Intolerance (1916)
Director: D.W. Griffith
Studio/Distributor: Wark Production Company/Triangle Studios
Budget: $2 million
Domestic Gross: N/A

Director D.W. Griffith's expensive, most ambitious silent epic film masterpiece overtook his earlier The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was the previous record-holder of "most expensive film" (at $110,000). Both films were milestones and landmarks in cinematic history - and regarded as two of the greatest films of the silent era. This film was financed using the profits of Griffith's earlier film. Unlike Birth, however, Intolerance - with an astronomical budget of almost $2 million, became the first multi-million dollar box-office 'bomb' in film history. Griffith's Triangle Studios suffered from poor box-office receipts, and went bankrupt, and Griffith himself was personally burdened by debts for almost two decades.

The most costly elements of this early blockbuster were in the Babylonian segments which had the largest set ever constructed for a film. The excessive expense of 4,000 extras, and the orgy scene (priced at $200,000 alone) threatened to doom the film's production. It was also commercially unsuccessful in the US, partially due to the financial burden of having full orchestration accompany the film.

The mammoth, melodramatic film was subtitled: "A Sun-Play of the Ages" and "Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages." All of the four widely separate, yet paralleled stories spanning several hundreds of years and cultures were held together by themes of intolerance, man's inhumanity to man, hypocrisy, bigotry, religious hatred, persecution, discrimination and injustice achieved in all eras by entrenched political, social and religious systems. The disparate storylines were:

• the Modern Story in early 20th century America
• the French Huguenots at the time of their persecution and slaughter in 1572
• the destruction of Prince Belshazzar's Babylon by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC
• the story of Jesus in ancient Judea

In Griffith's radically non-linear, interwoven hybrid film, he simultaneously cross-cut (or "switchbacked") between the four segments over great gaps of space and time - there were over 50 transitions between the segments. As the film reached its suspenseful climax, the tension built as the transitions increased in tempo. This complex, sometimes baffling, unwieldy construction, and its three hour length partially contributed to its failure. One of the major reasons it bombed was because of timing - its pacifist themes (in its closing segment) helped to encourage its unpopular reception just prior to the US entrance into the Great War (World War I).

Freaks (1932)
Director: Tod Browning
Studio/Distributor: MGM
Budget: $311,000
Domestic Gross: N/A

This disturbing and bizarre film was Tod Browning's follow-up to his horror smash hit Dracula (1931). Browning had run away to join the circus when he was 16 years old, influencing his work, and had directed two other circus-related films: The Show (1927) and The Unknown (1927). After this film, Browning's career would never be the same - he directed only a few more films through 1939 before retiring.

This cult film redefined the concepts of beauty, love, and abnormality, but was so disturbingly ahead of its time that audiences stayed away in huge numbers, and it was even banned for 30 years in England. MGM was so embarrassed and horrified by the film's premise that it withdrew the film after its initial release, and sold off the film to exploitative, second-rate distributors who truncated it, toured it and renamed it Nature's Mistakes. To the studio's dismay, the film was both a financial disaster and a critical failure.

Taglines and posters shamelessly promoted the film: "Can a full grown woman truly love a midget?" "Do Siamese twins make love?" "What sex is the half-man, half-woman?" The film avoided being exploitative by establishing itself as sympathetic towards the "freaks," explaining in the apologetic prologue that as otherwise normal people, they have through the ages been unfairly considered "an omen of ill luck or representative of evil," forcing them to adopt a code. Any crime committed against any one of them will be considered a crime against all of them.

The morality play was about a circus sideshow and its odd clique of "freaks," comprised of real-life malformed people, such as dwarves, androgynous hermaphrodites, Siamese twins (Daisy and Violet Hilton), a "living torso" (Prince Randlan, a man without limbs who slithered on the ground), a half-man (Johnny Eck with only the upper half of his body), a bearded woman, pinheads, and others. The film told a tale about a cold-hearted, full-sized, high-wire trapeze artist Cleopatra (Baclanova) who seduced and married a circus sideshow midget named Hans (Harry Earles), hoping to inherit his wealth by poisoning him, and then running off with her boyfriend and circus strongman Hercules (Victor). After the film's infamous and macabre "Wedding Feast" scene (with the unforgettable chant: "Gooble Gobble! We accept her, we accept her, one of us, one of us!"), she incurred the wrath of the tightly knit, loyal group of "nature's aberrations," including Hans' fiancee Frieda (Daisy Earles), who set out to avenge their compatriot in a truly horrifying climax that played itself out in a muddy rainstorm.

