien Earth, the official podcast. Each week, host Adam Rogers is joined by guests, including the show's creator, cast and crew. In this exclusive companion podcast. They will explore story elements, deep dive into character motivations and offer an episode by episode behind the scenes breakdown of each terrifying chapter in this new series. Search FX's alien Earth. Wherever you listen to podcasts.