Karina: Welcome back to Love is a Crime. In our last episode, Walter Wanger was given a four month prison sentence for shooting Jennings Lang. It was the culmination of several years of chaos and humiliation for Walter. Professionally, he had fallen behind at the times. His previously sensitive thumb on the pulse of the culture had deadend. His laser sharp vision had become clouded with self pity, but by the time he emerged from the scandal a free man, Wanger's mind had cleared. He very smartly set to work developing films that would deal with his personal experience, address of the moment problems in American society and institutions, and capture the zeitgeist while also offering cutting edge entertainment.

Vanessa: In today's episode, we will explain how Walter Wanger rebuilt his career over the course of a decade, drawing on his personal experience to make some of the most socially conscious films of the 1950s leading to his role as the producer of the most spectacular, most expensive, most talked about film of the early 1960s, the Elizabeth Taylor starring "Cleopatra".

Karina: We'll also investigate what went so horribly wrong on "Cleopatra" that Walter felt he had no recourse, but to write a book about the films beyond tumultuous production. A book that would serve as the final epitaph to Walter's 40 year film career, while giving him an oblique opportunity to show that his attitudes towards relationships, monogamy, and women had, since his own adultery scandal, evolved. I'm Karina Longworth 

Vanessa: and I'm Vanessa hope. This is Love is a Crime

Karina: It was a big deal that Walter Wanger, Hollywood power player for decades was sent to prison at all. The conditions at the minimum security facility at Castaic Lake, 45 minutes north of the Bennett mansion, were relatively cushy, but for a man who had been the president of the Motion Picture Academy just a few years earlier, this was no vacation. Walter's experience opened his mind to the dehumanizing nature of incarceration. As his biographer, Matthew Bernstein explains 

Matthew Bernstein: The deprevations, the lack of privacy, freedom, the fixed hours for eating, the lack of any activities to do available to him or the inmates was shocking to him and he was amazed at how literate and accomplished so many of his fellow inmates were. You know, his previous conception of criminals in jail were, was stereotypical and formed largely by movies, including Hollywood movies he had created. 

Karina: In fact Walter and his producer friends spoke of the honor farm experience using the only frame of reference they shared first cinematic depictions of a life of crime. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "It's like a Warner Brothers movie." 

Karina: In his cell, Walter stewed over the media coverage of his crime and his current predicament.

Matthew Bernstein: And one of the striking things to me is that he actually thought the MCA talent agency where Jennings Lang worked had coordinated a massive campaign against him. And for the first time in his life, he became paranoid. Of course, there was great symbolism in the fact of a film producer of the old school shooting an agent in the early 1950s, because agents were becoming even more prominent and powerful in the industry and actually taking over some of the producer's role and power. 

Karina: On September 13th, 1952, Walter was released. The press was waiting outside the prison to snap pictures, and he used the spotlight to talk about prison reform. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "It's the nation's number one scandal. I want to do a film about it." 

Karina: But what the media really wanted to talk about was Walter's relationship status. When asked if he and his wife planned to reconcile, Walter referred the journalists to Joan. At least one newspaper headlined their story about this with the phrase, "Not sorry he shot agent." After prison Walter did move back into Joan's house. They did not divorce. Legally they remained married for another 13 years, but romantically, their marriage was over. Given that both had divorced before, after all they had been through why didn't they just make a clean break? 

Vanessa: I asked my mother about it and her answer was that Joan did not want to divorce Walter until he made money otherwise she was footing all the bills, but I would add that Joan was first and foremost taking the welfare of her children into consideration, putting her own ego and hurt feelings aside, and also looking after Walter. I was thinking about how an incident as traumatic as the one he put them through could have completely derailed him. Even with all the help and support he got financially from friends in the industry and Joan, without emotional support, most of us are done for, and Joan offered Walter emotional support too.