Duck Soup (1933)
Director: Leo McCarey
Studio/Distributor: Paramount
Budget: N/A
Domestic Gross: N/A

Although most critics have rated this absurdly funny film as one of the Marx Brothers' best comedies, it was also considered a very subversive political satire (and banned in Italy by Mussolini). Groucho headlined as Freedonia's prime minister Rufus T. Firefly who went to war because he was called an 'upstart' by the ambassador of the neighboring Sylvania. The film was filled with non-stop verbal humor, anarchic set-pieces and visual gags, without any of the solo musical routines that were found in their other features.

At the time of its release, this short feature film was a commercial failure at the box-office, although actual statistics about its monetary take are unavailable. American audiences in the early 1930s were put off by the cynical and scathing attitudes toward war, politics and nationhood displayed in the film. As a result, it became the last of five films the Marx Brothers made with Paramount, when their contract wasn't renewed. However, they were picked up by MGM - and two years later, starred in the very successful MGM film A Night at the Opera (1935), with a more predictable and subdued plot.

A Damsel in Distress (1937)
Director: George Stevens
Studio/Distributor: RKO
Budget: $1 million
Worldwide Rentals: $1.5 million

This musical comedy (with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and based on a P.G. Wodehouse story) was best known as the first Fred Astaire/RKO film to not feature Ginger Rogers, after they famously teamed up together in Flying Down to Rio (1933) through their previous last joint appearance in Shall We Dance (1937). It was also the first Astaire film to be a box-office flop. To make up for their miscalculation, RKO quickly recast the celebrated dance team of Astaire and Rogers in the next year's Carefree (1938).

In Ginger's place was an inept dancer/singer -- 19 year-old starlet Joan Fontaine (as Astaire's love interest Lady Alyce Marshmorton, the daughter of an English Earl), along with radio stars George Burns and Gracie Allen as themselves. Fontaine appeared in one song/walk routine with Astaire, called "Things Are Looking Up".

The film received two Oscar nominations (including Best Art Direction) and won choreographer Hermes Pan an Academy Award Oscar for Best Dance Direction for the "Fun House" dance sequence titled "Stiff Upper Lip".

The Conqueror (1956)
Director: Dick Powell
Studio/Distributor: RKO Radio Pictures
Budget: $6 million
Domestic Gross: $4.5 million
Worldwide Gross: $12 million
Rentals: $4.5 million

This much-troubled, lavish epic production from RKO, better titled "The Genghis Khan Story," was heralded with taglines: "Spectacular as its barbaric passions and savage conquests!" and "They conquered each other and then the world" - little knowing that the phrases would become true in unexpected ways. Musical dancer/crooner Dick Powell directed (it was his second film as director after Split Second (1953)). It was executive-produced by the notoriously-eccentric studio head Howard Hughes (his next-to-last film along with Jet Pilot (1957)), already famous for the film fiasco related to The Outlaw (1943), who was running the studio into the ground with a series of self-indulgent and expensive flops.

Filmed on location near St. George, Utah (in Snow Canyon) close to nuclear weapons testing grounds in Nevada (at Yucca Flat), the radioactive side-effects eventually were hypothetically linked to the deaths of the major stars and the film's director. (Additional exposure to the radioactive earth occurred when 60 tons of it was shipped back to Hollywood by Hughes for additional reshoots). Filming was also plagued by a threatening flash flood, and searing 120 degree heat which affected the actors with heavy makeup and costuming. Reportedly guilty about the demise of so many related to the film, the increasingly-reclusive Hughes bought up all copies of this film and Jet Pilot (for $12 million) and kept them from public view for 17 years, until 1974, when Paramount secured the rights and it was broadcast on TV.

