Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934)

Cast: Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Henry Wilcoxon, Joseph Schildkraut, Ian Keith, Gertrude Michael, C. Aubrey Smith, Irving Pichel, Arthur Hohl, Edwin Maxwell, Ian Maclaren. Screenplay: Waldemar Young, Vincent Lawrence, Bartlett Cormack. Cinematography: Victor Milner. Art direction: Roland Anderson, Hans Dreier. Costume design: Travis Banton. Film editing: Anne Bauchens. Music: Rudolph G. Kopp.

Claudette Colbert's Cleopatra arrives rolled up in a rug and meets her end by clasping a rather limp garden snake to her bosom, and in between there's a lot of posing and tin-eared dialogue superimposed on the story told by Plutarch and Shakespeare. It won't do, of course, except for the camp extravagance of Hollywood awash in Cecil B. DeMille's usual sin, sex, and sadism. If the 1963 version of the story had been this entertainingly vulgar, it might have made money.