User reviews

On the surface, Taylor was all sex and devil-may-care… Everything in her was struggling toward respectability… She never gave up trying…The film concerns her fashionable life which is part model, part call-girl—and all man-trap… Her performance is one of her best and was nominated for her third Academy Award…

Her remarkable scene is her confession to Eddie Fisher about how she got started in the life: she was seduced by a house guest when she was thirteen, and she liked it! She has always 'liked' it! Emotionally, she dominates the screen at this moment and her serious attitude simply fills it up…

Filmed in and around New York, "Butterfield 8" is an intimate portrait of a tormented woman daringly beautiful and sexy

... and just a few years away from the production code being dumped altogether it seems like a demonstration of what was the worst about the code years combined with films in the 60s trying to use what shock value they could get away with, and today , overall, it just looks cheesy.

In most summaries of this film I see Elizabeth Taylor's character, Gloria, described as a call girl. I never really see that happening. Instead Gloria just seems to like sex a lot. As in lots of sex with lots of men. Maybe to come out and say that when the goal of all women was still supposed to be having dishpan hands was going too far.

Gloria wakes up one morning in the apartment of wealthy but married playboy Weston Liggitt (Laurence Harvey), with him having left behind a note with $250 asking "Is this enough". She writes "no sale" in the mirror and takes a mink coat she finds in the closet - only to teach the guy a lesson for assuming she is for sale, but as they get more involved and do so immediately, she forgets all about that coat, and that causes a huge misunderstanding down the line.

The title comes from Gloria's answering service which is "Butterfield 8", and it is the subject of some - today - howlingly unintentionally funny scenes as Liggitt pleads with these people to find Gloria, curses at these people because they don't know where Gloria is, thanks them when they do find her. Gee, fellow, these are just operators eking out a living. They don't know their clients and they don't know you!

With Liz' husband at the time, Eddie Fisher, as a musician who has been Gloria's platonic friend since childhood and who also has a jealous girlfriend who oddly enough looks like Debbie Reynolds. There are some great location shots on the road between New York and Boston with the little independent diners and hotels that once dotted that landscape. I'd mildly recommend it.

An aside - Jeffrey Lynn, once strangely promoted as a romantic leading man over at Warner Brothers just before WWII, does a good job in a small role as Liggitt's friend.

John O'Hara's novel was way ahead of its time. Daniel Mann's "Butterfield 8" was a film that capitalized on the lurid aspects of the book, but actually was turned into a soap opera. By today's standards it looks kind of ridiculous, but of course, it was meant to reflect the period of the late fifties in which the action is set.

Elizabeth Taylor was at the height of her beauty when the movie was shot. She comes out as the gorgeous creature she was in this vehicle that won her the Oscar that she should have received for other films, notably "Suddenly, Last Summer".

The film will entertain whoever hasn't seen it before. It's obvious Ms. Taylor and her co-star, Lawrence Harvey, had no chemistry whatsoever, as it shows in the film. What was shocking then wouldn't raise an eyebrow now. In the supporting cast, Mildred Dunnock, Betty Field, Dina Merrill give good performances.

Watch this film as curiosity piece to see some of the New York of that era.

Two beautiful unhappy people from opposite ends of Eisenhower era America are drawn together by an obsessive love that ends in tragic consequences. Elizabeth Taylor won a Best Actress Oscar (after much better performances in earlier pictures such as `Cat On A Hot Tin Roof') for her portrayal of (shock!) call-girl Gloria Wandrous. Laurence Harvey plays the john, Weston Liggett, trapped in a stale marriage with his stoic wife Emily (Dina Merrill, perfect as a blue-blooded blonde heiress).

Complementing the moody performances of Liz and Laurence Harvey are an excellent Eddie Fisher as Gloria's long-suffering best friend and greatest admirer Steve, Mildred Dunnock as poor Mrs. Wandrous, in complete denial of her daughter's easy virtue, Betty Field as nosy neighbor Mrs. Fanny Barber, and many others including Kay Medford as tragicomic motel matron, Happy.

