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| Liz Taylor and Laurence Harvey |
BUTTERFIELD 8 (1960). Director: Daniel Mann.
"
Every awful moment of it, I Loved!" -- Gloria.
Gloria Wandrous (Elizabeth Taylor) is a model and good-time girl who has a male best friend, Steve (Eddie Fisher), who may be in love with her, to the consternation of his girlfriend, Norma (Susan Oliver). Gloria begins an affair with an unhappily married man named Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey of
Summer and Smoke) and is convinced that her sordid liquor-and-sex past is over, that she has found true love at last. But there is still the wife, Emily (Dina Merrill) to deal with, and more than one ugly misunderstanding ...
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| Eddie Fisher and La Liz |
Butterfield 8 is undoubtedly a sanitized, cliff notes version of John O'Hara's 1935 novel, and has apparently been updated to the late 1950's. Gloria is not an especially sympathetic character (nor Weston) until she reveals to Steve what happened to her in her childhood in a powerful sequence. Like something out of Harvey's film
Room at the Top, Weston has apparently married for a good job and social position, although his wife seems to blame her own family for making things too easy for him. Taylor gives a very good performance, and won an Oscar for her portrayal. Harvey is also excellent, and there's good work from Merrill, Oliver, Kay Medford as a motel proprietor, Carmen Mathews as Emily's mother, and especially Mildred Dunnock as Gloria's mother and Betty Field as her very blunt best friend, Frances. Eddie Fisher, who was married to Taylor at the time (after leaving Debbie Reynolds for her), gives a respectable performance.
Verdict: Good performances and some good dialogue lift this a notch above the soap opera level. ***.
I agree, Bill, this one is soapy and glossy and entertaining (love the quote you called out--perfect!) --and Taylor is beautiful and totally in-charge of the proceedings. Though she hated the movie--it was beneath her talents after Giant and Place in the Sun and Cat--she really is marvelous here, if not 100% Oscar worthy. What a star!! I have this one in my collection and now will pull it off the shelf again, thanks to you!
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I'm sure you'll enjoy it all over again. I agree that Taylor didn not neccesarily deserve an Oscar for this, although she is very good, anbd you're right that she was furioujs about having to be in the movie, sipposedly to take advantage of all the publicity about her and Fisher and poor Debbie Reynolds. Fisher's acting career never amounted to much, unfortunately for him.
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