Mankin Review of Elephant Walk

Elephant Walk (1954)

No "happily ever after" for Elizabeth Taylor at the movies

[21 July 1999]

"Elephant Walk" (***) caused me to consider once again how often during her movie career Elizabeth Taylor fell in love with men she lost or who rejected her. She spends most of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) begging an apathetic Paul Newman to sleep with her. In "Suddenly Last Summer" (1959), her cousin Sebastian is more interested in the local peasant boys than in her. In "Raintree County" (1957) she has to fake a pregnancy in order to get Montgomery Clift to marry her. In "Place In the Sun" she loses Clift to the electric chair. In "Night Watch" (1974) she discovers that hubby Laurence Harvey is having an affair with another woman. In "Elephant Walk" she spends her wedding night alone because her husband, played by Peter Finch, would rather carouse with his drinking buddies. I guess being one of the most beautiful women in the world doesn't mean you will be lucky in love - certainly not in Elizabeth Taylor's case, either on or off the screen. The film itself is an enjoyably over-the-top melodrama with a splendid production, a fine score by Franz Waxman and that famous elephant stampede at the end to top it off. Of course, one can't help wondering why Finch's father would insist on building a house right on a spot the elephants have claimed as their own. Why not, say, a mile away?