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Cleopatra 1963, Trek influences??

ItsGreen

ItsGreen

Captain
Captain
Was flipping channels and Cleopatra (1963) with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was on.
There was one scene where Mark Antony was sitting at a festival drinking and a dance toupe came in with a green male dancer.
This scene reminded me somewhat of the scene in "The Cage" with Pike.
Cleo_Green_Guy.jpg

Also note this Egyptian character....looks like a Vulcan or Romulan to me!
Cleo_Roman.jpg

Wondering if Roddenberry saw this film and took some ideas from it? Green dancer/Orian slave girl, Roman/Romulan/Vulcan look of the species??
 
The Vina dance scene was surely influenced by "Oriental decadence" tropes in movies/TV in general; this movie could've been a specific influence, or could've just been one more iteration of the more general trope being drawn on. Green has been a cliched color for aliens since at least the 1940s, so that's the most likely source of Vina's coloration (note that Spock's makeup is also greenish -- although that's because the originally envisioned red color didn't look right in black and white -- and the original Klingon makeup is greenish-brown). Before it was appropriated by science fiction, though, the term "little green men" was used to refer to faerie folk, leprechauns, and the like. The dancer in Cleopatra is evidently meant to be a faun or satyr, a magical creature of the forest, so that's probably why he's green.

As for the haircut, that's a Roman style, so naturally it would show up in Cleopatra -- and of course the Romulans were Romans in space. It's a bit coincidental that Spock ended up with the same haircut before the Romulans were created, but Roddenberry wasn't the hairstylist. He would've had final say, but it's not like it would've been his job alone to design Spock's haircut. And of course Spock initially had a somewhat shaggier look that gradually evolved into smooth bangs like those in your photo, which argues against that character being the original inspiration.
 
I always get a kick outta seeing John Hoyt (Dr. Boyce) playing a rather bitchy and tempermental Cassius. The whole supporting cast is rather interesting as well; you have Archie Bunker and MI6's Q as senators in the curia.

As far as the influences, I think it's just a coincidence that there's some similarities.
 
^As I said, there's a whole tradition of such dance scenes in vintage movies. Any two that happen to resemble each other are probably both drawing on the same tradition, rather than referencing each other directly. The green bodypaint is the only thing that suggests a link between these two in particular, but that could be coincidental. When there are that many instances of a certain trope, it's likely that you can find two that accidentally have some specific attribute in common.
 
...And reminiscent of belly dancers and slave girls in countless films/shows set in "the exotic Orient" or the Middle East (which '60s Hollywood saw as pretty much interchangeable). We Trek fans see that kind of costuming and scenery and hear that kind of music and we think of "The Cage," but more mainstream '60s audiences would've recognized that scene in "The Cage" as emulating belly-dancer and harem-girl scenes in general.
 
plynch said:
That dance scene looks VERY similar.
Click to expand...


I can't see video here at work, but if I recall correctly, Susan Oliver had to come up with her own choreography. Maybe she was influenced by this huge, then-recent movie along with GR and others.
 
Thanks for that trailer! Hilarious! The hyperbole! GREATEST THING EVER CREATED BY MAN!!!

And it looks ridiculous now. And no offense, but Liz Taylor is stunning, but when she opens that mouth, the speaking voice, uh, no. Maybe for a fanfilm, someone could dub in Jennifer Lien?
 
The green dancer in Cleopatra is even made up with arched eyebrows and horns, so yes, he's probably supposed to represent a faun(satyrs were Greek) from Roman mythology.
 
FormerLurker said:
The green dancer in Cleopatra is even made up with arched eyebrows and horns, so yes, he's probably supposed to represent a faun(satyrs were Greek) from Roman mythology.
Click to expand...
Ah, so that's it! I always wondered what the difference was between a faun and a satyr. I thought maybe satyrs were just horny fauns.
 
I'm sure someone will tell me I'm not using the terms properly, but I usually consider a Satyr as the male of the species and a Fawn as the female.

Sincerely,

Bill
 
ZapBrannigan said:
plynch said:
That dance scene looks VERY similar.
Click to expand...


I can't see video here at work, but if I recall correctly, Susan Oliver had to come up with her own choreography. Maybe she was influenced by this huge, then-recent movie along with GR and others.
Click to expand...

About Oliver's dancing, the following is from http://startrekhistory.com/cagepage.html by way of a 1988 Starlog interview:

For the Orion Slave Girl sequence, Oliver would be required to dance very well - and seduce 'Captain Pike' "One of the unique things about this job was I wasn't really a dancer" she admited "They had a choreographer work with me a solid week, every day, before I begin filming. There were different faces in this role, and the green girl was the most challenging".
Click to expand...
Oliver must have been a quick study, as she sold all that particular role demanded.
 
Redfern said:
I'm sure someone will tell me I'm not using the terms properly, but I usually consider a Satyr as the male of the species and a Fawn as the female.
Click to expand...

A fawn is a baby deer, not a mythological creature at all. A faun is a half-human, half-goat woodland deity from Roman mythology, capricious but sometimes helpful to humans (Mr. Tumnus from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was a faun, and Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream has often been portrayed as one). Whoever wrote that blog post Maurice linked to is confusing the two.

A satyr is a male companion spirit of Dionysus in Greek mythology, basically a perpetual party animal that spends his time drinking, carousing, and sexually pursuing women (generally maenads, their female counterparts). Satyrs were originally depicted as a mix of human and horselike traits, but when the Romans conflated them with fauns, they started getting portrayed like fauns.
 
That half-man, half-deer creature sounds like something out of Celto-Druidic mythology, anyway. It would therefore be something the Romans would have wanted their subjects to forget, not remember. How else would they become good Romans, then?
 
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