TCM’s ‘The Plot Thickens’ Podcast Takes on ‘Cleopatra’

The TCM podcast The Plot Thickens returns in July with host Ben Mankiewicz taking a deep dive into the making of Cleopatra, the troubled 1963 drama that starred Elizabeth Taylor and was directed and co-written by his uncle, Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

As TCM notes, the production of the 20th Century Fox film was “plagued from the start by medical emergencies, location changes, climate disasters, nervous breakdowns and egos as big as pyramids … not to mention Taylor’s scandalous love affair with co-star Richard Burton. It fell to [Joe] Mankiewicz to somehow wrest an epic out of chaos.”

The most expensive film ever made at the time — some estimates put the cost at $49 million, or $512 million in today’s dollars — Cleopatra began principal photography in September 1960 and wrapped in July 1962, with reshoots taking place through the following March. It nearly bankrupted the studio.

The lavish movie opened in June 1963, was the highest-grossing film of the year with $58 million ($606 million today) and earned nine Oscar nominations, winning four. (Read THR’s original review here.)

The pipe-smoking Mankiewicz, who had received directing and screenplay Oscars for A Letter to Three Wives (1950) and All About Eve (1951), had replaced original helmer Rouben Mamoulian in early 1961. Writing at night and directing during the day, he “struggled to stay one step ahead of financial disaster and his own failing health,” TCM notes.

“I didn’t really know Joe well, even though I was already 25 years old when he died [in 1993],” Ben Mankiewicz said in a statement. “I had the basics. The highs: He had four Academy Awards. The lows: Writer’s block plagued him for the last two decades of his life.

“But reading Joe’s diaries from the Cleopatra production reveals a man far more complicated. And far more human. First of all, he’s wickedly funny, like my dad, my brother, my grandfather and most of my cousins. Second, he’s exasperated. I think he could feel the movie slipping away. And there is nothing he can do about it.”

On The Plot Thickens, listeners will be treated to never before heard archival interviews with the cast and crew; new expert interviews from movie historians and pop culture aficionados; and stories drawn from Joe’s private diaries and production logs.

The six-episode series kicks off July 17 (watch a preview here). In conjunction with the podcast’s return, TCM will air a Mankiewicz-Taylor double feature the next day with Cleopatra and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).

Previous seasons of The Plot Thickens centered on Peter Bogdanovich; the 1990 film The Bonfire of the Vanities; Lucille Ball; Pam Grier; and John Ford. The podcast has been featured on “best-of” lists from The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, NPR and Vanity Fair.