Karina: Walter found professional support at Monogram. Though still far from a major studio, by 1952 Monogram, under the label Allied Artists, was seeking to distinguish itself in a crowded B-movie marketplace by spending slightly more on each production and utilizing bigger stars. Allied Artists, Harold and Walter Mirisch, who had helped to pay Wanger's bail immediately after the shooting, went the extra mile to help him get back on his feet by giving him a producer's credit and salary on three films made in 1952, which he barely had anything to do with. His first post-prison passion project would be a prison drama called, "Riot in Cell Block 11." Walter wanted to show that imprisoned people were, but for a slight twist of fate, just like anyone in the audience watching the movie. This had been more or less the message of Walter's first film with Fritz Lang "You Only Live Once," which was 15 years old by the time Walter got out of prison, but Walter was a different person now, and Hollywood was different too. Now movies could be more gritty, more realistic and less optimistic. They could reflect the growing sense of paranoia in a Cold War world. 

Matthew Bernstein: And that sense of paranoia informed these three major films he made in the 1950s. "Riot in Cell Block 11" in 1954, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" in 1956, and then "I Want to Live" in 1958. With his first film out of prison "Riot in Cell Block 11," he was determined that the film would be done right because it was such a personal project. On this and "I Want to Live" with Susan Hayward in 1958 he was very involved in the scripting and preparing the film for production. He took in these films and the preparation of the point of view of the alienated outsider who was mistreated by society and the failure of America to live up to its ideals, but he still believed movies could make a difference in public opinion. It could enlighten people and change attitudes, and that's what he wanted to do with this. 

Vanessa: Walter wasn't just working from personal experience. In preparing "Riot in Cell Block 11", he traveled the country researching the state of the prison system. He was particularly impressed by the county jail in New Orleans and he dictated notes about his visit there. 

Walter Wanger: No guns, no billies, no uniforms. Remember this is a county jail. First timers, not more than 3%. The 10 men seemed very happy to have food and the entire atmosphere of the place, although that many very serious felons up to life and death. She was far better then the Los Angeles county, or the other ranch. The problem is so simple most people think when men go behind jail walls, they don't come out again. They do come out, so if they don't come out better than when they went in you're up against a very difficult problem because they are more anti- social than before and the tax payers have been paying $40 million a day for the training of these criminals to join the underworld. 

Karina: "Riot in Cell Block 11" was a hit in part because it was unlike any prison film that audiences had ever seen. 

Vanessa: It brought a new level of realism to the prison film rather than shooting on studio sets, Walter arranged with California Corrections for the film to be shot on location at Folsom Prison in an abandoned cell block for two weeks. Yes, it was a low budget film, but to add to its realism they chose to work with character actors or relative unknowns, not stars. They even used inmates at Folsom Prison as extras.

Karina: Within a few months after this film's release, Wanger was finally able to settle his longstanding debts and get the IRS off his back for good. His next move was to make one of the quintessential films about group think and paranoia in 1950s America, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", in which aliens gradually replaced an entire communities free thinking citizens with souless, brainless, homogenous, pod people. According to director, Don Siegel, the creative team behind "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" believed they were making a movie about a real problem. As he wrote in his autobiography quote, "many of our associates, acquaintances, and family were already pods."

Vanessa: People under McCarthy's red scare influence acting like conformist automatons taken over by an alien force and demanding you conform or else with something Walter was familiar with and could put into a pretty dynamic thriller like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". Just given the experiences that he had been through and feeling like an outsider, I can understand his paranoia and why he would find this material interesting. 

Karina: Surprisingly, "Body Snatchers" didn't get much attention on its original release. Siegel wrote that after he and Walter approved their final cut Allied Artists, quote, "edited out all the humor on the grounds that horror films weren't allowed to be funny." As a Siegal wrote, "I translated it to mean that in their pod brains, there was no room for humor." Walter was dismayed that the studio had promoted the movie as pure genre fare, and hadn't taken his suggestions to highlight the parallels between the story of pod people and the real problems of peer pressure and conformity, but airings on television would soon turn "Body Snatchers" into a cult classic and something better than that enduring re-makable IP. After "Body Snatchers," Wanger jumped ship from Monogram for RKO, but then his comeback was derailed by a heart attack. 

Vanessa: It was very serious and he said, he'd seen the angels. The doctors told Walter that he was never allowed to work again, and according to Joan that was the only time she's ever seen him cry.

Karina: Walter couldn't fathom a life without work. Instead of taking his doctor's orders and retiring after this heart attack, Walter joined Figaro, Joseph Mankiewicz's production label at United Artists. Wager wasn't lacking for inspiration, but few of his ideas seem to fall in line with what UA was looking for circa 1956. 

