Plot Intro
Gloria Wandrous (Elizabeth Taylor) has a name a drag queen would kill for. She’s also a call girl with a rather tempestuous life. When she starts falling in love with one of her married clients (Laurence Harvey), will she find the happiness she seek or will it all go down in flames? I mean, do we even have to ask?
Mama, face it! I was the slut of all time!
Goodbye 1950s, hello 1960s! It’s almost as if Hollywood wanted to mark the change of decade with this very un-’50s film involving extra-marital affairs, references to prostitution and above all - SEX SEX SEX. This is basically two hours of Elizabeth Taylor smouldering as rich man Liggett (Laurence Harvey) fawns over her.
Let’s start with the film itself. There’s a few problematic things I want to address: the idea that for a woman to enjoy being sexually free, she must:
have been abused as a child
be a sex-addict
eventually receive punishment.
The film itself doesn’t hinge on any of these three elements so the fact all three are included feels unnecessary. Ultimately this is a film about a woman with commitment issues falling in love with a married man and that playing out. Everything else feels weirdly ‘Victorian Morals’ and gets in the way.
However, filmmaking-wise, there’s some great new things here. The first 10 minutes, there’s barely a line of dialogue as we see Gloria waking up in her one-night-stand’s home, reassembling herself, rejecting the cash he’s left her, scrawling a message in lipstick on the mirror and storming out in his wife’s fur coat. This feels very fresh against the word-heavy films of the past. I also loved the humour that dots throughout - whether it’s Gloria trading barbs with her mum’s best friend, or an over-attentive shop assistant accidentally cock-blocking the ardent lovers. At times the film delved too deeply into the earnest romance vibe and actually it was the lighter, wittier moments that made it speed past.
But actually I want to focus on Elizabeth Taylor because this is her first (but not last!) appearance in our project. Taylor was famously quite dismissive of her talent, saying that she couldn’t act on stage but could pull off a film. I beg to differ - she is phenomenal. This would be quite a dull film without Taylor’s energy and charisma pouring through each scene. She’s dynamic, moving constantly - whether it’s the swift decisive way she scrawls ‘No Sale’ in lipstick on the mirror, or pretending to flirt with her old friend Steve. Her sharp exchanges with Steve’s girlfriend Norma and her mum’s pal Mrs Thurber are funnier and cleverer for Taylor’s pitch-perfect delivery and she doesn’t let a moment stray into saccharine territory. Towards the end, Taylor finally allows more stillness into her performance and the devastation of her journey hits home all the more for this change.
It’s a barnstorming performance and Laurence Harvey does good work opposite her (second film in a row with him in as someone having two simultaneous relationships, one of which ends in a car-related death??) and actually the entire cast pull out solid performances (see my highlight for one terrific moment). The film itself could have done with a less misogynistic rewrite, but I’d be intrigued if there was an updated version for our time (definitely with a new ending) - it might still work.
Taylor aside, there was a terrific moment of slapstick where Mrs Thurber (Betty Field) was trying to get her friend’s dog off her lap. She slumps down in the chair, keeps going towards the floor and then gently backhands the dog off her lap and it disappears off camera. It was so, so funny and this film was a real showcase for Field to show her comedy chops.
Saddled with the misogynistic tropes around promiscuous women, this film unfortunately ends up punishing the heroine (after revealing she was abused as a child). I know it was based on a real story, but they changed so many details, they didn’t need to follow this road. I’d like a new ending please.
Mark
8/10
Sex, sex, sex, that’s all they think about! And according to cinema audiences of the late '50s and early '60s, this was indeed the case. This is the third film in a row in the Best Actress canon to delve into a world where women engage in sex and crime (or, at least, anti-Christian immorality such as infidelity). And like Doug says, it is also the third film in a row where the leading lady HAS to be killed off at the end.
Of those three films, this is probably the strongest. It has moments of levity that make you root for Gloria and hope she finds happiness and success (or at least get to keep the gorgeous mink coat she nicks from her client’s wife in the opening scene); the moments of tenderness feel more genuine; and it doesn’t shy away from addressing our heroine’s flaws albeit through a sympathetic eye.
