A Statue for 'the Sandpiper' (1965) User Reviews

Artist does redwood sculpture for "The Sandpiper"...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 29 April 2008]

This promotional short was for the MGM film, THE SANDPIPER, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Eva Marie Saint.

Since the story takes place in the Big Sur area of California with its giant redwoods, the artist was commissioned for a life-size statue of Elizabeth Taylor that had to be finished within a month. Edmund Kara was the artist and the short shows him working hard with tools to chisel Taylor's features into the redwood. The finished art is revealed at a press conference where Richard Burton unveils the statue which had been shipped, first by plane, then by ship to its destination.

Nothing distinctive about this, which should have been filmed in color to get the full impression of the sculpture.

A delightful short

[rgcustomer · 7/10 · 26 September 2010]

I disagree with the other comment currently here on IMDb. This is quite a distinctive short. It may well be the only one of its kind, or at least I've never seen anything like it.

First I was struck by the wonderful scenery of the area in which the sculptor worked, and his carving/statue of a phoenix.

Second, considering the anti-porn hysteria of the age, the jaw just drops open to see the Elizabeth Taylor statue as it is being formed, and you realize that she is bare-breasted, in exquisite detail. I have no particular desire to see her naked (call me when they do Daniel Radcliffe ... I missed Equus) but I think it's wonderful that a Hollywood celebrity permitted it.

I do wish more time had been spent showing us the carving process. For something that took 500 hours during ~30 days (at least 16-hour days including weekends) there was clearly a lot of fascinating work that was skipped over, which is why I limit this film to 7/10.

I had not heard of The Sandpiper before, but I'm going to seek it out now just to see how this unique work of art is used.