Lurking behind the scenes of `Butterfield 8' are some very grown up issues (particularly for its day) about infidelity, high class prostitution, childhood sexual abuse, and the meaning of true commitment. The dialogue by John Michael Hayes (`Peyton Place,' `To Catch A Thief,' and `Rear Window", among many credits) and Charles Schnee, is punchy and quick, and the movie glows with luscious cinematography from Hollywood veteran Joseph Ruttenberg, who got an Academy Award nomination for his efforts (he had previously won four Oscars dating back to 1938).

Although somewhat dated, it remains a thoughtful film (if you pay attention) and a visual treat for any Liz fan. Worth watching!

As a lad I well remember in 1960 Elizabeth Taylor's struggle for her life with a deadly form of pneumonia. The news which usually when it talked about Liz Taylor it was usually about her various amours. this was different, the whole world was watching the bulletins as they came from London where she was in hospital. It was touch and go, but she made it.

Because she made it, she got an Oscar for Best Actress in 1960 for BUtterfield 8. It was not an award she highly prized. While she was filming BUtterfield 8 she cracked to the press loud and often about what a trashy film it was. She did it because she had only one more film to do on her commitment to MGM and MGM had this property kicking around for decades.

BUtterfield 8 was a novel by John O'Hara about a high priced call girl named Gloria Wandrous. It was based on the infamous Starr Faithful who was killed in 1931 and had a black book of some very influential clients.

Though it was written in 1935 the film is updated to the present. Taylor has a tempestuous relationship with her number one client played by Lawrence Harvey. He's the problem with the film. He's basically a cad, so much of one that one wonders what Taylor saw in him other than a successful social marriage. She certainly has some twisted values and finds that out too late.

Taylor got Eddie Fisher cast in the film as her friend. This was Fisher's second attempt at a movie career and there were no further offers from Hollywood for his services. As an actor he was a dud, Taylor says he doubled in that department as husband. She was quoted as saying that while she could think of good qualities in most of the men she was involved with, she couldn't for the life of her understand why she married Eddie Fisher.

But more than that, to me it was obvious that Fisher's character is gay, despite him having a girl friend played by Susan Oliver. Back then that was one area Hollywood didn't go into.

So Liz got her Oscar at last more for her courageous battle with pneumonia than her performance. She sure did better work. Her second Oscar for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf was one she really felt she earned. She was not on screen again until 1963 when Cleopatra was released. And that's a whole other chapter in the Elizabeth Taylor saga.

Taylor is tasty in this role, but is it the way she smokes or the way she smokes? Much of this movie is cheap psychobabble, but Taylor smolders with a raw sensuality that you would never guess she had in her. You knew she was strong, beautiful, and flawed, but you never knew she could be all three and still be able to act with that much cleavage.

The unfortunate thing about this movie is that there are other people in it. It's Taylor's movie, but somehow it gets mangled and it ends up being Laurence Harvey's story. Who the Hell let the last twenty minutes of this movie get through the production line? What a complete letdown. And Bronislau Kaper's absolutely horrible musical score doesn't help matters. If there was ever a movie that didn't need this kind of filler music, this is it.

Daniel Mann directs this eye opener of its day. The beautiful Elizabeth Taylor plays Gloria, a high-dollar prostitute that comes to grips with the possibility of finding 'Mr. Right'...a wealthy married man(Laurence Harvey). Gloria has a very troubled past...being forced to the ways of the flesh at the age of 13. She picks the men she wants in and out of her life; but has a problem breaking off with the compulsive and enamored Harvey. Taylor's sultry role is near perfection and earned her the Academy Award. The subject matter by today's standards is far from taboo as it was; but is still very interesting. Supporting cast includes:Dina Merrill, Susan Oliver, Kay Medford and Eddie Fisher. It is hard to not watch the screen when Liz makes the scene.

