![]() ![]() It was also notable for other reasons: the adulterous romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the time and money spent (Taylor got a million dollars for her participation), the somewhat risqué (for the time) bath scene, the changing of directors, the start-over with a new cast in Italy after the film had begun shooting in the totally inappropriate English climate, the movie’s architect and producer Walter Wanger forbidden by 20 th Century-Fox to attend the premiere. Rhonda Fleming was the low-budget Serpent of the Nile (1953), which might be worthwhile just to see Raymond Burr as Marc Antony! The scale of the 1963 version of Cleopatra put these predecessors in the shade. (“There’s no room in Rome for both Octavian and me!” cried Henry Wilcoxon’s Marc Antony, hardly distinguishing it from a western.) In the literate but somewhat set-bound and slightly dull 1945 version of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, Vivien Leigh played the seductress. Claudette Colbert starred as the Egyptian queen in Cecil B. ![]() ![]() The original “Vamp” Theda Bara played the title role in the silent and now lost 1917 version. ![]()
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