Matthew Bernstein: I think of Walter as kind of like a Rip Van Winkle when he gets to work with Joseph Mankiewicz and Figaro Productions, because he basically spent seven years from the time of "Joan of Arc" in 1948 through 1956, you know, far away from where the main action was where the high budget filmmaking was going on. And the rules for a semi independent producer like himself have had changed in a number of ways. A lot of the great movie stars of the period were their own producers they formed their own production companies. They didn't need someone like Walter to work with them, to get a film made. So Walter really didn't have many relationships with stars anymore, and at one point he got really frustrated and he said, I'm not saying I'm in sympathy with this system of not being able to make pictures without anybody in the world, but six stars, but that seems to be the plan everybody is dedicated to. I am trying to conform. 

Karina: Every one of his generation was annoyed by these changes to the industry. But what could they do? At least Walter had a sense of humor about the predicament, as he once joked, 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "You chaps just talk about agents. I'm the only one who ever did anything about them." 

Karina: Because of what Walter had done, most of the most valuable stars were unavailable to him. They were all signed to MCA. The one exception was Susan Hayward. Walter had discovered Hayward back in the mid forties and had cast her in her first important films, including "Smash-up, the Story of a Woman," in which Hayward played an alcoholic singer based on Bing Crosby's first wife, Dixie Lee. "Smashup" was a Walter Wanger film in the model of "Private Worlds." It was a social issue movie wrapped in lurid candy. Hayward gave a performance of spectacular heightened realism, and it would prove to be her breakout role resulting in her first Academy Award nomination. But before he could find another hit for her Wanger ran into his financial troubles and sold Hayward's contract to 20th Century Fox. There she flourished starring in one money-making film after another until her marriage to "Scarlet Street," supporting player, Jess Barker imploded leading Hayward to attempt suicide. Throughout both of their ups and downs, Susan and Walter had stayed in touch. She felt she owed her career to him and she promised to return the favor in any way she could. She was the perfect star for the movie that would turn out to be the last unqualified success of Wanger's career, "I Want to Live." Though infused with jazz and seductive post-noir aesthetics, "I Want to Live" is groundbreaking for the way it depicts the nitty gritty procedure of an execution. Based on the true story of Barbara Graham, a woman who had been executed at San Quentin in 1955 for her alleged role in a murder. "I Want to Live" was another deeply personal project for Walter. Walter saw in Graham, an actual femme fatale and fallen woman, and with a star like Susan Hayward playing her, he could transform an inherently antisocial character into someone the audience would sympathize with. Through Hayward as Graham, he could make the case that even people who do bad things don't deserve to have the state decide whether or not they live or die.

Vanessa: "I Want to Live" was a big hit and Hayward won the Oscar for best actress. Hayward studio, 20th Century Fox signed Wanger to a contract at the highest salary he had earned in years. This massive success seemed to harold another Walter Wanger comeback, but as was often the case in his life in Joan's, and in Hollywood, just when it seemed like he had climbed back to the top of the mountain, he realized that there was nowhere else to go, but down. Walter Wanger's next film would be his last.

Walter had been wanting to make a film about "Cleopatra" for years. Initially seeing the Egyptian story as the most epic version of one of his old sexed up orientalist pictures, then he optioned a book which made the case for "Cleopatra" as an intelligent empowered leader, Wanger came to see the Egyptian in the model of an archetype he knew well, the femme fatale. 

Matthew Bernstein: The femme fatale is of course a beautiful and dangerous woman who can lure a man to his death or downfall. The hero is drawn to her, falls in love with her, and she's mysterious and she's not domestic. You know, Walter saw "Cleopatra" as a brilliant, beautiful well-educated scheming character who seduced the leaders of the greatest empire of her time.

Karina: Wanger got the green light for "Cleopatra" at 20th Century Fox and he worked hard to convince them to hire the biggest female star in the world, Elizabeth Taylor, and to pay her an unprecedented salary of $1 million. But the project was calamitous from the start, a large part of the problem owed to the mismanagement of the studio, which was desperate for a hit when Walter first began working on "Cleopatra" in late 1958. Fox became more desperate over the course of the five years that it took to finish the movie and rushed the production in a number of ways that turned out to be insanely expensive. 

Walter Wanger: Well what we should've done Mr. Skouras should given this trailer a million dollars and give us a year to get ready. That's what should've happened. 

