Reviving the Classics - John Baxter remembers Cecil B DeMille's CLEOPATRA (USA, 1934)

A SHOW OF HANDS. 

Cecil B DeMille (r) rehearses Henry Wilcoxon and
Claudette Colbert, Cleopatra

Gore Vidal said the first question he was asked on signing up for Ben Hur was “When a Roman sits down, what does he loosen?”  Advice on such challenges is not found in manuals of film acting.  One can only sympathise with Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon, who played Caesar and Marc Antony respectively in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1934 Cleopatra, since both wore those unfortunate Roman mini-skirts that expose the naked backside to unprotected contact with icy marble. 

It was unlike DeMille to ignore the matter, since, according to his sometime screenwriter Jesse Lasky Jnr, he placed more importance on the actions that accompanied a conversation than on anything said. Jesse Jnr worked on Reap the Wild Wind, The Ten Commandments and a number of other films for DeMille, and did a good imitation of CB’s oratorical whine. “I don’t give a good goddam what they say. Any fool can write dialogue. What I want to know is -what do they do with their hands?”

         To hear Lasky tell it, inventing bits of business took up most of his time. For one film, he gave the villain a shark’s tooth which he wore around his neck and periodically stabbed into the table to signify frustration. He had another dunk his cigar in whisky, permitting him to smoke and drink at the same time. 

Warren William as Caesar, Cleopatra

Other than that, his role in the DeMille entourage appears to have been less scenarist than whipping boy. The old tyrant found a special satisfaction in having the son of his one-time partner at his beck and call. To paraphrase de Rochefoucald, It is not enough to succeed: your best friend must fail, and Jesse Snr. failed spectacularly, first losing his money in the 1929 Crash, then being ousted in 1932 from the company he co-founded. 

Jesse Jnr. was too young to work on Cleopatra,but DeMille’s preoccupation with what characters do with their hands is already evident. How else to explain Marc Antony appearing with two Great Danes on a leash? For his part, Caesar plays with scale models of the latest in Roman high tech, pitching balls at recalcitrant Egyptians or implying their fate by touching a lever that thrusts a miniature spear-headed ram suggestively in their direction. 

So what did they do with their hands on those chilly marble seats? In their place, I’d sit on them.

 Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra wastes no time with toys. For Antony’s seduction, she literally pushes out the boat, luring him onto a barge the size of a liner for a glimpse of what he can expect if he leaves the Great Danes at home. DeMille isn’t as explicit as a recent London production of Antony and Cleopatra on which the curtain rose to reveal Antony on his knees, attending to the Imperial pudenda. But Colbert’s budget is considerably larger, allowing her to offer Wilcoxon a parade of production numbers worthy of Ziegfeld. 

It commences with a troupe of catwomen leading live leopards (left), followed by a hopefully well-sedated bull, on the back of which a rubber-jointed dancer performs a routine not described in the Stock Breeder’s Almanac. Agnes, DeMille’s niece, had this role first, but ankled, as they say in Variety, because of “creative differences” – whether with her uncle or the bull isn’t clear. There is no credit for her replacement, but I thought I recognised the agile and delightfully named Joyzelle Joyner, seen two years earlier in The Sign of the Cross, pitching deviant woo to Elissa Landi (below). 

The Sign of the Cross has, of course, Colbert again, playing the famously dissolute Poppaea, bathing in a swimming pool of milk. This being a DeMille film, the milk was genuine. After a full day’s shooting under hot lights, Colbert complained “Excuse me, but my bath is turning to cheese.” Later, some exhibitors being shown around the studio mistook the solidified milk for marble, with catastrophic results. (That story is rivalled by one about Noel Coward appearing in In Which We Serve. After three days bobbing in a studio tank as the captain of a torpedoed ship, he faced the rancid water on the last morning, made a perfect dive, and surfacing, trilled encouragingly “There’s dysentery on every rrripple!”) Aware of Claudette’s taste for an occasional lesbian adventure, CB enlivened the milk bath scene by having her invite a confidante to “take off your clothes, get in and tell me all about it.” And what they  did with their hands, we can only imagine.

Editor's Note (1): To watch a trailer featuring Cecil B DeMille himself  Just click here 

Editor's Note (2): John Baxter is a widely published author of autobiographies, fiction, film scripts, travel books and criticism. Among his recent contributions to the Film Alert 101 blog are posts on William A Wellman's THE HATCHET MAN, Mario Bava's LA MASCHERA DEL DEMONIO/BLACK SUNDAY,The Netflix series HOLLYWOOD, and Vincente Minnelli's THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Just click on the title to read the review. John is also the author of a recently self-published set of memoirs FILMSTRUCK: A LIFE IN THE MOVIES. You can read about it and purchase an e-copy if you click here