Applause Meter The movie is about a high-priced call girl. Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous is a prostitute but Hollywood, in 1960, still bound by antiquated production codes couldn't reveal her real resume. This leaves the film uncomfortably constrained and contrived. The audience has to go with what's presented, a story line crafted to sanitize the world's oldest profession. So the censors have given us a character Gloria, who is a "club girl," a model paid to wear fashionable clothes and be seen in trendy watering holes. These gathering places are frequented by men in suits, the wealthy and influential whose hands are never empty of a glass, downing one drink than another, the highball or martini. Gloria, a "good time girl," is promiscuous, BUT what she's really selling and out to get is "true love." She herself is an elitist in her own line of work, not just a common gold digger, but also a girl with an elevated purpose. And then in comes one of the regulars Gloria has hooked, Weston Liggett played by Laurence Harvey. Harvey's an actor accomplished at playing characters practicing deception and enduring subsequent remorse, and he's able here to deliver this type of troubled personality. Liggett, we soon learn is suffering from a terrible malady. He is married to a wealthy society woman, and works for the family company where he feels undervalued and unproductive. With all the entitlements of the good life, he is still a wretch, enslaved to a life of dull, staid opulence. His wife Emily, played by Dina Merrill, is the ever suffering, understanding spouse, putting up with her husband's philandering. His wife's indulgence of his shortcomings only increases Liggett's self-loathing and guilt. What's a young, good-looking man with money to do when he's destined to endure such a banal lifestyle? Why take up with a fancy slut and then of course, fall obsessively, madly in love with her. Eddie Fisher, Taylor's husband at the time, is awkwardly positioned into this melodrama, giving less a performance than a "walk through." He plays Gloria's childhood friend Steve who serves as her devoted, unfailing confidante. He's always there for her when she is in need of emotional support, which for Gloria means an almost daily cry for help. Steve's jealous finance Norma hates his relationship with Gloria. Susan Oliver as Norma gives a serviceable performance as she has little to do but by turns look aggrieved and frustrated. Her confrontations with her boyfriend Steve are verbal jabs, inviting Steve to challenge her dramatic statements, ones usually centered around Gloria's cheap behavior: "Is she not the biggest tramp in the whole city!" Since Manhattan contains somewhere around 8 million inhabitants…this is certainly quite a distinction. Mildred Dunnock is Gloria's mother, a woman living a genteel life of denial. Her daughter is a "good girl." Mrs. Wandrous' one time man friend, and prospective husband, sexually abused the young teen-aged Gloria, a heinous exploitation over a protracted period of time. Whether the mother even knows of her daughter's childhood ordeal is never in fact made clear to the audience. Kay Medford, provides the most noteworthy, spirited performance in this otherwise dour production. She is the ironically named Happy, the owner of a popular motel, a rendezvous for illicit love. Happy, herself a "good time girl" in her younger days, maintains a cynical but upbeat philosophical outlook on life. She's a self-defined expert on male/female relationships, the guru ready to dole out wisdom and advice gained from her own hard luck lessons of life. Elizabeth Taylor reportedly disliked making this movie and her displeasure shows. Her portrayal is deficient in conveying the emotional and physical scars of misuse. Taylor gives us the emotional posturing of an uninspired acting technique. She's too much The Screen Goddess throughout, unblemished by any of the authentic grit and misery defining a victim of a sordid past and present. No piece of used merchandise, Taylor on screen is every inch the Movie Star. Liz got the best actress Oscar for this movie, purportedly the "pity vote," in acknowledgment of the illness that almost took her life. The win certainly couldn't have been for the undistinguished performance she gave in this movie.

tempus1 Hmmmmm--the usual collection of 'reviews' from imbeciles who cannot spell, punctuate, write a complete sentence, or manage to learn anything about historical periods before Facebook. I cannot decide what the stupidest comments are here: the ones which blame Fisher for being lackluster in a nothing and hardly-written part? the ones which scream and carp about O'Hara's novel being trash and the film consequently being the same? the ones which backbite about Taylor's gorgeous and truly voluptuous figure, calling her 'chubby' and 'fat'? the ones bitching out Merrill for elegantly underplaying a thankless female- doormat role? the ones which think Fisher has to be 'gay' because he doesn't screw Liz? the ones which shriek about how 'ugly' and 'charmless' the handsome and talented Harvey is? the ones which call Taylor's character a WHORE although the novel and movie are both at pains to convey that she is in fact a 'loose woman', a party girl, and NOT a hooker? It's difficult to choose from such a cornucopia of MORONS. The movie itself is an O'Hara potboiler (which is what he wrote--get used to it, morons)based loosely on the life of Starr Faithful, and it is a melodrama, and Taylor didn't want to make the film. That said, she is surprisingly vivid and good, and the rest of the cast acquits itself more than gracefully. Taylor's delivery of laugh lines, never appreciated by most morons, is excellent here, and without the cheesy score (Kaper usually did much better at least than this) the movie would probably make it up to GREAT trash. Taylor is also drop-dead gorgeous, whether wearing a mink or a slip, and worth seeing even in a movie she disliked and did not want to make.

Putzberger 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.

blanche-2 John O'Hara loved writing about bad girls, and "Butterfield 8," adapted from his novel, is no exception. Elizabeth Taylor stars as Gloria, a model/slut who sleeps around and keeps up the good girl illusion with her mother (Mildred Dunnock). Her mother's friend (Betty Field) has Gloria's number (Butterfield 8), but doesn't say anything to her mother. Gloria then falls in love with an unhappily married man (Laurence Harvey) -- but is it too late for her? Meanwhile, her childhood friend Steve (Eddie Fisher) is there to take care of her and listen to her confessions. His girlfriend (Susan Oliver) doesn't like it. I was reminded watching the film of Carrie Fisher's comment about her father: "When Mike Todd died, Eddie flew to Liz's side. Eventually, he got around to her front." The only reason to sit through this soapy, dated drama is Elizabeth Taylor, at the height of her beauty. And she's very good, despite people (and her) thinking her Oscar was a sympathy award.The film moves slowly, but Taylor keeps it interesting. She was a true movie star in the very best sense. When she was on the screen, you couldn't take your eyes off of her.