Cleopatra

Cleopatra (1917)

The story of Cleopatra, the fabulous queen of Egypt, and the epic romances between her and the greatest men of Rome, Julius Caesar and Antony. Only a small fragment of this film survives.

Date of release
1917-10-14
TMDB
4.2 / 10 (5)
Runtime
2h 5m
Genres
Drama, History
Director
J. Gordon Edwards

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: California

Cleopatra is a 1917 American silent historical drama film based on H. Rider Haggard's 1889 novel Cleopatra, the 1890 play Cleopatre by Émile Moreau and Victorien Sardou, and the play Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. The film stars Theda Bara in the title role, Fritz Leiber Sr. as Julius Caesar, and Thurston Hall as Mark Antony.

Production

Cleopatra cost $250,000–500,000 (equivalent to $12,564,935 in 2025) to produce. Copies of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Great Sphinx of Giza were constructed in Ventura County, California; a set of Alexandria's waterfront was constructed near Los Angeles; and a fleet for sea battle scenes was at the Balboa Peninsula. The film had 15,000 extras and over 2,000 horses.

Bara visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was shown the Egyptology section by Albert Lythgoe. Bara's car almost fell off a 1,000-foot cliff after an accident with a motorcyclist during production.

The picture was filmed on the Dominquez slough just outside Long Beach, California. The throne prop used in the film ended up, years later, in the possession of Leon Schlesinger Productions; its disposition after the acquisition of that company by Warner Bros. is unknown.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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