The Millionairess

If Cleopatra so much as breaks even, Elizabeth Taylor will earn at least $7,000,000. A figure of this magnitude deserves to be savored and detailed. $1,725,000 in salary. Then 10% of most of the gross. This is not just the most money that anyone has ever been paid in the history of show business, more than doubling the $3,000,000 that William Holden siphoned out of the River Kwai. It is the most money that any employee has ever been paid for anything.

And where does this leave Richard Burton? Well, for his work in the same picture, he made $250,000. And if that seems grim enough, there is something even grimmer. In a burst of generosity some years ago, Liz gave her husband a 50% cut of her proceeds from the picture. So Eddie Fisher, who is still her husband, will make perhaps 14 times as much from Cleopatra as Richard Burton. He'll be rolling in money, but that ain't hay.

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