Word: cleopatras
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Ever since capturing 20th Century-Fox from the cold grip of Wall Street last summer, President Darryl F. Zanuck had been holed up in his Manhattan bunker, coldly sniping at Cleopatra. Then, armed with the excellent argument that any unfinished movie that has cost its studio $35 million must be a scandal, Zanuck moved into Paris for close combat with Writer-Director Joseph Mankiewicz. Last week the generalissimo took careful aim, picked Mankiewicz off, and flew home with Cleopatra under his arm. Having made a career of making others dance to his martial music, he was scarcely prepared...
...Cleopatra was rubbish-and he made something...
With that, Zanuck launched his counterattack. "Remember," he proclaimed, "I'm a practical picturemaker, not a fool. I have done my duty to my corporation and-yes-to myself." Mankiewicz, he said, was fired because he demanded full control over Cleopatra, a right Zanuck feels must be reserved for himself. Worse, Mankiewicz wasted vast amounts of money-$7,500,000 by Zanuck's reckoning: Richard Burton worked only one of the first 17 weeks he spent in Rome; Roddy McDowall was called to the set only once in four months; sets were built at hurry-up costs, then...
...Cleopatra, Zanuck said, the key scenes are fine but the continuity and, in some places, the photography are disappointing. A "more or less drastic" editing is needed before it can be released in mid-May. "I can't afford the luxury of more talk," Zanuck says. "Interest on the $35 million the picture has consumed amounts to $7,000 a day. Completing work on it will cost a couple million more." Then, assuring all who would listen that Mankiewicz is still welcome "for debates and conversations about what I do to the film," Zanuck retreated to the consolations...
...moment, it has Darryl Zanuck. At 60, Producer Zanuck is known as an organizational genius who for 20 years was chief of production at 20th Century-Fox and is currently president of the company-long an ailing entity that now, after two years of playing Antony to Cleopatra, seems dangerously close to collapse (TIME...