Vanessa: That's Walter talking to journalist, Joe Hyams, who would collaborate with Wanger on a book about the experience of making "Cleopatra". He's talking about Spyros Skouras who ran 20th Century Fox for 20 years and was deposed from his position during the "Cleopatra" debacle. "Cleopatra" has the reputation of having destroyed that studio, but as Matthew Bernstein puts it, Fox was complicit in its own destruction. 

Matthew Bernstein: So I may be biased, but when we're talking about "Cleopatra", I think 20th Century Fox was about 80% responsible for everything that went wrong and Walter was 20% wrong, in the wrong about it. You know, his contribution to the mess, arguably is that he was not able to get a completed script done in time to form the basis of budgets and operations. What made it awful and there's disaster was that the executives at 20th Century Fox insisted on starting production twice without a complete script.

Karina: First Fox pushed the Egyptian epic into production at Pinewood Studios outside London to take advantage of a program that offered financial incentives to American productions that provided work for British crew members. But it was an enormous challenge to replicate ancient Egypt in England. It was also freezing and Elizabeth Taylor, prone to sickness as it was, couldn't stay healthy in that climate. Though filming began around her by November 1960, director Rouben Mamoulian had shot everything he could without his star. In January, Mamoulian was replaced by Wanger's partner, Joseph Mankiewicz, who insisted on rethinking the film from page one. In March, 1961, Elizabeth Taylor was hospitalized with pneumonia. The most famous woman in the world was on the brink of death until an emergency tracheotomy saved her life. Between recovery from the surgery and the plastic surgery needed to remove the next scar, she would be out of commission for at least six months. The long layoff, as well as Mankiewicz's rethinking of "Cleopatra" as a kind of Freudian love triangle, required recasting Irish actor, Stephen Boyd had spent weeks filming as Mark Antony and had even been sent to Egypt on a publicity tour. Now Boyd was out. Walter would eventually close the deal to cast Richard Burton, a Welsh actor who had just won the Tony for playing King Arthur in "Camelot" on Broadway. And so doing Wanger shirt put into motion the biggest celebrity sex scandal of the air. Elizabeth Taylor's affair with Richard Burton on the set of a movie about world beating, bad idea love would spark an international public conversation about infidelity that revealed how much had changed in just a decade since Walter's own marriage and Joan's affair had made front page news.

Vanessa: In mid 1961, Fox agreed to allow director Joseph Mankiewicz to shoot "Cleopatra" entirely abroad in Rome and Egypt, because they were already spending "Cleopatra"'s expected profits Fox also set an immovable date for the shoot to begin whether the script was finished or not. 

Matthew Bernstein: They said we've got to start shooting in late September 1961, but Joseph Mankiewicz who took it over, he was directing the film by day and then writing the second half of the film by night. And because the studio insisted on starting before everything was set, they had no financial infrastructure to check on expenditures. They had no organizational support for the production. Fox executives blamed Walter for not pulling his weight around, not bossing people into making the film, but his whole approach to producing was not... You don't throw your power around or become a hatchet man, you, you have to encourage the creative artists to do their best work. You know, what's, what's going to happen if I start yelling at Joseph Mankiewicz? He's the only guy, he's directing it and he's writing it. So really Walter was in a situation of great responsibility without any authority, you know, Fox proceeded to blame him for everything that's wrong with the film.

Karina: Vanessa's mother, Stephanie, then 18 enrolled in school in Florence during the "Cleopatra" shoot. She saw the ways in which her father held the film together that the studio couldn't see. 

Vanessa: Walter used to have a kind of open door in his hotel living room and everyone from the director, Joe Mankiewicz, to the cinematographer Leon Shamroy, anybody, everybody, whoever had some difficulty going on, they would come to him to air their grievances. And from my mother's perspective, all of the difficulties of the movie and people's personal lives were completely intertwined. So, you know, Joe Mankiewicz was directing during the day, but staying up all night on amphetamines. Elizabeth Taylor had overslept or she was upset with her hairdresser. It was one drama after another. From my mom's point of view, Walter was in his element on a set of "Cleopatra". His strength was people and how he loved them and helped them. 

