Rating: 
Summary: "Mama, Let's Face It: I was the Slut of All Time!"
Review: When Elizabeth Taylor says that to her mom, she gets a slap in the face. But that's okay: this is one of those "torn from today's headlines" kind of movie where things like that are commonplace. Liz plays Gloria Wandruss, a wild sex kitten who may or may not be a call girl. I mean, why is the movie named after a phone number otherwise? Yet Liz gets steamed when Laurence Harvy leaves her money after their night together, so steamed that she uses her lipstick to scrawl across the living room mirror, "No Sale!" Wow, is this trash or what? Yes, "Butterfield 8" is a type of trash movie, in spite of its garnering Liz an Oscar. Why trash? There's a lot of meaningless sexy talk between everyone imaginable, for one thing. Another thing is the terrible acting of Laurence Harvey--he comes across as a sicko and I'm not sure that's where they were going with this one. He has the requisite long-suffering wife, Dina Merrill; not much to say about her performance--she knows that for some reason he's troubled, but she expects him to find himself one day. Really bad too is Liz's real-life husband of the year, Eddie Fisher, as her childhood friend who may or may not be in love with her. She keeps going over to his apartment and annoying him as he tries to compose music at his piano. From time to time his angry girlfriend Susan Oliver stops in to say jealousy-tinged things to Liz. I couldn't help but notice that Susan Oliver's hair and clothing style are suspiciously familiar--hey, she looks like Debbie Reynolds! I wonder why. I understand the original book by John O'Hara has the sexy Gloria leave her lover's apartment wearing nothing but a mink coat she "borrows" from his wife's closet, because during their wild night he ripped her dress off her body. Well, Hollywood allowed us to see the ripped dress on the floor, but Liz traipses around Laurence Harvey's apartment in her tight tight slip and spike heels before heading out under the mink. What I'd like to know is, If he was so passionate that he ripped her dress, why is this tight slip intact? Seems to me that something that form hugging would have offered more protection than a chastity belt. "Butterfield 8" is not a fine film, but it does offer us much in the way of humor, however inadvertently. If you're the sort of person who likes to talk back to the screen trying to top your friends with additional dialogue, then this is one movie you ought not miss.
Rating:
Summary: Atmosphere burns bright enough to hide flawed finish
Review: While I don't think Elizabeth Taylor deserved an Oscar for her performance in Butterfield 8, the movie itself is still worth watching because its fervent atmosphere sears an indulible mark in your memory. Taylor plays a New York City callgirl whose passion is waning until she hooks up with a wealthy (and married) corporate lawyer (played with magnificent suave by Laurence Harvey). Taylor's and Harvey's lust,like fireworks, burns brightest (and best) at night--particularly in the lavishness of latenight Manhattan. Who couldn't fall in love in the swanky, svelt atmosphere of late 50's Manhattan? The nightclub where Taylor prowls for Mr. Right is passion personified: its denizens dress to kill and stalk from behind the hypnotizing haze of cigarette smoke. The only thing that dims Butterfield 8's fire in the end is the way it ends. It is somewhat puzzling in that it isn't very realistic and doesn't fit the character patterns the movie develops. It's sort of like the old saying the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Luckily, the silverscreen burns long enough with its main characters' desires to hide Butterfield 8's flawed finish.
Rating: 
Summary: A BLAZING PERFORMANCE
Review: `The most desirable girl in town is the easiest to find. Just call Butterfield-8!' So trumpeted the posters of this, Elizabeth Taylor's first Oscar winning performance. The film is a modernization of the 1935 novel by John O'Hara, which was based on the real life of the 1920's New York City call girl Starr Faithful.Miss Taylor was dead set against playing Gloria Wandrous. She felt was a deliberate play by M.G.M. to capitalize on her recent notoriety in the Liz-Eddie-Debbie scandal. Also, she was anxious to move on to her first ever million-dollar role in Fox's Cleopatra. She was told by M.G.M that if she did not fulfill her contractual obligation to her home studio for one final film on her eighteen year contract that she would be kept off the screen for two years and miss making Cleopatra all together. She swore to the producer Pandro S. Berman that she would not learn her lines, not be prepared and in fact not give anything more and a walk through. Mr. Berman knew her better than she suspected. In the end Elizabeth Taylor turned in a professional, classic old style Hollywood performance that ranks at the top with the best of her work. She brings a savage rage to live to her searing portrait of a lost girl soaked through with sex and gin. A woman hoping against all hope to find salvation in yet one last man. Weston Leggett, a man who is worse off than she is in the self-esteem department. In her frantic quest for a clean new life Gloria finds that the male establishment will not allow her to step out of her role as a high priced party girl. She is pigeon holed by her past and the narrow mores of the late 50's are not about to let her fly free. Not the bar-buzzards of Wall Street, not her best friend Steve who abandons her at his girlfriend's insistence. Not even her shrink Dr. Treadman believes in her. The three women in her life are blind to who she really is. Her mother will not admit what Gloria has become. Mrs. Thurber will not believe she can ever change and Happy, the motel proprietor is too self involved in her own past to care who Gloria is She is the dark Holly Golightly and this is the lurid red jelled Metro-Color Manhattan that is the flip side of Billy Wilder's The Apartment (also 1960). Wilder's New York is cynical. Liz's tony East Side phone exchange rings only one way, the hard way. This New York is dammed. Recrimination and death are Gloria's final tricks, and she goes out in a melodramatic blaze that Douglas Sirk might have envied in place of his usually unsettling, unconvincing happy endings. In the end we have a bravura performance by the last true star of the old system. Yes she deserved the Oscar more for `Cat'. Yes it was given to welcome her back from the brink of death in London. And even Shirley MacLaine's lament on Oscar night, `I lost the Oscar to a tracheotomy.' can not diminish this must see performance by Miss Taylor. In what one could call a perfect example of what an `Oscar scene' is all about she says it all. `I loved it! Every awful moment of it I loved. That's your Gloria, Steve. That's your precious Gloria!' She gave it to us with both barrels blazing, and M.G.M., and Berman be dammed.
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