Movie a Day Blog found BUTTERFIELD 8 to be a hoot. Suddenly popular again following Elizabeth Taylor’s demise last March because it marked her first Academy Award, the film is alternately clever and appalling, sometimes both at once. Taylor looks unbelievably lovely in every scene of the movie – her face did not have a bad angle to the camera – and she somehow carries off the conceit of a high-class prostitute who won’t admit that she’s a hooker. She falls for rich socialite Laurence Harvey, who is married to one of the most emotionally paralyzed, longest-suffering wives in movie history, played by Dina Merrill. At a certain point, you want her to kill Harvey, or failing that, to kill herself, anything than her bland solicitousness toward her lying, cheating husband. Just about the entire film is consumed by a prolonged tryst between Taylor and Harvey, which occasions all the misunderstandings and miscommunication that 1950s melodrama abounded in. That’s really what BUTTERFIELD 8 (the title stands for the phone exchange for the ritzy part of upper Manhattan) is, a movie already out of step with the 1960s although considered racy material for the era in which it was made. A major movie star agreeing to play a prostitute was a brave career move for Taylor, and it certainly paid off with an Oscar. Her skills as an actress, which often took a back seat to her allure as a woman and her status as one of the last great movie stars, are certainly on display here, although she’s a bit regal for the fallen woman. Harvey plays the entire movie with a furrowed brow, as if he’s got a very bad headache, and no wonder. He forgets who he is, seems prepared to abandon Merrill’s money and his marriage, and is ready to dedicate all to Taylor when he suddenly realizes that she’s slept with half of the men in New York City. Traveling around with her one night and seeing her greet every bartender intimately should have given him a clue, but plots like this require everybody to be clueless until the appropriate melodramatic moment for catharsis and resolution arrive. The only person who is conscious of forgetting what she knows is Mildred Dunnock, in a wonderfully sensitive portrayal of Taylor’s ashamed mother. The banter between Taylor and Betty Field as her mother’s rude neighbor is delightful, and there are clever digs at Taylor’s morality and her wardrobe (which is eye-popping, designed by Helen Rose) throughout. There are also eye-rolling lines, and the clunkers outweigh the zingers by a sizeable margin by the film’s end. I’m not sure of how much of this originates in John O’Hara’s best-selling novel – he’s very much out of style now, but was enormous in the 1950s. I remember that my mother had each one of his books in paperback, but I never read any of them. Based on this, and the reputation of his novels “From the Terrace” and “Ten North Frederick,” I don’t think I missed too much. Director Daniel Mann did many different kinds of films, none of them with great distinction, except for his adroit film adaptation of the Broadway play COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (1952) with Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster. BUTTERFIELD 8 doesn’t have the realism or gravity of that story, but it certainly showcases La Liz at her Technicolor best.

Dir.: Daniel Mann, 1960. 109 min. MGM, Afton-Linebrook. Produced by Pandro S. Berman. Screenplay by Charles Schnee and John Michael Hayes, based on novel by John O’Hara. Cinematography by Charles Harten. Edited by Ralph E. Winters. Art direction by George W. Davis, Urie McCleary. Music by Bronislau Kaper. With Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, Dina Merrill, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Jeffrey Smith, Kay Medford, Susan Oliver, George Voskovec. Viewed on Turner Classic Movies.