Karina: Walter wasn't to blame for "Cleopatra's" most famous problem. On January 22nd, 1962, Taylor and Burton filmed together for the first time. Walter memorialized the event in his diary. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "There comes a time during the making of a movie when the actors become the characters, they play. This merger of real personality into the personality of the role has to take place if a performance has to be truly effective. That happened today. While other sections of the scene were being filmed. I noticed Liz and Burton sitting next to each other on the sidelines, intently talking. When they were called they separated for a moment, then met on set in their proper places. The cameras turned and the current was literally turned on. It was quiet and you can almost feel the electricity between Liz and Burton."

Karina: Soon after, Mankiewicz asked Walter for a private conference and in the director's hotel room, Wanger's suspicions were confirmed. Taylor and Burton were in fact having an affair. Even as Liz and her then husband Eddie Fisher, presented a united front to Walter's face, even as Richard's wife Sibyl arrived in Rome to lay claim to her man. As shaken as Walter was and concerned about finishing the film, a visit to Elisabeth's villa put everything in perspective. 

Vanessa: Interior Elizabeth Taylor's, Villa Rome.

Elizabeth Taylor [Reenactment]: "I feel dreadful. Sybil is such a wonderful woman." 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "There are tides to life and love. They ebb and flow. It sounds corny, I guess, but it's hard to swim against the tides."

Elizabeth Taylor [Reenactment]: "Funny, you should say that, Richard calls me ocean, but I really love Eddie. I hate feeling so confused." 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "We all love you, Liz. I promise you'll get everything you want." 

Elizabeth Taylor [Reenactment]: "But what do I want? My heart feels as though it's hemorrhaging." 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "Believe me, I know. I was no expert in solving a similar problem myself." 

Karina: Over the next couple of months, the Taylor Burton affair became incredibly public. Italian tabloids published photos of them kissing and Vatican city's weekly newspaper denounced Liz for quote, 'erotic vagrancy.' Walter was concerned about what this would mean for "Cleopatra" and at his urging Taylor issued a statement saying her marriage to Eddie Fisher was over. Though Fisher ultimately lost his wife, Wanger understood why Eddie had stuck around and fought for her for so long. Eddie believed that Burton was the bad guy, that he had misled Elizabeth, and that he, Eddie, had to essentially protect his wife from the devil. Walter understood this because this was exactly what he had felt during what he called 'my little MCA situation.' 

Vanessa: It would have been natural for Walter to side with the cuckolded husband and demonize the adulterous woman as he had when confronted with the infidelity scandal of Ingrid Bergman in 1950, but this time he could empathize with Elizabeth Taylor. He had nothing but respect for her, especially once the press really started going after her for the Burton affair. Walter was eager to defend her. 

Walter Wanger: She has so much more guts, so much more far to ingenuity then all the people that were passing her. And the way she would stand up for a year and then she doesn't run you know? She's been exploited and abused pillar. That's accredited and hung, and crucified and she comes up small. And so you know. 

Karina: In most of his movies made post-prison, Wanger had used empathy to humanize outsiders. Writing about "Cleopatra," Walter was able to put Elizabeth's experience in context with an assist from his own experience. 

Walter Wanger [Reenactment]: "The American public pretends to be puritanical, but the immense popularity of the people publications and fan magazines belies the public puritanism. The same studios, which require a morals clause in the contracts of all employees from stars to executives, make motion pictures, which glamorize the same immorality their contracts forbid. These are hypocritical times when men are permitted to have more than one love at a time and women are castigated for the same kind of behavior. I believe that Elizabeth loves two men and who's to say that a woman can't love two men at the same time, any more than a man can't love two women at the same time. I believe that Elizabeth is envied by most of the women in the world because she follows woman's true nature. She goes where her heart leads her. Most people don't dare to follow their heart, and in envy attack those who do." 

Vanessa: What's amazing about the Walter of the "Cleopatra" production years is how much his awful macho rage against my grandmother for having had an affair had disappeared and he shows in how he treats and speaks with Elizabeth Taylor that he thinks women can be forgiven and understood, and that it's possible to love two men and that that's not a reason to punish a woman. What's moving about the sentiment of Walter's toward Elizabeth Taylor, who only goes where her heart leads her, is that you imagine in the back of his mind, he's also thinking about Joan. 

