Trivia

When Cecil B. DeMille was in pre-production on this film, he asked to screen the original Cleopatra (1917) with Theda Bara. No prints could be found in Los Angeles, so a copy was borrowed from the Fox office in New York. After DeMille viewed the film, it was sent back to Little Ferry, NJ. On 7/9/37 a fire at the storage facility destroyed almost all of Fox's known archived prints, most likely including "Cleopatra". The screening for DeMille's company, on 2/15/34, may have been the last time anyone saw the legendary film. However, on September 14, 2023, 42 seconds of extremely rare footage of the final act in which Cleopatra prepares to die as the Roman Legion marches upon her palace was procured from a 1920's toy film projector and presented on YouTube.

In 1934 the Hays Code was only just being implemented, so Cecil B. DeMille made sure to flaunt its restrictions while he was still legally able to do so. He opens the film with an apparently naked, but strategically lit, slave girl holding an incense burner in each hand as the title appears onscreen.

When she first started having discussions with Cecil B. DeMille about playing the part of Cleopatra, Claudette Colbert expressed a lot of unease about her climactic scene with an asp, being terrified of snakes. On the day the scene was to be filmed, DeMille had one of the largest snakes sent over from Los Angeles Zoo and approached Colbert on the set with it as she sat in costume on her throne. The actress was terrified and pleaded with him not to come any nearer with the enormous snake, whereupon DeMille produced the diminutive asp and said, "How about this instead?" Colbert was perfectly happy to film the scene with such a small snake.

The most popular movie at the US box office for 1934.

The film largely came about because Cecil B. DeMille's previous film, Four Frightened People (1934), which also starred Claudette Colbert, had been a huge flop. Paramount head Adolph Zukor wanted DeMille to replicate the success of The Sign of the Cross (1932) and told him he had to make another historical epic next with lots of sex in it.