According to legend, Elizabeth Taylor won a sympathy Academy Award for "BUtterfield 8" in 1961 because she'd just survived a near-fatal case of pneumonia. Not quite. Liz's Oscar was the Hollywood equivalent of a Purple Heart for defeating the old-guard Studio system while enduring the worst script ever written. A dying MGM attempted one last show of force by punishing Taylor, the last star it created, for her wanton ways with a tawdry film designed to exploit the home-wrecker reputation she'd gained by breaking up Eddie Fisher's marriage to Debbie Reynolds. Bad move. On screen and off, Liz proved herself superior to this gold-plated pigsty, picking up an award for a movie she refused to even see as she waltzed off to bigger paydays, better scripts, and more husbands.
Most comedies should be this funny. "BUtterfield 8" has the exact same plot as "Pretty Woman" - New York tramp meets and falls for wealthy executive -- but we're supposed to take it seriously. Liz plays Manhattan model Gloria Wandrous (subtle, eh?), who's technically not a prostitute but rather a single woman who has multiple affairs, a merely academic difference according to 1960 Hollywood. After sleeping through the opening credits, which are superimposed over her in bed, Liz wakes up alone in a penthouse following a one-night stand with rich stiff Laurence Harvey, wanders around wrapped in a sheet, has a drink, nabs a mink, and cabs it to the apartment of Eddie Fisher, for whom Liz secured a role as Gloria's childhood best friend and the first of many doormats she will trample in this film. Even better, Eddie is engaged to a perky blonde with a Debbie Reynolds hairdo. If you aren't giggling yet, just wait until Harvey reappears. As the married lawyer who falls for mantrap Liz, he spends the movie looking slightly less dazed than he would two years later throughout "The Manchurian Candidate" and has to deliver all the dumbest lines - when he escorts Liz onto his yacht, she asks "where are you sailing, Captain?" to which he responds "Out of frustration and into ecstasy!" There's no reason, except script contrivance, that a babe of Liz's caliber should ever fall for a rude, ugly, self-loathing dullard like Laurence (a meta-mockery of Fisher?). However, he has plenty of reason to fall for her -- despite the movie depicting her as damaged goods, Liz is actually fun, witty, sexy and roughly a 1000% improvement on Laurence's on screen wife, the blonde, bland and blank-faced Dina Merrill, who can't decide if she's playing a willfully or genuinely naive woman and splits the difference by acting really, really stupid. If only "BUtterfield 8" were made in an era of sex comedies, say the 30's or 70's, Liz could have been a heroine, Harvey's zombified affect could have been exploited for comic value, and the filmmakers would have recognized the humor in the following exchange between Harvey and Merrill: "I can't go on disappointing you!" "Couldn't you try?" But "Butterfield 8" was made during the Golden Age of big-budget soapscum like "Peyton Place" and "Written on the Wind" so viewers have to endure the era's hypocritical moralizing . . . these bad people will pay for their sins, but not until a reel or two after we've been titillated by same.
Most comedies should be this funny. "BUtterfield 8" has the exact same plot as "Pretty Woman" - New York tramp meets and falls for wealthy executive -- but we're supposed to take it seriously. Liz plays Manhattan model Gloria Wandrous (subtle, eh?), who's technically not a prostitute but rather a single woman who has multiple affairs, a merely academic difference according to 1960 Hollywood. After sleeping through the opening credits, which are superimposed over her in bed, Liz wakes up alone in a penthouse following a one-night stand with rich stiff Laurence Harvey, wanders around wrapped in a sheet, has a drink, nabs a mink, and cabs it to the apartment of Eddie Fisher, for whom Liz secured a role as Gloria's childhood best friend and the first of many doormats she will trample in this film. Even better, Eddie is engaged to a perky blonde with a Debbie Reynolds hairdo. If you aren't giggling yet, just wait until Harvey reappears. As the married lawyer who falls for mantrap Liz, he spends the movie looking slightly less dazed than he would two years later throughout "The Manchurian Candidate" and has to deliver all the dumbest lines - when he escorts Liz onto his yacht, she asks "where are you sailing, Captain?" to which he responds "Out of frustration and into ecstasy!" There's no reason, except script contrivance, that a babe of Liz's caliber should ever fall for a rude, ugly, self-loathing dullard like Laurence (a meta-mockery of Fisher?). However, he has plenty of reason to fall for her -- despite the movie depicting her as damaged goods, Liz is actually fun, witty, sexy and roughly a 1000% improvement on Laurence's on screen wife, the blonde, bland and blank-faced Dina Merrill, who can't decide if she's playing a willfully or genuinely naive woman and splits the difference by acting really, really stupid. If only "BUtterfield 8" were made in an era of sex comedies, say the 30's or 70's, Liz could have been a heroine, Harvey's zombified affect could have been exploited for comic value, and the filmmakers would have recognized the humor in the following exchange between Harvey and Merrill: "I can't go on disappointing you!" "Couldn't you try?" But "Butterfield 8" was made during the Golden Age of big-budget soapscum like "Peyton Place" and "Written on the Wind" so viewers have to endure the era's hypocritical moralizing . . . these bad people will pay for their sins, but not until a reel or two after we've been titillated by same.