In the normal scheme of things, lofty MGM wouldn't have touched John O'Hara's novel with a ten foot pole--but shortly before her contract was to end, MGM star Elizabeth Taylor besmirched her image by running off with Debbie Reynolds' husband Eddie Fisher. With her reputation in shreds and one foot outside the studio gate any way, MGM decided to capitalize on the bad press by casting Taylor as BUTTERFIELD 8's bad-girl-from-hell... and then, to add insult to injury, tucked Eddie Fisher into a supporting role and cast Debbie Reynolds look-alike Susan Oliver in the role of Eddie's girl friend, who feels threatened by Liz's manhungry ways. Liz fought the project tooth and nail, but MGM was adamant: she owed them another film, and she wasn't leaving until she made it.

BUTTERFIELD 8 is the story of Gloria Wandrous (Taylor), a hard-drinking, sexed-up, bed-hopping dress model who gets her kicks by seducing and then dumping men according to whim--until she encounters an unhappily married man just as hard and disillusioned as she in Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey.) Although the production code was still somewhat in force, it had loosened up quite a bit since the days of NATIONAL VELVET, and while scenes stop short at the bedroom door they have plenty of sizzle while they walk up to it; moreover, every one in the film talks about sex so much you'd think it had just been invented. Taylor is on record saying that she considers the film a piece of trash, and she swears she has never actually seen it, that she would rather die than ever see it.

But something weird happened as the camera rolled. Taylor, doubtlessly driven by her fury at having to do the movie, gives a throw-away, over-the-top performance--but perversely, this is precisely what the role requires, and her performance was successful enough to earn her an Oscar. The supporting cast follows her lead, all of them performing in broad colors and bigger-than-life emotions, and again they too are quite successful, with Laurence Harvey and Dina Merrill (as his long suffering wife) particularly effective. Ultimately, of course, Elizabeth Taylor is quite right when she says the film is a piece of trash. But it is the best kind of trash because it is so completely trashy: BUTTERFIELD 8 doesn't just dive into the trash pile, it wallows in it with considerable conviction. Modern films of the same type may show more skin and more sex, but for sheer authority BUTTERFIELD 8 remains a standard against which most of them pale. Not every one will like it, but I recommend it all the same.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

The best thing about BUtterfield 8 is the performance of Elizabeth Taylor, it is a superb performance(especially during Gloria's rape revelation) that did deserve the Oscar it got and she to me has only been sexier in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. But that is not to say that she is the only good thing because the locations and costumes are just splendid and the whole film is very good-looking and rich in colour. The showdown between Taylor and Dunnock and especially the rape revelation scene(a very daring theme and scene for the time and still hits hard, the best line of the film is also in this scene) are very vividly done and are the dramatic highlights. Some of the supporting performances are good too, Mildred Dunnock is very touching, Betty Field has a ball and savours the catty dialogue she has and Kay Medford is always good value. BUtterfield 8 is a case however of the lead performance faring far better than the film itself, it's far from a terrible film but what is not so good about it comes across rather weakly. Laurence Harvey looks uncomfortable throughout, as you can see at the end and in the practically non-existent chemistry between him and Taylor, and Eddie Fisher is wasted, going through the motions in a thankless and confusingly-written role. Dina Merrill has next to nothing to do in a performance that manages to be overdone and underplayed. The music score from personal opinion was over-the-top and irritating as well as at times excessive, BUtterfield 8 would have benefited a little more from the score being used sparingly or not having one at all given the nature of the story. The pacing and direction like the film start off well but as the writing weakens the more lethargic both get. And the script and story didn't come off well to me, the controversial, daring aspects come across as tepid and out of date now and the script is as far away from naturally-flowing as you can go, has far too much talk and reeks of melodramatic soap opera complete with some of the catty dialogue sounding ridiculously over-heated. The ending came across as far too moralistic and the dialogue and Harvey's delivery of it in his very tacked-on final speech have to be heard to be believed. Overall, not terrible, not great but worth the viewing for Taylor and the production values. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Several times a year, I love nothing more than to curl up with a nice, strong drink, and--preferably if it's rainy or snowy outside--pop in this unforgettable tribute to a phenomenal star and that long vanished world of 1960. For the next two hours I willingly become lost in an MGM Technicolored world of high glamour--where women wear ravishing clothes, where all the rooms are warm and inviting and elegant and everyone enacts their deep problems in bigger-than-life style. And everyone looks like the type of people you would love to spend a few hours with and who in no way resemble your boring next door neighbor. I remember being in college at the time and three times I, with several of my gay buddies, tried to buy a ticket to see this so-called torrid romance of a New York call-girl, played by the most notorious and magical and beautiful woman at that time: Elizabeth Taylor. The theater was sold out each time but it did have a life-sized cardboard cutout of the movie's main character, Gloria Wandrous, wearing that famous slip with a phone to her ear and above the message: "Call Butterfield 8 anytime and Get a Message You Won't Forget." There was an actual phone and if you picked it up, a recording gave you the show-times. Many of us were photographed next to this cardboard vision of decadent beauty and we all ended up weeping at the end of the movie at the beautiful but troubled woman's demise. We all know that Elizabeth Taylor fought hard not to make this film. She had thought she had finished her contractual obligations with MGM and was eager to start earning her $1 million salary to portray the Queen of the Nile. She was also horrified by the script, which she dubbed pornographic, but the script writers had based their work on the image of Elizabeth Taylor the world considered her at that time. She had "run off" with Debbie Reynolds crooner husband, Eddie Fisher, and had never apologized for it while Debbie posed for photographers with safety pins pinned to her blouses as if she had just changed diapers on one of her newborns. Elizabeth was also living openly with her new lover--a horrible no-no at that time. Another strike against this scarlet woman! But this star of stars did make the movie and it broke box office records around the world. The studio surrounded Taylor with the MGM personnel she had grown up with and the result is a lush, glamorous world where everything is clean and rich looking and the people are beautiful and dramatic. Camera man Joseph Ruttenberg, who was nominated for an Oscar for this film, bathes our star in flattering, warm light. The gifted Helen Rose created the character's striking wardrobe of beautiful gowns and suits and furs. The haunting but subtle musical score is by Bronislau Kaper. What stands out is that legendary MGM gloss where all the rooms and interiors are bathed in warm and inviting tones. A great added attractive element of this movie is the outstanding supporting cast with Mildred Dunnock playing the naive mother of our bad girl but even better is acting veteran Betty Field as the nosy neighbor who fires off some of the wittiest one-liners in the movie. Laurence Harvey has the unpleasant role of the rich jerk, Liggett, who verbally destroys Gloria at a climatic moment and then tries to woo her back. Dina Merrill is his long-suffering wife. The studio put yet another iconic image into this intoxicating brew and that's the unforgettable little red sports car that Gloria zips around Manhattan in. It's actually a 1960 Red Series Sunbeam Alpine that could be driven in style even today. This is an addictive movie to watch for those who long for those ancient days when major studios still knew how to pour on the glamour, with haunting musical soundtracks and bigger-than-life stars like Elizabeth Taylor who no longer exist.

Call girl Elizabeth Taylor (playing Gloria Wandrous-!!) pines for love in this glossy, empty claptrap from John O'Hara's flimsy novel. Lots of bitchy banter, a neon-lit love clinch, but no real characters and not much interest beyond the rather tacky glamor. The movie does begin well, with an elongated opening set-up featuring Liz leaving a married man's apartment, taking a mink and scrawling a missive on the mirror. But the film is so poky and lethargic, and Taylor looks so sleepy, that one waits in vain for the director to shake off the cobwebs. Even sleepier is Eddie Fisher, in a confusingly written role as Liz's...what? guy-pal? For those who stick with it, the ending has to be seen to be believed. Taylor surely didn't buy it, not even when she won the Best Actress Oscar (everyone knew it was because she had been so sick). *1/2 from ****

`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 Metro, and Berman be dammed.

***SPOILERS*** At first the movie "Butterfield 8" skirts around the very obvious fact that it's leading character the drop dead gorgeous Gloria Wandrous, Elizabeth Taylor,is actually a high paid call-girl. Gloria gets all heated up when she finds $250.00 left to her in an envelop at her sex partners Weston Liggett, Laurence Harvey, pent-house apartment on swanky 5th avenue in Manhattan. It's a big insult to Gloria that she's being paid for having sex with Weston as if she expected to have done it just for love and nothing else!

It's much later in the movie when the truth comes out that Gloria is not only, as she's called by Weston himself, a slut but a woman that jumps into bed with every man that she meets like a flea jumps from one dog to another. This somewhat confusing storyline makes it hard to believe the basic premise of the film involving a fur coat that Gloria takes from Weston's apartment because he tore her dress, when he was drunk, and didn't pay to replace it. It's the missing fur coat that in the end leads to both Gloria's demise, in a fatal car accident, and the by now mentally destroyed Weston leaving his faithful wife Emily, Dina Merrill, so he can spend some time, as possibly a Monk in a Buddhist Monastery, to get his head together as well as his pride and dignity back.

Gloria for her part isn't the bad, or immoral, young woman as were at first made to believe that she is. Gloria had been looked after since she was a teenager, for some 12 years, by her good kind and understanding friend of the family and now music composer Steve Carpenter, Eddie Fisher, who despite her knock out and sexy looks only wants to be her friend and spiritual adviser not lover; even though Eddie Fisher was married to Elizabeth at the time. In fact Gloria constantly flaunts her sexuality, in skimpy and revealing underclothes, at him but Steve doesn't give her as much as a second look or hug. It's later revealed by Gloria, to Steve, that she in fact was sexually molested at the age of 13 by her widowed mothers, Mildred Dunnock, boyfriend that messed up her mind making Gloria feel dirty and incapable of having a normal sexual relationship with anyone.

Weston for his part develops a love hate relationship with Gloria in the fact that no matter how much he's in love with her he's still married to Emily. It's Emily's family the fabulously wealthy Jescott clan that set Weston up in the life of luxury at a no show, or work, job in one of their chemical plants. Slowly losing his mind Weston finally snaps when he finds out that Emily's expensive fur coat is missing, taken by Gloria, and the fact that the truth is soon to be revealed to Emily of his infidelity toward her was just too much for the poor man to take.

In one of the most explosive scenes in movie history Weston confronts Gloria at a local and very expensive bar & restaurant and all hell breaks loose. Spewing out a string of obscenities, that were allowed on the screen back in 1960, at Gloria Weston leaves her hitting the bottle and almost suicidal. It's later when Weston came back to his senses he tries to apologizes to Gloria for what he did to her, humiliating her in public, but by then it was already too late. An emotionally drained and deeply hurt Gloria had just about had all that she could take from him and made a dash for it, in her red sports car, with Weston begging for her forgiveness, in his Rolls Royce, hot on her tail.

The tragic ending has Weston finally realize that he can't juggle two women, Gloria & Emily, around at one time and not end up getting burnt. Weston had the best advice he could get in the movie from his mother-in-law Mrs. Jescott, Carman Mathews,in that it's time, after 150 years in the social registry, for a Jescott to get a divorce which she wanted her daughter Emily to get from Weston. If only both Weston an Emily listened all this tragedy, Gloria's death Weston's mental breakdown and Emily's estrangement, could have easily have been avoided.

Even though this film has such actors as Laurence Harvey and Eddie Fisher, forget it, this film belongs to La la Liz Taylor, Dina Merrill and all the other females who can't insulting Liz but can's help wish they were like her, a model who's job is to "model fancy dresses at nightclubs"(??). Of course, as you probably know, this film details Liz as the ulitmate Man Magnet, who sleeps with every man she sees but abhors at being called a wh---. Laurence Harvey and Liz try to make a go at it, but secrets and lies catch up with them, leading up to the well, unexpected conclusion (hey, it was the 60's, so I guess there was no way to go!) I enjoyed this film, although not REALLY as campy as it could have been, this is worth a hoot or two,

Watching 'BUtterfield 8 (1960)' is like stepping into another world. Everything is so foreign when compared to modern society - from the societal norms and morals, down to the interior decorating and the way people would place a call on a phone. At the center of this moving time capsule is the beautiful Liz Taylor, mesmerizing the audience. 80+ years later, this forgotten gem of a film still sparkles.

Real Review Posting Scoring Criteria:

Acting - 1/1;

Casting - 1/1;

Directing - 1/1;

Story - 1/1;

Writing/Screenplay - 1/1;

Total Base Score = 5

Modifiers:

Standout Performances - +1 ( Elizabeth Taylor );

Total Real Review Rating: 6.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in the world back in 1960 and she's always been a very talented actress. As the promiscuous model that finally fell in love, Taylor was the best thing in the dated, overly melodramatic, often ridiculous movie that was adapted from the John O'Hara's novel (written in 1935). I did not read "Butterfield 8" but I can't believe that the author of "Appointment in Samarra, and "The Lockwood Concern" wrote the stuff the cheap soap-operas are made of. Liz was big and she deserved her first Oscar but there are so many bad things about the movie - uninteresting characters, uninspired acting by the male protagonists, horrible irritating musical score - just a few of them. I read that Taylor hated the move when she was making it and she hates it now - I don't blame her. Taylor - Yes, the movie - no

"Butterfield 8" is a good movie, but a better sexy movie. This is Elizabeth Taylor's sexiest part. Even though Ms. Taylor hated this movie, she deserved the Oscar. Laurence Harvey was perfect as her leading man. Mr. Harvey should have been nominated for his performance, too. Of all her leading men, Mr. Harvey complimented her the best. Too bad they never worked again!

The movie was well-cast. The surprising performance was by Eddie Fisher, who is not an actor. He did a good job.

My first complaint about "Butterfield 8" is the description of the plot summary calling Ms. Taylor's character (Gloria Wandrous) a call girl. In the movie, Gloria Wandrous was portrayed as a model who liked to party. The point of the movie was Gloria was insulted that Weston Liggett portrayed by Lawrence Harvey gave her money for their first night together. Throughout the movie, she kept complaining she never took money for sex. Well, I never heard of a call girl not getting paid. Perhaps in the book, Gloria was a call girl. It seems censorship confused the storyline.

My second complaint about the movie was it should have been filmed in black and white. This movie was a black and white story and many of the colors were in black and white. MGM did the same thing years earlier in the movie, "That Forsyte Woman". Very distracting and what a waste of money! Both movies would have been accepted better if they were in black and white.

Elizabeth Taylor is her usual stunning, glamorous self but the preachy sentiment of this film hasn't aged well and a lot of the acting is soapy. Interesting how Mr Lingot is basically an upgraded Richard Burton. Worth a watch if you're a Taylor fan, but not her best.

If dated 60's camp with sexual innuendo and great outfits for the leading lady are your thing, then B8 will not disappoint. However speaking as a fan of such fare, this film leaves me a bit cold. Its camp moments and dialog are numerous enough, but B8 holds its best shocker for the end. The film, like Liz's character is a big tease. Taking small but well-placed stabs at sexual mores of the time period, but never really going further. Add Laurence Harvey's womanizing alcoholic, Dina Merrill as the waspy compliant wife, Eddie Fisher (La Taylor's current hubby at the time) in the non-essential role as Liz's pal, and Mildred Dunnock as Liz's annoying mother in denial, and you'll be hard pressed to find a likable character. Liz herself did not consider this her best performance. Shirley MacLaine called it "the Oscar I lost to the tracheotomy" referring to Taylor's near death from pneumonia complications in 1960. B8 (like other films that were based on camp sex novels of the 60's) would make a great remake if it remained set in the 60's but kept the shocks of the original book intact. If you love Liz, chances are you'll love B8. If you're looking for an accurate portrayal of O'Hara's landmark novel, this is not it.