Helen Gardner was among the first actors to form a motion picture production company, the Helen Gardner Picture Players. In 1912, she released her version of the story of Cleopatra. According to Felicia Feaster’s article at TCM (which has broadcast a restoration), this was one of the first feature-length films made in the United States, and one of the first films shows presented in a roadshow format: “Prints of the film were sent to provincial theaters, opera houses or town halls along with an advance-man, a lecturer-projectionist and a manager…Considered by many to be the cinema’s first ‘vamp,’ Gardner was thus well equipped to play the notoriously seductive Cleopatra.”

YouTube has a full-length version of Gardner’s Cleopatra, as well as this preview of an alternate score for the film.