BUtterfield 8 (1960)
Elizabeth Taylor won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a high class call girl with much emotional baggage. Eddie Fisher to whom she was married at the time seems uneasy as her only true friend but Laurence Harvey is convincing as the wealthy executive with whom she has a sordid affair. Or at least sordid for Hollywood circa 1960.
Taylor is at her most glamorous here but the opening scenes as she wakes in Harvey's hotel room to an envelope with a note and $250 then proceeds to clean her teeth with Scotch before scrawling 'No sale' across the mirror in pink lipstick gives her an almost sleazy allure.
BUtterfield 8 plays out as a human drama with little in the way of humour to enlighten proceedings, the sex, whilst tepid nowadays caused controversy at the time and the shock ending is just that - a genuine shock.
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