The problem, as Doug says, is that the film feels misogynistic and sex-negative by today’s standards. Ever since the age of the Victorian novel, men have loved to write about a woman who is unjustly chewed up and shunned by society, cry out “Aren’t I enlightened, I want to help women!” and then have the absolute gall to kill her off at the end. Oh how the patriarchy just LOVES to murder sexualised women! Give me a story about a woman who does have a lot of sex, gets paid for it, makes mistakes, is abused by society BUT finds happiness in the end whilst still having a lot of sex. Someone? Anyone? It’s just getting tedious now and I know the writer is trying to expose the cruelty and hypocrisy of the patriarchy but perhaps they could do it without the Tragic Ending tick box?
Having said that, I agree with Doug that Elizabeth Taylor is fucking fabulous. Her energy and sassiness is the sharpest we’ve seen so far. Perhaps, as we move into the age of second-wave-feminism, we will start to see more heroines who, despite ending in death, at least have humour and comebacks to make them memorable rather than the pious, deferential '40s types. Taylor is also helped along by the other females in the cast. I especially enjoyed Mildred Dunnock as her mother, a rather frail, timid character who loves her daughter with great tenderness but prefers the safety and comfort of living in denial about Gloria’s life. She is partnered with Betty Field as her more realistic, tough-talking best friend, with whom Gloria shares a curt but touchingly respectful relationship.
By this point in her career, Taylor was just 28 but had become a hugely popular star. This is her fourth Academy Award nomination and she was also on her fourth of eight marriages. She hit big time usually playing young ingenues of varying degrees of morality in films such as Father of the Bride, Raintree County, Giant, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. BUtterfield 8 was her first foray into more complex roles (but with glamour fully intact of course) and it was followed closely by famously naff Cleopatra and her second Oscar win for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? After this, her movies became fewer but she did a great deal of stage work to huge acclaim and, of course, her phenomenal charity work for victims of HIV/AIDS.
Her personal life has somewhat overshadowed the career and the charity. People just love to gush over the fact that she had 8 marriages to seven different men which, to be fair, is pretty interesting. She was of wealthy stock and got famous very young, so it’s a little grim that MGM “arranged” (the exact word used by Wikipedia) for her to date a footballer (when she was 16) and Howard Hughes offered a six figure sum to her parents for her hand in marriage like she’s a French Princess and the perfect pawn for an ally against Spain. She was 18 when she first married (to Conrad Hilton, great uncle of Paris) and she was quickly out of there because he was an abusive heroin-addict.
Her third husband, Mike Todd, and father of her eldest child, died in a plane crash. She was comforted by Eddie Fisher, father of Carrie, who was married to Debbie Reynolds until her, well, left her for Elizabeth and he became her fourth husband (and co-star in BUtterfield 8). This, understandably, caused a huge rift between Taylor and Reynolds who were once friends but apparently it was Carrie herself who helped instigate a reunion of the two and they became friends once more, even co-starring in a TV movie called These Old Broads with Joan Collins and Shirley MacClaine (what a cast!).
The drama continues but fortunately we will be seeing the great Taylor once again on this sojourn through great actresses. When we reach Virginia Woolf (which is not far away), we can delve into her charity work and her famous marriage to Richard Burton.
For now, I’m going to search for a story with a little more sex-positivity and little less tragedy. But Sophia Loren is up next so I don’t think that’s happening any time soon.
The relationship between Gloria and her mother’s friend Mrs Thurber is all too briefly addressed but quite lovely. They exchange vicious barbs like they’re Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, but when Gloria’s mother struggles emotionally, the two speak to each other with much more collaboration and warmth. The mutual respect amidst the criticism is warming to see, especially between two female characters.
As before, the inevitably beautiful but tragic death is signposted right from when Gloria talks openly about having extra-marital sex. It’s so predictable you almost laugh when it does happen, and this time you get to SEE the car go arse-over-tit.
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