Cleopatra was once rendered unto Caesar in a rug, but today she is wrapped up in an insurance policy. Before 20th Century-Fox began filming Cleopatra early this fall, the studio spent an estimated $390,000 in premiums for a Lloyd's of London standard policy covering possible delays. Then production got under way in a spectacular, 8½-acre, open-air reproduction of Alexandria, just west of London. But in the title role, Elizabeth Taylor turned out to be little more than queen for a day.
An abscessed tooth put Liz in the hospital. While she recuperated last week in California, her bright-eyed three-year-old daughter Liza Todd remained behind in London to keep up the side, dressed herself in Ptolemaic Merry Mites as if to prove that she might at least have played Cleopatra as a tot. Meanwhile with shooting at a dead stop, Lloyd's was faced with what will be the largest claim —at least $2,800,000—ever made against the insurers of a motion picture.
Sticky Patch. Film insurance has, in fact, been a frisky business lately. Lloyd's several other English firms and San Francisco's Fireman's Fund Insurance Co.—the only American underwriter in the field—have been slogging about in what one English expert calls "a rather sticky patch." The death of Tyrone Power during Solomon and Sheba caused the biggest settlement in history: Fireman's Fund paid United Artists $1,219,172. The vaguely defined illnesses that put France Nuyen out of Suzie Wong cost the insurance companies nearly half a million-when Audrey Hepburn fell from a horse in Mexico early last year, breaking her back and delaying The Unforgiven for six weeks, Fireman's Fund paid $250,000; Kay Kendall's fatal illness necessitated a $106,000 payoff to the producers of Once More, With Feeling.
Despite 1960's troubles, the underwriters will all show their customary profit this year. Movie insurance turns on a working combination of independent brokers who know show business and glam-ourproof actuaries who know just what table the show must go on. They protect themselves with .such features as the "48hour clause franchise" (no payoff if shooting is held up less than three days) they raise premiums to cover special risks: film versions of Broadway plays are often expensive because groups of stars are generally on-camera at the same time and if one is out the whole production is stopped; similarly, if the plot depends mostly on the lead, up goes the premium because it is more difficult to "shoot around" a sick star.
Insurance men have played their part in show business at least since Go-for-Broker Arthur Stebbins, nephew of 20th Century-Fox's former Board Chairman Joe Schenck, talked Mack Sennett into taking a $500,000 policy on cross-eyed Ben Turpin to protect Sennett if Turpin's eyes should decide to go straight. Self-proclaimed originator of "the scarface policy," Stebbins later arranged insurance for Eddie Cantor's eyes, Jimmy Durante's nose, Marlene Dietrich's legs. Of course, the real purpose was publicity, and for sheer newsworthiness no policy before or since has been able to touch the masterpiece Lloyd's once wrote to cover bosomy Evelyn West and her "treasure chest."