The Girl is on Salary

The Plot Thickens

TCM Podcasts

Tv & Film, Film History

4.8 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Joe Mankiewicz decides to recast two leading men and hires Richard Burton and Rex Harrison – major talents who turn out to be major headaches. He also moves filming to a new country, where the budget spirals out of control. Joe works against the clock to meet the studio’s deadline to start shooting, and he nearly pulls it off… until Richard Burton puts the moves on his married co-star Elizabeth Taylor, throwing the entire production into chaos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.7	In the spring of 1961, Joe Mancowicz was furiously writing a new screenplay for Cleopatra.
0:40.3	But he had a problem, his cast, specifically his leading men.
0:46.3	Cleopatra had two great loves in her life.
0:49.3	Julia Caesar.
0:50.3	Hail Caesar.
0:52.3	And Mark Antony. Do you trust this And Mark Antony.
0:57.5	Do you trust this, Mark Anthony?
1:04.2	Originally, she wanted to rule the world with Caesar. After he was assassinated on the Ides of March, Cleopatra switched to Mark Antony. Actors for the two roles had already been cast by the time Joe took over production.
1:13.6	Mark Antony was being played by an Irish actor named Stephen Boyd.
1:17.6	It's a Roman world if you want to live in it, you must become part of it.
1:21.6	Boyd had just been in Ben Hur, a hugely popular biblical epic from 1959.
1:29.2	But when writing Mark Antony,
1:31.8	Joe had a specific voice in mind.
	...

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