Egypt in C20: At the Movies

The second of this series focusing on actresses who played Cleopatra in the twentieth century (see the first here) focuses on the film starring the marvellous Theda Bara.

The director was J. Gordon Edwards and it also featured Fritz Leiber and Thurston Hall. It was filmed in the Summer of 1917 and was released in October of the same year.

Both publicity, sets and costumes were lavish.30,000 people were employed in the making of the film as well as 2,000 horses in total Fox spent $50,000 on sets.

 Publicity stated that ancient prophecies had predicted that Theda would play Cleopatra.

She makes a wonderful, exotic and mysterious Cleopatra, if the surviving footage and publicity materials are anything to go by.