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Extra-cinematic commentary also suggested how Jewish actress Bara’s personal
biography was manipulated and reinvented in linking her to the role
of Cleopatra as a racially exotic and treacherous “other” (Royster, 71–82).
In the 1920s and 1930s, the idea of the “new woman” entered the
American consciousness, as middle-class women experienced new political,
financial, and sexual freedoms. Soon Hollywood embraced a more
desirable and familiar image of Cleopatra in the first sound version of the
story, Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934). DeMille was famous for his
stylish romantic comedies on contemporary social themes, and viewers
have noted the modernity and humor of his Cleopatra, as though it were
“a comedy of modern manners in fancy dress” (Wyke, 91). Claudette
Colbert pouts prettily in the lead role like a glamorous sex kitten, purring
the witty, often racy, dialogue and lounging on visually opulent sets.
DeMille’s cinematic interpretation of history presents the same simple
confrontation that frames so many modern sex comedies of the 1930s:
here, “masculine” Rome meets “feminine” Egypt in a grand amorous conceit
(Elley, 93). Likewise, contemporary female spectators were encouraged
to identify with this insouciant onscreen Cleopatra in their choice of
fashion and make-up (Wyke, 98–9). At the end of the film, Cleopatra is
comfortably restored to traditional femininity through her love for Antony,
and the dangerous “new woman” is also safely contained. A decade later,
when George Bernard Shaw’s stage play (1898) was adapted into film,
George Pascal’s Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), the mighty queen, played by
Vivien Leigh with giggling petulance, is demoted to a foolish little girl,
stripped of potency and peril (Hughes-Hallett, 252–65). These twentiethcentury
cinematic Cleopatras recall and reshape the earlier traditions for
representing her beauty, sexuality, and power, and anticipate the celebrated
incarnation of Cleopatra in Mankiewicz’s film.
One of the most sophisticated and intelligent American filmmakers,
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909–93) tackled many different creative roles
during his career in Hollywood. He began in the late 1920s as a writer, and
by the mid-1930s he was the producer of such superb films as The Philadelphia
Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942). In the 1940s he took
up directing, and had hit films with The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) and
A Letter to Three Wives (1949), for which he won both writing and directing
Oscars. The next year, Mankiewicz took home twin Oscars for his most
famous and admired film, All About Eve (1950), the wicked backstage
chronicle starring Bette Davis in an Oscar-nominated performance. In the
1950s, Mankiewicz directed several remarkable films, including Sidney
Poitier’s first film, the racial drama No Way Out (1950); a scathing look at
138 CLEOPATRA (1963)