Karina: The affair between Taylor and Burton was producing incredible footage. The actors funneled their passion and an angst into their performances, such as in the scene in which Elizabeth in character slashes Antony's chamber to shreds and anger after he leaves her. That was shot the day the newspapers printed a quote from Burton claiming he'd never leave his wife Sibyl. But the chaos surrounding the couple also caused delays, such as when Elizabeth emerged from a long weekend with a bruised face. There were conflicting stories as to how the bruises got there. Taylor claimed a minor car accident was at fault. Burton attributed the bruising to the emergency effort to pump her stomach after a suicide attempt. The only thing that was certain was that Elizabeth wouldn't be able to film until the bruises faded causing yet more delays that the production couldn't afford. And yet Walter defended Elisabeth's expensive absences. He admired Taylor's big heart so much that he didn't really mind if her passions, whether for Burton or her children, or even her pets led to absences. Even though those absences would ultimately cost millions of dollars. Walter knew and Elizabeth Taylor knew that she was so unique she was worth waiting for. Elizabeth Taylor was indispensable to "Cleopatra". Fox needed someone who was dispensable to blame for all the money they were losing. And in June 1962, the studio sort of fired Walter. They told him his contract would not be renewed and that his expense account was canceled, but he remained on location. 

Vanessa: A few weeks after the shoot wrapped Spyros Skouras was fired and Darryl F. Zanuck, the former head of the studio was reinstated. And that's when the scapegoating of Walter began in a big way. 

Matthew Bernstein: I mean, he was not allowed to sit in on post-production and watch the editing of the film once Darryl Zanuck took over. I mean, Zanuck wouldn't even let Mankiewicz work on post-production for awhile until he realized he needed to have Mankiewicz with him and they had to reshoot some of the battle scenes. And Walter was not invited to the premiere. He produced the film. He was not invited to that premiere in June 1963. And Fox was blaming him publicly for extravagance and effectiveness, everything that was wrong with the film and Zanuck was getting all this publicity for saving the studio and saving the film. And you know, if you're a Walter Wanger and you're shut out of the film and you're not getting credit for it, that has got to be intensely frustrating and aggravating. 

Karina: While stewing in his frustration, Walter sat down to dictate his thoughts and excerpts from the diary he had kept during the multi-year saga to bring the movie to the screen into journalist, Joe Hyams' tape recorder. Movie publicity usually relied on suppressing most of the nitty gritty details about how movies were made, how much money they cost to make, and what stars were really up to behind the scenes. But these tapes that Walter recorded about "Cleopatra" would break all the old rules and ensure that the saga of "Cleopatra" would become for better or for worse unforgettable.

The tapes from ultra sessions with Joe Hyams became the starting point for a book called, "My Life with 'Cleopatra'" co credited to Walter and Hyams. Walter's goal with the book was to tell his side of the story to combat the version fed to the press by 20th Century Fox. The tapes reveal that Walter was in a fragile state of mind, professionally adrift feeling as though he had been discarded by the studio he had worked so hard for, Walter's situation was as he put it really depressing. 

Walter Wanger: In these last five months the first time I have been really without work in all my life and it's been a horrible period. I've had an opportunity to think much too much about myself and my past and my present and to worry about my future. There so many things that I want to do when I read the stupidity of analysis as printed in the press, I were to shout and do something about it my style at my age, again start at the bottom to retain my independence and to have some self-respect. I'm even perfectly ready to do that. 

Karina: This book would be the first of its kind. Never before had a film producer gone behind a studio's back to tell his story of conflict with that studio in book form. Walter had frequently seen himself as an independent maverick working inside the system to try to change Hollywood movies for the better. Now he was speaking directly to the public as to why one specific, very high profile production had gone bad excerpts from "My Life with 'Cleopatra,'" first appeared in the Saturday Evening post two months before the movie's premiere. 20th Century Fox was not prepared for the expose and they were shocked that Walter would make his grievances so public. But Matthew Bernstein argues that the studio was absolutely complicit in the book. If they hadn't done what they did, Walter wouldn't have had to do what he had to do. 

