Tramps Like Us We Were Born To Run-Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey In The Film Adaptation Of John O’Hara’s “Butterfield 8” (1960)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont

Butterfield 8, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, from the novel by John O’Hara, 1960 

Bang- I might as well get my “hook” in right now. Talking explicitly about sex, as opposed to channeling explicit sex in its various guises is still a hard sell in many precincts. That seems counter-intuitive given the amount of time and energy media, social media, hell, people in cozy individual conversations spent on it. Maybe I should step back and explain what the heck this statement has to do with reviewing a film from the early 1950s before the full swing of the sexual revolution hit, before the blessed “the pill” which needs no further explanation, Butterfield 8, updated from a John O’Hara 1930s novel, he the Pottsville, Pa plot-liner famous at the time for his ground-breaking Appointment at Samarra.  Explain too why this is a film review “of sorts” and why I used a line from a Bruce Springsteen song in the headline to this piece.  

When I essentially retired from the day to day grind of writing a by-line for Women Today I didn’t fully want to give up writing and still wanted to do an occasional piece, what I call a “think piece” as the spirit moved me. So I got in touch with my old flame Josh Breslin who has worked at this publication for many years and whom I met here when I was a young just out of graduate school stringer working for Sam Lowell, the film editor, when Allan Jackson was running the show. (In the interest of transparency which is a big thing with current site manager Greg Green Josh and I are “rekindling” our old flame if you can believe that after his three marriages and my two and Josh was instrumental back in the day in helping me get that by-line when it was apparent that I would never be more than a stringer as long as his old friend Allan was in charge.) He checked with Allan and Allan was now quite pleased to have me contribute whatever I wanted to as that spirit mentioned above moved me.

That is the rub though. Since my arrival there has been a change of leadership from Allan to Greg the reasons for which do not need to be gotten into here since that happened a while back. Originally the assignment on this film was given to Si Lannon who was crazy for, had read I think every John O’Hara novel although his writings in my eyes were uneven enough that I would not have read everything the man wrote. This was a couple of years ago just before the #MeToo movement came to the public gaze and Greg felt that the subject matter was best handled under the current circumstances by a woman given that the lead female character, Gloria, the role Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for, was what in the old days, my youth days a tramp, “every man’s darling” we used to cynically call such women in the girls’ locker room. Men would have used the word “whore” or some such vile designation.  I had argued at the time that Si was still the better choice since having read the novel and thinking it was so much pulp I was not that enthusiastic about reviewing the film adaptation. Greg shelved the project for a while and I had other assignments in the meantime and didn’t get to view this film until recently.

That is one part of the back story. The other after viewing the film was a feeling that I wasn’t sure how to approach the subject matter until I remembered Sam Lowell’s “cure”-when you don’t have a “hook” for your piece (and he reminded me of that as well after he read the first draft of this review). On viewing older films, this from 1960s and so even before my time although not my sensibilities, when stuck use the old tried and true “slice of life” approach. And that along with some personal material which is the “sort of” part of the review is where I am heading with this-and with my initial comment about the vagaries of talking candidly about sex.

As I mentioned above the lead female character, Gloria, was a tramp, a slut by her own definition, although being beautiful, being intelligent and fronting her sexual appetites working as  a pay my own way “fashion model” she didn’t want for male companionship-on her terms. No dough involved, at least formally.  More on that later when I do a short summary of the story. Although couched in 1950s implicit language where much was left to indirection to pass the Hollywood censors and arbiters of what could be expressed and how vividly to do so the girls in my Monday morning before school locker room conversations would have known girls just like Gloria, as did I.

Girls who in our suburban New Jersey neighborhood were known to go “all the way” meaning for anybody now who is clueless having full sexual intercourse (then meaning essentially the “missionary position” and not of other types of sexual experience learned about later and not just from the Karma Sutra either although that is a an excellent source-for the young and agile not fragile). Known to be “easy.” Some of them were motorcycle mamas in training, others were just seen as promiscuous, being seen with a variety of guys on a variety of occasions and others whom we never heard about were those who had been “soiled” by some unwilling bad encounter with a man, maybe even a relative, which did something to her soul. Like I said we would have been clueless and horrified at that latter although today a too frequent story from hell. That was the obvious “bad girl” aura of the times. More than a few of whom would wind up what Josh called in his growing up neighborhood in Maine “going to see Aunt Emma.” Meaning the girl was “in the family way,” pregnant and unmarried and rather than bring shame on the family would leave town for some relative’s home to have her baby maybe never to return.

What the reader may not know and here is my “of sorts” contribution not all the so-called virtuous girls, meaning flat-ass virgins who were allegedly clueless about sex were that innocent. Not according to that ubiquitous Monday morning locker room talk, although we all found out much latter after high school usually that girls who said that had “gone all the way” with some Johnny hadn’t and girls, confession, girls like me who had said they were still virginal who had. That last part important and I think that is where I could stand in some solidarity with that Gloria of the film. I was known publicly to be very proper, something of what today would be called a nerd, always nose in a book and in the advanced classes in school. But I was very curious about sex, about “doing it” and one summer night when I was fourteen I let a guy I said I loved have his way with me (funny all the implicit sexual expressions we used rather than some maybe rawer terms).

And I will not lie, will not kid the reader, I liked it maybe not that first night since it hurt a little but after that.  And nobody, nobody at all knew what I was up to including close girl friends who would have freaked. Maybe told their parents or worse mine. See from the very first I never dated any guys from in town, in that death trap Sunnyvale town but would go to say the Village in New York City and get picked up with no real problem. I was so naïve though I never seriously thought about the possible consequences if say “the rubber” failed, about becoming an “Aunt Emma” girl. This I know, this in the heart of the sexual revolution 1960s and later with Josh, we used to laugh about all the secret stuff, all the shameless shameful stuff we did and which today probably seems pretty old-fashioned and it was except you had to know the milieu then, had to know that “slice of life.”

That, finally, is what did Gloria in, that difference between being a party girl, being any man’s girl, being a tramp. I would have been horrified if anybody called me that-ever but it was the way I felt some times, sometimes when I was plotting my next adventure. That struggle to gather in some self-respect, to have her man Liggett, played by coldly sexy Laurence Harvey, love her for what she was -a good woman-and not a tramp no matter how many men she had is what would be her downfall when she decided she had to start a new life, start a life without the burden of what Liggett knew about her and in the back of his mind would always wonder about her. While her death via an automobile accident as the scorned Liggett was pursuing her in another automobile seemed too over-the-top as a story line it kind of says a lot about who was a winner and who was a loser then. She died, while when he went home to wifey, he could just try to go “find himself.” Damn.