In this troubled early Cinemascope production (with four cinematographers), John Wayne was horribly miscast as Mongolian 12th century warlord conqueror Genghis Khan (or Temujin) (Marlon Brando was originally considered for the role), with Agnes Moorehead as his mother Hunlun, and Susan Hayward as pretty red-haired Tartar love interest Princess Bortai (who Wayne coveted, as he said: "I feel this Tartar woman...is for me...and my blood says...take her" and later, "She is a woman -- much woman!"). This "Oriental western," made with a cast of thousands, actually looked like there were only 40-50 in wide-shots, and included buxom harem dancers and an Oriental-sounding score (by Victor Young).

The preposterous script, coupled with Wayne's wooden (often with cowboyish drawling) and monotonous delivery of the inane dialogue (Sample: "You're beautiful in your wrath. I shall keep you, Bortai!") and his horrible makeup (slanty eyes and a "Charlie Chan" mustache) made for some campy moments. Bortai's forced rape scene by Temujim was modified due to the demands of the censoring Breen Office - in his brutal grasp, Temujim was forced to claim: "Know this, woman, I take you for wife!" Critics quickly denounced the film as unintentionally hilarious, although Hughes claimed it was one of his masterpieces and heralded the film with an expensive marketing campaign. It was one of the higher-grossing films of its year, but it couldn't recoup all of his unprecedented costs.

Cleopatra (1963)
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Studio/Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Budget: $44 million
Domestic Gross: $48 million
Non-USA Gross: $14 million

The much-heralded Joseph L. Mankiewicz film, shot on location in Rome, brought together the explosive pairing of Elizabeth Taylor as the Queen of Egypt (from 51 B.C. to 30 B.C.) and future husband Richard Burton as Marc Antony, who brought more headlines with their blossoming romance than the budget problems. It proved to be a tremendous financial disaster for 20th Century Fox, headed by Darryl Zanuck, and the entire studio system.

Violet-eyed Taylor (after her Oscar nomination as steamy Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)), secured a contract with 20th Century Fox in October 1959 to star in this film - and she simultaneously became the highest-paid performer in the history of Hollywood at $1 million for a single picture, the first Hollywood star to do so. Her costume wardrobe (of about 5 dozen costumes) was budgeted at almost $200,000, and with numerous cost over-runs, two directors (the first director was Rouben Mamoulian, who resigned in early 1961), extravagant sets and thousands of costumes for the cast, the film was the most expensive up to that time at a record $44 million (in adjusted dollars, about $300 million). It was also the longest, commercially-made American film released in the US - at 4 hours and 3 minutes. Another expensive consideration was Taylor's contractual insistence that the film be shot using the 70 mm Todd AO-process developed by her husband.

20th Century Fox's monumentally-unwieldy epic was plagued by difficulties during the long shooting schedule, including indulgent star Elizabeth Taylor's long illness with meningitis and then another near-death illness (pneumonia) that forced an emergency tracheotomy (and a visible neck scar), the rebuilding of expensive sets in Rome's Cinecitta Studios when the production was moved there from the original shooting location of Pinewood Studios in London, a highly-publicized adulterous affair between Taylor (who had earlier 'stolen' Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds) and Richard Burton, an extensive script re-write, a cast and crew of thousands, a defection of two highly-distinguished stars from the film (Peter Finch as Julius Caesar and Stephen Boyd as Marc Antony), and escalating runaway costs (from an original budget of $2 - $6 million to well over $40 million). When the filming was suspended in mid-1961 after a year in London, $6 million had been spent with only 12 minutes of usable footage.

After the lavish film was completed with some very impressive and spectacular set-pieces, the six-hour epic had to be seriously cut (almost in half), resulting in a choppy, disjointed and fragmented film of over 4-hours. Since it was a lengthy film, theatre owners rationalized the $5.50 per ticket charge - three times more than normal for 1963. However, 20th Century Fox was forced to sell off its backlot to developers in the area of LA's Century City when the film bombed. Producer Darryl Zanuck ordered an additional 21 minutes cut from the film, and it received a questionable Academy Awards Best Picture nomination. The studio claimed that the film eventually went on to become the year's highest-grossing film, despite its heavy financial losses and astounding price-tag (due in part to large and expensive lawsuits in the film's wake).

Fox was saved from complete financial disaster only by the release of the fact-based war epic The Longest Day (1963) - an all-star re-creation of the events surrounding D-Day, and the blow was also softened by the unexpected success of The Sound of Music (1965). A TV documentary was made to chronicle the epic film and its lasting impact: Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood (2001).