Trailer
Plot summary
In 48 BC, Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy each seek control of Egypt. Pothinos carries Cleopatra and Apollodorus away and leaves them in the desert. Pothinos then tells Julius Caesar that the queen has fled, and Caesar prepares to make an agreement with Ptolemy. Apollodorus arrives with a gift carpet for Caesar. Cleopatra comes out of the unrolled carpet, and Pothinos, startled, tries to deny her identity. Caesar is not deceived, and Cleopatra draws him in with the wealth of Egypt and India.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cleopatra (1934)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For Cleopatra's final scene, Cecil B. DeMille borrowed a boa constrictor from Griffith Park Zoo and walked on set with the large snake wrapped around his body, hiding a six-inch asp behind his back. The sight frightened Claudette Colbert so much that she begged him to stay away and refused to touch it.
- While still searching for a satisfactory Marc Antony, Cecil B. DeMille discovered Henry Wilcoxon by accident: waiting in Paramount's projectionist booth to watch horse footage, he heard a resonant, manly voice with only a pleasant trace of an English accent from the screen.
- Dancer and choreographer Agnes de Mille, Cecil B. DeMille's niece, was hired to work on Cleopatra's barge sequence, but she and DeMille disagreed over the dance on the back of the bull and she walked off the set in late April.
- Claudette Colbert's beaded gown weighed 75 pounds and Henry Wilcoxon's armor 110 pounds. The Egyptian dancers' fans were made of 600 pheasant feathers, wigs and hair pieces used "the hair of 700 Egyptian peasants", and 55 gallons of body makeup tanned the extras.
- Claudette Colbert contracted appendicitis on the set of her previous film, Four Frightened People, leaving her able to stand for only a few minutes at a time during the shoot. Her stand-in knew Cleopatra's lines and substituted for her during rehearsals.
- Fredric March, Claudette Colbert's co-star in The Sign of the Cross, was Cecil B. DeMille's first choice for Marc Antony; in October 1933 columnist Louella Parsons reported that March had signed with Paramount to play the part.
