BUTTERFIELD 8 C
USA (109 mi) 1960 ‘Scope d: Daniel Mann
Apparently Elizabeth Taylor initially rejected this screen role, but eventually changed her mind in order to fulfill the final movie of her MGM contract which Taylor claimed made her “MGM chattel” for 18 years, freeing her up afterwards to earn one million dollars in salary for CLEOPATRA (1963). Despite winning the Academy Award for this performance, Taylor never warmed up to the material, allegedly throwing a drink in disgust the first time she watched it in a screening room. There are also rumors that Taylor garnered the Academy sympathy vote, as she was extremely ill with pneumonia and nearly died, where many felt she might never work again. It is true, Taylor had never lowered herself to this kind of trashy and tawdry material before, and despite providing an excellent performance, the film never rises to ever be about much of anything. What’s kind of interesting is seeing how this role was preliminary material for hurling barbs and playful insults in the bawdy drinking games in her next Academy Award winning performance, WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966). In both films, she works with her real life husbands at the time, providing explosive fireworks with Richard Burton in the latter, while Eddie Fisher is simply her foil here.
A note of interest, novelist John O’Hara’s name appears in the title credit, something rarely seen, adapted by John Michael Hayers, who wrote the screenplay for Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW (1954), and Charles Schnee, who wrote the screenplay for Howard Hawks’ RED RIVER (1948). There are some clever exchanges between characters, verbal barbs that pass for veiled insults or sexual banter, but the film eventually deteriorates into near laughable material. The opening ten minutes or so are wordless, with the camera following Taylor’s every move from the point she wakes up alone in bed, checking out the lay of the land, never uttering a word except a name and a phone number, until she leaves the luxurious New York apartment and hops in a cab. This sequence features tense and over-anxious music that is completely out of synch with the otherwise quiet and calm demeanor of Ms. Taylor, who plays Gloria Wandrous, a sexually adventurous woman with a history of continually changing partners. She is in her element getting picked up in bars where the clever one-liners are bitchy, sexually provocative, and highly aggressive, where it appears she can stand up to anyone and match them blow for blow, just verbal sparring where they usually end up in bed together. The title is her answering service where she carefully screens and selects the men who interest her.
Something changes, however, when she meets Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey), a filthy rich playboy who keeps a wife and women on the side. Despite his smug fratboy manner that suggests women are mere collections, something to be talked about in the executive boardrooms, when they meet in a bar they do produce verbal sparks, where she interestingly digs her spiked heel into the toe of his shoe when he grabs her arm, which is sexual stimulation for these two practitioners. But all the promise in the world can’t hide where this film’s going, despite Gloria’s desperate attempts to gain respectability. Noted for his role in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962), where he plays a brainwashed victim subject to a hypnotic trigger code, Harvey always provides wooden performances, where his character barely registers a pulse. Here he’s a bit more frenzied and on edge than usual, but simply no match for the emotional volatility from Taylor’s performance, always showing an appealing vulnerability, even playing this kind of trashy role which feels much like a lurid dimestore novel you can pick up at any airport book stall. If there’s anything all of Ms. Taylor’s roles have in common in her 4 consecutive years of Academy Award Best Actress nominations, culminating with winning the award, it’s her ability to bring down the curtain with such distinguished high drama. This film is no different, though it’s the least suspenseful, where the director actually adds a feeble addendum at the end that ridiculously shows how far this film has deteriorated, which without Taylor’s performance wouldn’t matter at all.
