"BUtterfield 8" has to be one of the most undeserving movies to win an Academy Award (alongside the glorification of rich English people that was "Chariots of Fire"). I suppose that it's trying to make a point about child abuse, but it comes out as two hours of blandness. It truly goes overboard on trying to be a soap opera. It's well known that Elizabeth Taylor didn't like it; she and co-star Eddie Fisher (her then-husband) apparently called it "Butterball 4". The Best Actress Oscar should've gone to Shirley MacLaine for "The Apartment" (the story goes that they gave it to Liz basically as a get well present after her tracheotomy).The car chase and its shocking result turn out to be the only interesting part of the movie. If you're looking for a poodle skirt-era soaper that's at least memorable, I recommend "A Summer Place": it shows how the parents are (meanwhile, the Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee characters actually have a healthy, loving relationship but their parents insist on keeping them apart because they're "not right" for each other). As for John O'Hara, I haven't read any of his works, but a good adaptation of one of his works is the Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward movie "From the Terrace". Daniel Mann's good movies - that I've seen at least - are "Come Back, Little Sheba", "Teahouse of the August Moon" and "Willard".

The reason BUtterfield 8 is so famous is two-fold: Elizabeth Taylor and the Hays Code. Before the fall of the Hays Code, a movie like this could never be made, so in 1960, Hollywood was thrilled to make a film about a call-girl. Since the call-girl was played by someone so beautiful and scantily clad, audiences were thrilled to see it. When they flocked to the theaters upon its release, they were greeted by life size cardboard cutouts of Elizabeth Taylor (I know movie theaters today are always decorated like that, but in 1960 it was new) and phone booths in which you could dial the phone number BUtterfield 8 and listen to a prerecorded message from the star. What a publicity campaign! Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar during the 1961 ceremony, but it was clear even at the time that she didn't really win for her performance. She'd recovered from a nearly fatal bout of pneumonia near the voting period, and since she'd recently made her way back into America's good graces after being branded as a homewrecker, the Academy rewarded her.Liz herself notoriously dissed the film, and I can't say I blame her. The film isn't that great, and it's also pretty dated, since countless movies about prostitutes have been made since. The shock value isn't there anymore. If you want to see Elizabeth Taylor in a negligee and you can't find Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I guess you can sit through this one. But try and find something else; there are so many other movies that show off her beauty.

Hmmmmm--the usual collection of 'reviews' from imbeciles who cannot spell, punctuate, write a complete sentence, or manage to learn anything about historical periods before Facebook. I cannot decide what the stupidest comments are here: the ones which blame Fisher for being lackluster in a nothing and hardly-written part? the ones which scream and carp about O'Hara's novel being trash and the film consequently being the same? the ones which backbite about Taylor's gorgeous and truly voluptuous figure, calling her 'chubby' and 'fat'? the ones bitching out Merrill for elegantly underplaying a thankless female- doormat role? the ones which think Fisher has to be 'gay' because he doesn't screw Liz? the ones which shriek about how 'ugly' and 'charmless' the handsome and talented Harvey is? the ones which call Taylor's character a WHORE although the novel and movie are both at pains to convey that she is in fact a 'loose woman', a party girl, and NOT a hooker? It's difficult to choose from such a cornucopia of MORONS. The movie itself is an O'Hara potboiler (which is what he wrote--get used to it, morons)based loosely on the life of Starr Faithful, and it is a melodrama, and Taylor didn't want to make the film. That said, she is surprisingly vivid and good, and the rest of the cast acquits itself more than gracefully. Taylor's delivery of laugh lines, never appreciated by most morons, is excellent here, and without the cheesy score (Kaper usually did much better at least than this) the movie would probably make it up to GREAT trash. Taylor is also drop-dead gorgeous, whether wearing a mink or a slip, and worth seeing even in a movie she disliked and did not want to make.

According to legend, Elizabeth Taylor won a sympathy Academy Award for "BUtterfield 8" in 1961 because she'd just survived a near-fatal case of pneumonia. Not quite. Liz's Oscar was the Hollywood equivalent of a Purple Heart for defeating the old-guard Studio system while enduring the worst script ever written. A dying MGM attempted one last show of force by punishing Taylor, the last star it created, for her wanton ways with a tawdry film designed to exploit the home-wrecker reputation she'd gained by breaking up Eddie Fisher's marriage to Debbie Reynolds. Bad move. On screen and off, Liz proved herself superior to this gold-plated pigsty, picking up an award for a movie she refused to even see as she waltzed off to bigger paydays, better scripts, and more husbands.Most comedies should be this funny. "BUtterfield 8" has the exact same plot as "Pretty Woman" - New York tramp meets and falls for wealthy executive -- but we're supposed to take it seriously. Liz plays Manhattan model Gloria Wandrous (subtle, eh?), who's technically not a prostitute but rather a single woman who has multiple affairs, a merely academic difference according to 1960 Hollywood. After sleeping through the opening credits, which are superimposed over her in bed, Liz wakes up alone in a penthouse following a one-night stand with rich stiff Laurence Harvey, wanders around wrapped in a sheet, has a drink, nabs a mink, and cabs it to the apartment of Eddie Fisher, for whom Liz secured a role as Gloria's childhood best friend and the first of many doormats she will trample in this film. Even better, Eddie is engaged to a perky blonde with a Debbie Reynolds hairdo. If you aren't giggling yet, just wait until Harvey reappears. As the married lawyer who falls for mantrap Liz, he spends the movie looking slightly less dazed than he would two years later throughout "The Manchurian Candidate" and has to deliver all the dumbest lines - when he escorts Liz onto his yacht, she asks "where are you sailing, Captain?" to which he responds "Out of frustration and into ecstasy!" There's no reason, except script contrivance, that a babe of Liz's caliber should ever fall for a rude, ugly, self-loathing dullard like Laurence (a meta-mockery of Fisher?). However, he has plenty of reason to fall for her -- despite the movie depicting her as damaged goods, Liz is actually fun, witty, sexy and roughly a 1000% improvement on Laurence's on screen wife, the blonde, bland and blank-faced Dina Merrill, who can't decide if she's playing a willfully or genuinely naive woman and splits the difference by acting really, really stupid. If only "BUtterfield 8" were made in an era of sex comedies, say the 30's or 70's, Liz could have been a heroine, Harvey's zombified affect could have been exploited for comic value, and the filmmakers would have recognized the humor in the following exchange between Harvey and Merrill: "I can't go on disappointing you!" "Couldn't you try?" But "Butterfield 8" was made during the Golden Age of big-budget soapscum like "Peyton Place" and "Written on the Wind" so viewers have to endure the era's hypocritical moralizing . . . these bad people will pay for their sins, but not until a reel or two after we've been titillated by same.