Matthew Bernstein: If Walter Wanger had been involved in the post-production of the film, the marketing of the film, if he had been properly credited, he would never have written that book. He wouldn't have had time to. He wouldn't have had reason to and, you know, the pillaging of Walter by the Fox executives was based on a fundamental disagreement about what producers are supposed to do on set. And again, Walter was very, hands-off let talent do what they do, encourage them and Fox was more kind of take charge and, you know, you can be a producer in any number of different ways. But they have this fundamental disagreement, which to them Walter looked like he was negligent. He was not hands-on. He was not doing his job, but from his standpoint, and this was the standpoint he learned about when he assisted Jesse Lasky in the twenties at Paramount, he was doing exactly what he needed to do and what he wasn't able to do. He couldn't do because they wouldn't let him. 

Karina: Walter's book achieved its purpose in that it drew the ire of the Fox executives who had taken advantage of him, particularly Spyros Skouras. 

Matthew Bernstein: He was livid. He was like, how dare you tell these stories, uh, and, and show people the behind the scenes operations of the studio, you're demystifying Hollywood and showing it to be an incompetent place. So the book was trying to set the record straight, it was also promoting the film and as he said, he really wanted to be promoting Elizabeth Taylor as the star. 

Karina: Of course, the thing that made "My Life with 'Cleopatra'" sellable was that it offered an inside glimpse into the conditions under which the most famous adulterous couple in the world had gotten together. The same thing, drove audiences to see the movie in droves. "Cleopatra" was by far the highest grossing movie of 1963, making far more at the box office than several films that have a much better reputation today, including "How the West Was Won," and "Bye Bye Birdie." But those movies hadn't taken half a dozen years to make, and "Cleopatra"'s gross was still less than the film's final budget. "Cleopatra" would be the last film which Walter would produce. Though he would keep trying to get various projects off the ground, he didn't want to live in the center of the industry anymore. He recorded the tapes for his "Cleopatra" book in a part of Los Angeles that brought up bad memories and filled him with dread.

Walter Wanger: I can see the Beverly Hills City Hall with a tower its, its not a unknown to me and adjacent to the tower of it, Greek parking note that was buildt by MCA and the little God that they took from the city. What does all this represent? Certainly nothing I want. I feel I'm in the 7th cycle of Dante's Inferno.

Vanessa: On these tapes, Walter looks back at his life and candidly assesses where he's been and where he's going.

Walter Wanger: I have at last reached that age where I can see clearly the sham of what people call success and the extent to which people go to drive themselves. I know no one who is so misguided by pollution and enthusiasms as myself. I know no one who enjoys doing things for others and not having it was done for himself. I know no one with more vanity more pride and less restraint. I must say I have the last ten years left to be less emotional, to go over, to keep my mouth shut and sit and doing nothing. This of course came about 10 or 11 years ago when I was first to find a way of watching time pass without accomplishing anything.

Karina: Walter needed a change of scenery, so he moved to New York where he began dating a much younger woman named Aileen Mehle, who wrote a syndicated gossip column under the name Suzy. On his "Cleopatra" tapes, Walter spoke incredibly candidly about their relationship and her similarities to Joan. 

Walter Wanger: The comparison is uncanny as if I uh projected back 25 years or more or is it that ones taste varies very little. And one follows a format. We talked so much about being civilized, yet what a lustful, animalistic passion this is and how beautiful and how uncivilized and yet, uh, how mental and how physical at the same time. Uh, what can this lead to? We both feel this is folly and yet we both are enjoying it to the fullmost. 

Vanessa: Aileen really knew how to charm people and she lived like an old fashioned movie star. She slept late, she didn't go out much during the day, she was never in the sun. My mom loved the way Aileen talked. She would say things like 'now, darling, I have to talk to you about what you're doing because I have to write about it in my column, so you're either going to tell me now, or you're going to read about it later.' Apparently there was one night when Walter brought up the incident of shooting Jennings Lang and Aileen tried to comfort him and said, you know, you don't have to think about that anymore and you did what you did. It was a crime of passion. It was spur of the moment. And Walter was basically like, spur of the moment? I carried that gun around for a year. 

Karina: At 44, Aileen was 24 years Walter's junior. Walter started thinking about his history with younger women, some of whom he had had real relationships with including Joan, but like many Hollywood producers, he had also exploited young women. Treating youthful beauty as a resource to make movies more exciting and to prop up his own ego. He and the industry had used up starlets and discarded them when they passed a certain age. 

