![]() She was released, but then ended up in the hospital again two weeks later with what was reported as meningitis, although that was then revealed to be a misdiagnosis. 1, when Liz had been scheduled to report for shooting, she was in the hospital suffering what was reported as Malta fever, a type of food poisoning. She arrived in London with Eddie and her kids at the end of the summer of 1960, and immediately things started going wrong. With Butterfield 8 in the can, Elizabeth was free to start filming Cleopatra, the Fox epic that would make her the first actress paid $1 million for a single film. And that was the whole point of having a censorship system, from its inception in the 1920s: to show the talent that bad behavior had to be punished. There’s probably no way to prove this, but I suspect that the censors allowed the filmmakers of Butterfield 8 to get away with much of the sexual content of the movie because it’s all a vehicle to have a dozen actors tell Elizabeth Taylor she’s a slut everything the character goes through seems plainly designed to blame, shame, and punish the actress who played her. By 1960 the Motion Picture Production Code was deep in the process of disintegration, but it still feels surprising how frankly characters talk about Taylor’s character’s sex life in this movie, and how carnal her performance is, especially given the pains taken to obscure the real subject of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof just two years earlier. But it’s still fascinating to watch in part because it’s so crude. I think if I got all the way to the end, when Liz’s Gloria explains she is the way she is because an older man “taught her more about evil than any 13 year old girl in the world knew,” I probably didn’t understand it. I loved the seedy adult world of booze and sex and stolen furs that it depicts and it cemented in my mind the idea that Elizabeth Taylor was the movie star who, more than any other movie star, did not give a fuck. When I first saw this movie when I was a teenager, I loved it. The songwriter is played by none other than Eddie Fisher, and his girlfriend is played by Susan Oliver, an actress whose pert petiteness sets her in physical opposition to Taylor, and whose, shall we say, chemistry with Taylor brings to life every international tabloid-watcher’s imagined confrontation between Liz and Debbie. The film puts her in two love triangles: one between a married guy played by Laurence Harvey and his Grace Kelly–like wife, and another between Gloria’s best friend, a songwriter, and his sweet blonde girlfriend. She then selects a full mink for her walk home. She pulls out her lipstick and writes “No Sale” on the mirror, then puts the coat back in the closet. Only when she’s put on the other lady’s fur-trimmed coat does Liz’s Gloria find the note and $250 cash left for her by the husband. She puts on a too-tight slip and starts poking through the closet of the wife of the man she’s just bedded. The opening credits play over a naked Liz slowly waking in a strange bed. She knew her personal life was being exploited. And as the nasty letters that poured into the offices of Chesterfield and NBC proved, the viewers took this scandal very personally.Įlizabeth was already resentful of having to go back to MGM for one last contractual obligation, and she hated the script for Butterfield 8. Eddie Fisher was the first TV star whose career was threatened by a personal scandal. The season premiere of Eddie’s show, on which he sang “That’s Entertainment,” was a smash ratings hit, but viewership declined steadily after that. The theory that all press was good press looked like it was getting a real test when Chesterfield cigarettes, sponsors of Eddie’s TV show, was boycotted by irate moralists. Columnists like Hopper were inundated with letters, many of which they printed, expressing sympathy for Debbie and disparaging Liz as a tramp, a hussy, a home-wrecker. ![]() While Liz remained in hiding at her agent’s house, subsiding on takeout chili from Chasen’s, Debbie played her part in daily photo ops designed to show that, unlike the bad girl, the good girl was not afraid to show her face. After being married to Debbie, who by her own admission was not a very sexual person, Fisher was delighted to be with a woman who had, as he put it, “the face of an angel and the morals of a truck driver.” For the first time, Liz was choosing to be with a man in spite of a lot of reasons not to, because she liked having sex with him. Debbie was wrong-it took more like 30 months. ![]() Debbie had warned Eddie that Liz was going to leave him within 18 months.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |