Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous BUtterfield 8 · 1660

Butterfield 8 (1960). Elizabeth Taylor.

Heartfelt gratitude to the attendees of last night’s Lobotomy Room cinema club presentation of Butterfield 8 (1960) at Fontaine’s! Some musings based on my introduction: Butterfield 8 is the story of the doomed love affair between a Manhattan call girl and a rich married man. (Seriously – who among us can’t relate?). Sure, the film has a terrible reputation but that’s what this film club is for - reappraising “bad” movies. I’d argue Butterfield 8 is juicy, irresistible good fun. If it’s trash, Butterfield 8 is the acme of trash. Rewatching it, I was struck by the persistent strain of melancholy throughout the film. You just know it’s all going to end tragically. The opening moments of Elizabeth Taylor waking up alone, hungover and naked in bed, donning a white slip, sparking the first cigarette of the day and prowling around silently feels like something out of a European art movie. It boasts snappy, biting quotable dialogue. Considering it was made during the Hays Code, it’s a genuine attempt by a Hollywood film to tackle adult content like adultery, premarital sex, promiscuity and prostitution. (It does what it could get away with at the time). As discussed, Taylor hated the script and only took this role begrudgingly (it was her final contractual obligation with MGM, liberating her to make Cleopatra with 20th Century Fox), but you’d never guess from the raw emotion, glamour and sensuality of her performance. Butterfield 8 captures Elizabeth Taylor at her most “Elizabeth Taylor”. She deserved that Oscar, damn it! It also gloriously captures the fashions and décor of 1960: pink marble bathrooms. Powder blue telephones. Swanky cocktail lounges with red flocked wallpaper, gilt-framed mirrors and chandeliers. Bouffant hairstyles. Cocktail dresses with plunging necklines. Full-length mink coats. (Boy, does that mink coat cause a lot of trouble!). Squint your eyes, and Laurence Harvey and Dina Merrill anticipate Don and Betty Draper of Mad Men. There’s no April film club (I’ll be attending the Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender) but see you again in May. Now go brush your teeth with scotch and scrawl a message on a mirror with pink frosted lipstick!

BUtterfield 8 (1960) // dir. Daniel Mann

July 25, 1962.

Art Linkletter condemned Butterfield 8 for endangering "the morals of teenagers."

The happiest of birthdays in the afterlife to Elizabeth Taylor!

60 Years of Vamps and Camps (1973)

Sue Lyon in Lolita, 1962.

Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemon in Irma La Douce, 1963.

Gloria Swanson in Fine Manners, 1926.

Sylvia Miles and Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy, 1969.

Tallulah Bankhead in My Sin, 1931.

Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8, 1960.

Jane Fonda in Klute, 1971.

Shelly Winters and Michael Caine in Alfie, 1966.

Claudette Colbert in ZaZa, 1938.

Angela Lansbury in Mister Buddwing, 1966.

Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers in Broadway Bad, 1933.

BUtterfield 8 (Butterfield 8) (1960) Daniel Mann

December 10th 2022

Elizabeth Taylor, BUtterfield 8, 1960 ..

“In both Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Butterfield 8, Taylor appears in a tight white slip that looks as if it were sewn onto her body. What a gorgeous object she is! Feminists are currently adither over woman’s status as sex object but let them rave on in their little mental cells. For me, sexual objectification is a supreme human talent that is indistinguishable from the art impulse. Elizabeth Taylor, voluptuous in her sleek slip, stands like an ivory goddess, triumphantly alone. Her smooth shoulders and round curves, echoing those of mother earth, are gifts of nature, beyond the reach of female impersonators. Butterfield 8, with its call-girl heroine working her way down the alphabet of men from Amherst to Yale, appeared at a very formative moment in my adolescence and impressed me forever with the persona of the prostitute, whom I continue to revere.”

/ From "Elizabeth Taylor: Hollywood’s Pagan Queen" by Camille Paglia, Penthouse magazine, March 1992 /

YES! Join us for an evening of diva worship and experience Elizabeth Taylor in her full glory when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (devoted to cinematic perversity!) presents juicy 1960 melodrama Butterfield 8! Thursday 21 March at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Email the venue on [email protected] to reserve your seat!

GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH HER NEW MAN

Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8

BUtterfield 8 (1960) dir. Daniel Mann

Films I watched during quarantine #310