Walter Wanger: This weakness to be loved and to have attention and to attractived to young and beautiful women is something that has been a cancer in my system and well and I try to help people I find myself so involved. What am I a fraud, a liar, and a cheat. That's the way I wake up in the morning in the middle of the night. How can I have these emotional powers and this emotional drive and then at the same time analyze so presently how these poor girls are going to look a few years from now and how little I can do for them and how little possible for me to do and how much they expect from me. 

Vanessa: I think at the end of his life, it's a positive evolution that he could question himself and his power and his behavior, and wonder about these women who he may have taken advantage of, and then not been able to help in their careers or their lives. It's interesting that Walter was examining his behavior and asking these questions in the 1960s, because it's still a fundamental problem in Hollywood today. 

Karina: As Walter was taking stock, he saw a bright spot in his relationships with his daughters, Stephanie and Shelley. 

Vanessa: In looking back, Walter was extremely grateful for his two daughters, my mother and her sister, who he felt gave him reason to live even if he credits Joan with convincing him to have them in the first place when he didn't think he wanted children. It also seems that by the end of his life, Walter developed new levels of humility, empathy, and interest in being a good father. This helps explain why my mother felt so much love for him and forgiveness, despite his crimes and shortcomings. My mother described her life as the daughter of filmmakers to me when I was growing up as a constant rollercoaster, always up and down, and she hoped to steer me away from a career in film while instilling a love of movies at the same time. My mother experienced the bright side, but also the unfair burden of Walter's expectations for her long after his death, the desire to have her be great and make this huge impact in the world.

I think Walter hoped my mother would be able to do something with his legacy, that if he'd left her nothing else he'd left her that which shows you how much he imagined the good outweighing the bad, but my mother passed down the weight of living up to what Walter had wanted for her. My mom and her sister, Shelly, both adored Walter, and they feel he was responsible for much of how they view the world and especially for their love of books, of reading, and learning. I got the sense from my mother that having the privilege of an excellent education, which was really important to Walter, meant I should do something meaningful with it if I could. When I worked at the council on foreign relations, I came across Walter's piece in Foreign Affairs referring to movies as '120,000 Ambassadors.' Because I'm a documentary filmmaker who loves foreign films I did find it fascinating that during his tenure as president of the Academy, Walter had had a hand in creating the Oscar categories for best documentary and best foreign film. Also something, no one in our family knew about. I never got to meet Walter because he died before I was born, but I got to know who he was through my mother and in the various ways my life has connected or intersected with his past. 

Karina: In our next episode, we'll shift back to Joan Bennett. How did she deal with her husband's imprisonment for shooting her lover? As always she did what she had to do.

Love is a Crime is a Vanity Fair presentation in partnership with Cadence 13. Executive produced, created, written, and hosted by Vanessa Hope and Karina Longworth. Starring John Ham as Walter Wanger, and Lili Anolik from the podcast "Once Upon a Time in the Valley" as Elizabeth Taylor. 

Vanessa: Our executive producer is Chris Corcoran and our showrunner is Jacquelyn Jamjoom. Production support provided by Nico Steele, Julia Doyle, Tony Mantia, and Lindsey D Shoenholtz. Theme music composed by Lionel Cohen and Vybbes, audio produced and supervised by Shelby Comstock Britten and mixed by Gintas Norvilla and Rainhouse. Special thanks to Katey Rich from Vanity Fair and Julie Shen and Kelly Bales from Condé Nast. 

Karina: Love is a Crime was written by Vanessa Hope and Karina Longworth who consulted the following published sources in researching this episode. "The Bennetts: An Acting Family," by Brian Kellow, published by the University Press of Kentucky, used by permission from the University Press of Kentucky. "Walter Wanger Wanger, Hollywood Independent," by Matthew Bernstein published by the University of Minnesota Press, used by permission from University of Minnesota Press. "The Bennett Playbill," by Joan Bennett published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston used by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. The Joan Bennett estate and the Lois Kibbee estate. "My Life with 'Cleopatra'" by Walter Wanger and Joe Hyams published by Vintage. This episode includes an interview with Matthew Bernstein, archival clips sourced from the tapes from the Walter Wanger collection at the University of Wisconsin Madison, used by permission from the Joe Hyams estate and University of Wisconsin Madison, and excerpts from Walter Wanger's dictaphone tapes courtesy of Shelley Wanger. Fact checking by Laura Bullard.