Best movie ever!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

one of films of Elizabeth Taylor. not memorable, not seductive, not so bad. only a simple story of a call girl and her fight to survive to social pressure, to her men, to the desire to be herself. only good point - the hard work of Elizabeth Taylor to create a credible character and the few sparkles who proves her talent. because she has the chance to drive Gloria Wandrous in the direction who transforms ordinaries clichés, the music of the period and the conflict mother - daughter in a realistic portrait of a young girl looking her personal way. and that is the basic virtue of a film who search to tell more than the moral of period permits. the game of suggestion, bizarre today, the manner to use it are the pillars of a rare performance of an actress who, in many occasions, was only the beautiful, eccentric woman or the second violin in films dominated by her partners.

The movie is about a high-priced call girl. Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous is a prostitute but Hollywood, in 1960, still bound by antiquated production codes couldn't reveal her real resume. This leaves the film uncomfortably constrained and contrived. The audience has to go with what's presented, a story line crafted to sanitize the world's oldest profession. So the censors have given us a character Gloria, who is a "club girl," a model paid to wear fashionable clothes and be seen in trendy watering holes. These gathering places are frequented by men in suits, the wealthy and influential whose hands are never empty of a glass, downing one drink than another, the highball or martini. Gloria, a "good time girl," is promiscuous, BUT what she's really selling and out to get is "true love." She herself is an elitist in her own line of work, not just a common gold digger, but also a girl with an elevated purpose. And then in comes one of the regulars Gloria has hooked, Weston Liggett played by Laurence Harvey. Harvey's an actor accomplished at playing characters practicing deception and enduring subsequent remorse, and he's able here to deliver this type of troubled personality. Liggett, we soon learn is suffering from a terrible malady. He is married to a wealthy society woman, and works for the family company where he feels undervalued and unproductive. With all the entitlements of the good life, he is still a wretch, enslaved to a life of dull, staid opulence. His wife Emily, played by Dina Merrill, is the ever suffering, understanding spouse, putting up with her husband's philandering. His wife's indulgence of his shortcomings only increases Liggett's self-loathing and guilt. What's a young, good-looking man with money to do when he's destined to endure such a banal lifestyle? Why take up with a fancy slut and then of course, fall obsessively, madly in love with her. Eddie Fisher, Taylor's husband at the time, is awkwardly positioned into this melodrama, giving less a performance than a "walk through." He plays Gloria's childhood friend Steve who serves as her devoted, unfailing confidante. He's always there for her when she is in need of emotional support, which for Gloria means an almost daily cry for help. Steve's jealous finance Norma hates his relationship with Gloria. Susan Oliver as Norma gives a serviceable performance as she has little to do but by turns look aggrieved and frustrated. Her confrontations with her boyfriend Steve are verbal jabs, inviting Steve to challenge her dramatic statements, ones usually centered around Gloria's cheap behavior: "Is she not the biggest tramp in the whole city!" Since Manhattan contains somewhere around 8 million inhabitants…this is certainly quite a distinction. Mildred Dunnock is Gloria's mother, a woman living a genteel life of denial. Her daughter is a "good girl." Mrs. Wandrous' one time man friend, and prospective husband, sexually abused the young teen-aged Gloria, a heinous exploitation over a protracted period of time. Whether the mother even knows of her daughter's childhood ordeal is never in fact made clear to the audience. Kay Medford, provides the most noteworthy, spirited performance in this otherwise dour production. She is the ironically named Happy, the owner of a popular motel, a rendezvous for illicit love. Happy, herself a "good time girl" in her younger days, maintains a cynical but upbeat philosophical outlook on life. She's a self-defined expert on male/female relationships, the guru ready to dole out wisdom and advice gained from her own hard luck lessons of life. Elizabeth Taylor reportedly disliked making this movie and her displeasure shows. Her portrayal is deficient in conveying the emotional and physical scars of misuse. Taylor gives us the emotional posturing of an uninspired acting technique. She's too much The Screen Goddess throughout, unblemished by any of the authentic grit and misery defining a victim of a sordid past and present. No piece of used merchandise, Taylor on screen is every inch the Movie Star. Liz got the best actress Oscar for this movie, purportedly the "pity vote," in acknowledgment of the illness that almost took her life. The win certainly couldn't have been for the undistinguished performance she gave in this movie.

for Taylor fans , it is a delight. for the others - image of a good performance. in fact, the seduction of movie is result of courage/science to present a series of delicate problems. Gloria is , in this conditions, a little more than a character but definition of a social search of sense. and Elizabeth Taylor does a correct work. maybe not great but perfect for give to her character strong nuances, delicate stripes of vulnerability, force and credibility. all in package of meeting with Laurence Harvey. its trap - the public expectations because the fame of film is more great by its resources. but it is only a detail. each actor does a meritorious work and the dust of a period sensitivity is not an important obstacle for discover a common story with melodrama flavor. a special contribution,a role as delicate embroidery - Mildred Dunnock.

I love BUTTERFIELD 8 but agree it's more good than great -- or, as the phrase goes, "great trash".I don't mind Eddie Fisher, but Harvey is too sleazy (and not in a good way) for my tastes in the role. I always recast him in my head with James Mason. I also believe Taylor very much deserved her Oscar for this, even if she didn't think so (and her bitterness stems from the fact MGM forced her to do the movie after telling Mike Todd she wouldn't have to make anymore pictures she didn't like before her contract expired in 1960). She's fabulous in this. Her "I loved it!" confessional scene is kind of jaw-dropping... And I can watch her to-period "tragic" car accident till I'm blue in the face from howling like a hyena. It's laugh-out-loud funny.Part of why the picture almost works is of course the era, that fresh, haunted, end-of-the-world, early-early-'60s thing going for it, albeit in Ektachrome or whatever the hell they were using... Funny how the pastels of the late-'50s/early-'60s were so much more vibrant: I loved the soft blue phone and the soft pink phone set against the pink bathroom tile -- those sooooo bring back childhood memories... It's hard to describe the look that these had from that period; they were almost child's playhouse floating-on-a-cloud colors. And the cars which were easter egg colors and even primary colors. Every car color has been so muted for decades now -- you never see a primary color for a car anymore.Semi-great sudser, lifted to a level of art by a defiant Taylor.