Several times a year, I love nothing more than to curl up with a nice, strong drink, and--preferably if it's rainy or snowy outside--pop in this unforgettable tribute to a phenomenal star and that long vanished world of 1960.
For the next two hours I willingly become lost in an MGM Technicolored world of high glamour--where women wear ravishing clothes, where all the rooms are warm and inviting and elegant and everyone enacts their deep problems in bigger-than-life style. And everyone looks like the type of people you would love to spend a few hours with and who in no way resemble your boring next door neighbor.
I remember being in college at the time and three times I, with several of my gay buddies, tried to buy a ticket to see this so-called torrid romance of a New York call-girl, played by the most notorious and magical and beautiful woman at that time: Elizabeth Taylor.
The theater was sold out each time but it did have a life-sized cardboard cutout of the movie's main character, Gloria Wandrous, wearing that famous slip with a phone to her ear and above the message: "Call Butterfield 8 anytime and Get a Message You Won't Forget." There was an actual phone and if you picked it up, a recording gave you the show-times.
Many of us were photographed next to this cardboard vision of decadent beauty and we all ended up weeping at the end of the movie at the beautiful but troubled woman's demise.
We all know that Elizabeth Taylor fought hard not to make this film. She had thought she had finished her contractual obligations with MGM and was eager to start earning her $1 million salary to portray the Queen of the Nile.
She was also horrified by the script, which she dubbed pornographic, but the script writers had based their work on the image of Elizabeth Taylor the world considered her at that time.
She had "run off" with Debbie Reynolds crooner husband, Eddie Fisher, and had never apologized for it while Debbie posed for photographers with safety pins pinned to her blouses as if she had just changed diapers on one of her newborns. Elizabeth was also living openly with her new lover--a horrible no-no at that time. Another strike against this scarlet woman!
But this star of stars did make the movie and it broke box office records around the world.
The studio surrounded Taylor with the MGM personnel she had grown up with and the result is a lush, glamorous world where everything is clean and rich looking and the people are beautiful and dramatic.
Camera man Joseph Ruttenberg, who was nominated for an Oscar for this film, bathes our star in flattering, warm light. The gifted Helen Rose created the character's striking wardrobe of beautiful gowns and suits and furs.
The haunting but subtle musical score is by Bronislau Kaper.
What stands out is that legendary MGM gloss where all the rooms and interiors are bathed in warm and inviting tones.
A great added attractive element of this movie is the outstanding supporting cast with Mildred Dunnock playing the naive mother of our bad girl but even better is acting veteran Betty Field as the nosy neighbor who fires off some of the wittiest one-liners in the movie.
Laurence Harvey has the unpleasant role of the rich jerk, Liggett, who verbally destroys Gloria at a climatic moment and then tries to woo her back.
Dina Merrill is his long-suffering wife.
The studio put yet another iconic image into this intoxicating brew and that's the unforgettable little red sports car that Gloria zips around Manhattan in. It's actually a 1960 Red Series Sunbeam Alpine that could be driven in style even today.
This is an addictive movie to watch for those who long for those ancient days when major studios still knew how to pour on the glamour, with haunting musical soundtracks and bigger-than-life stars like Elizabeth Taylor who no longer exist.
Review of BUtterfield 8
