The Plot Thickens: Cleopatra

Talking Pictures

TCM and HBO Max

Tv & Film

4.8 • 834 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get ready for your new summer obsession! We're sharing a special preview of Cleopatra, the new season of Ben Mankiewicz's other podcast, The Plot Thickens. (Yes, he has two.) Cleopatra was the most tumultuous production in Hollywood history, a disaster of epic proportions written and directed by Ben's Oscar-winning uncle, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With Mankiewicz calling the shots and with the luminous Elizabeth Taylor in the title role, Cleopatra should have been a smash. Instead, it was a shoot plagued by medical emergencies, climate disasters, nervous breakdowns, and egos as big as pyramids... not to mention Taylor's scandalous affair with co-star Richard Burton. Enjoy the first episode of Cleopatra right now, then look up The Plot Thickens for more episodes, wherever you get podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Ben here. I wanted to make sure you knew about my other podcast, also made by Turner Classic movies.
0:10.4	It's called The Plot Thickens, and each season we tell a different story about movies and the people who make them.
0:16.5	We have a new season, and it's a personal story for me. It's about a movie directed by my great uncle, Joe Mancowitz,
0:23.9	a movie that derailed his career and nearly destroyed a studio.
0:29.3	The movie is Cleopatra from Fox in 1963.
0:33.9	It was an epic in every way.
0:36.8	Epic budget, epic runtime, epic scandals.
0:40.3	Elizabeth Taylor played Cleopatra, and it was on this set where she met her fifth husband, Richard Burton.
0:47.3	Their affair nearly torpedoed the whole movie.
0:51.3	And that was just one of the countless problems my Uncle Joe had to deal with
0:56.4	during the years he spent making Cleopatra. We get into all this and much more this season
1:03.4	on the plot thickens. You won't want to miss an episode. So find the plot thickens wherever you get
1:09.6	podcasts. Give us a follow. But don't take my
1:12.8	word for it. Judge for yourself. Here's the first episode of the plot thickens, Cleopatra.
1:22.8	Please note, this podcast series contains mentions of suicide and domestic violence.
1:28.4	My great uncle, my grandfather's brother, lived in a farmhouse in upstate New York,
1:33.7	about an hour from the city. Joe made movies, wrote, and directed them. I was young when he was
1:39.6	still alive, but I do remember one thing clearly. His four Oscars sitting out on his fireplace mantle.
1:47.5	Joe was a seriously big deal in Hollywood during the 1940s and 50s.
1:52.6	Hello, hello, cousin.
1:54.7	Hello, cousin.
1:55.9	Alex Banquowitz is Joe's daughter.
	...

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