Liz Taylor is Luminous in Butterfield 8

 

BUTTERFIELD 8 (1960)

Directed by Daniel Mann

MGM, 109 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★ ½ 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Taylor was truly one of the screen’s most beautiful leading ladies. If you don’t believe me, watch the first five minutes of Butterfield 8 as the camera pans over her face and sheet-draped body as she awakes in the empty posh apartment of the man with whom she spent the previous evening. Taylor was 28 then, pretty much at her glorious prime and six years before she played a boozy slightly rumpled harridan in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which she won her second Best Actress Oscar.

 

The later was shot in black and white, but Butterfield 8 was bathed in rich technicolor. Taylor won the first of her two Oscars for this film. First, a word on the title. If you were born after 1963 you don’t remember when telephones were still few enough in number that you could call an (actual) operator and ask to be connected by giving the exchange name and a number of two, as in Colony 17 or Butterfield 8. The inside joke is that Butterfield 8 was allegedly a modeling agency; it was really a high-class escort service, “escort” itself being a nod-nod-wink-wink name for hooker. Gloria Wandrous (Taylor) actually does some modeling but she’s also under psychiatric care for her active libido. It speaks volumes about American society of the day that a sexually vigorous woman would be treated for such a perceived malady.

 

Gloria has other issues though, including an explosive temper and drinking too much. The bed from which she arises belongs to Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey) who leaves $250 by the bedstead before sneaking out. This leads to an outburst that is perhaps the film’s most reproduced still; when Gloria sees the money and note, she angrily takes out her lipstick and writes “No Sale” on Liggett’s elaborately framed mirror and storms off after grabbing a mink coat to cover herself. (Apparently the night before was pretty wild, as her dress was torn.)

 

Gloria lands in the apartment of her childhood chum Steve Carpenter (Eddie Fisher) for chaste consolation. You could say that so far Taylor was playing to type. She married eight times­–twice to Richard Burton–and Fisher was husband number four. Butterfield 8 gets much messier, as Liggett is married to Emily (Dina Merrill) whose family owns the chemical firm for which he works. Plus, Steve’s girlfriend Norma (Susan Oliver) is the proverbial nice girl who is tired of playing second fiddle to Gloria any time she commands Steve’s attention.

 

Steve might be the last person on the planet other than Gloria’s mother (Mildred Dunnock) who doesn’t know that Gloria is, in the parlance of the period, a tramp. The club owners know it, most of their patrons know it, Weston’s buddy Brigham (Jeffrey Lynn) knows it, and even her mother’s best friend, the snarky Francis (Betty Field) knows it. Weston, though, has become obsessed with Gloria and finds himself falling for her. Gloria dares hope that maybe Liggett can be her ticket to respectability because she's tired of being a tramp.

 

Butterfield 8 was based upon a John O’Hara story and is a searing tragic drama. As suggested, the values are those of an earlier time period, so expect the film to exploit thinking that today might seem head-scratching. Will Emily and Norma stand by their men? Can mama accept her daughter for who she really is rather than her willfully ignorant fantasy of her? Even the extras have issues, especially Happy (Kay Medford in a small but juicy part), an ex-vaudevillian who now operates a low-class motel that caters to surreptitious trysters.

 

This is an actors’ ensemble film and everyone in it is superb. Moreover, though the technicolor hues are vibrant, we view all the earmarks of film noir except the shadows. Maybe you won’t come away desirous of taking a course on psychology as understood in 1960–or maybe 1935, as O’Hara’s roman à clef was based on the unsolved murder of socialite Starr Faithfull–but I suspect you will find yourself so immersed in the film’s well drawn characters that you’ll forget to look at your calendar.

 

Rob Weir