Charlton Heston directed and co-wrote this familiar story with his own cold, dead hand, out in the wilds of Almeria.
It was in fact the theatre version of ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ that gave Chuck his first break on Broadway in 1947, and he’d played Mark Anthony before, opposite Marlon Brando’s corpse in the 1953 version of ‘Julius Caesar’.
Almeria’s Alcazaba castle represented Caesar’s palace in Rome for the scenes when Mark Anthony and Octavius Caesar were still friends; the gardens where they discuss who controls what in the Empire were all shot in the gardens there, as was the gladiator fight.
Heston’s attempts to show his tender side in this film involve some early scenes where Anthony shows his decadence by wearing ear rings, which is almost as frightening as Heston’s nude scene early on, where the only thing between Charlton’s member and the audience is a curious kind of tiny curtain doubling up inadequately as a jockstrap.