Best Actress 1961: Elizabeth Taylor wins for Butterfield 8

the envelope please Elizabeth Taylor the thirty-third Academy Awards were in 1961 and honored the best films of 1960 that year Elizabeth Taylor won her first Best Actress Oscar for Butterfield 8 when we talked about Elizabeth Taylor we don't just talk about her movies although we absolutely could it's impossible to entirely disentangle the dramatic twists and turns of her personal life from her career it always has been so it only makes sense that the story of her first Academy Award is inextricably linked with her off screen life in this episode I contextualized her strained relationship with the Academy and explained how a brush with death may have elevated her performance from insignificant to award-winning first a moment for the nominees Melina Mercouri as a Greek prostitute who Amanda attempts to reform in never on Sunday Deborah Carr as the wife of an Australian ranch hand in the sundowners greer garson as Eleanor Roosevelt in sunrise at Campobello and Shirley MacLaine in the apartment as an elevator girl caught in the intersection of office politics and romance she really deserves a little bit of time here because if we're being honest she should have won this Oscar Shirley was a bit of a newcomer in 1961 though not unknown by any means her first movie was 1955 the trouble with Harry in 1959 she finally caught the Academy's attention and was nominated for some came running competing for Best Actress again that year with Elizabeth Taylor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but the apartment truly launched Shirley into stardom Billy Wilder's script let her be exuberant and sad and coy and apathetic and everything in between and her reviews were great variety said her ability to play abroad where it should be broad and subtle where it must be subtle enables the actress to affect reality and yet do much more Academy also loved the apartment awarding it Best Picture director and original screenplay among others typically when a film performs this well critically financially and at the awards and other categories all signs usually point to a win but as I've already alluded to Elizabeth Taylor's extraordinary circumstances essentially nullified any realistic chance Shirley had that night first Elizabeth's Oscar in 1961 was in part a retroactive acknowledgment of performances that had been unjustly overlooked by the Academy to understand why these losses were unjust we need context by the time Elizabeth Taylor's career really took off in the mid to late 50s she was already on her third marriage divorce though not uncommon in Hollywood still caused quite a scandal in the press Liz's capital as a celebrity was massive as both a legitimate force in the entertainment community and as a defining sexual icon of the era so the press had her under a particularly intense microscope Liz was determined that this third marriage to producer Mike Todd would last ending the daily public scrutiny of her life but where the public craves drama her life supplied during the filming of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1958 Mike tragically died in a plane crash Elizabeth sought comfort for her loss and found it in Eddie Fisher Mike Todd's best friend and husband of Debbie Reynolds any delivered that comfort and then some the story of this affair is wonderfully dramatic and you're not gonna get a better summary of it than Carrie Fisher's in wishful drinking but what you need to know for this story is that Eddie and Liz's affair and eventual marriage rebranded Elizabeth as a villain Eddie and Debbie had been America's Sweethearts and their breakup was a Brad and Jen sized story on steroids press painted a black-and-white narrative of Debbie as an innocent victim and Elizabeth as a manipulative [ __ ] overnight that seemingly perfect couples dream was over and it was all Elizabeth's fault this scandal arguably destroyed Elizabeth shot at an Oscar for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1959 the notoriously conservative Academy was not ready to reward someone so deeply stained by bad press for what was considered reckless and loose behavior of course the ceremony didn't lack its own controversy regardless debbie pulled out of presenting an award that night once again shifting the focus of the evening away from the actual winner susan hayward and back to elizabeth the following year elizabeth again lost the best actress race for suddenly last summer her third loss in a row in the category this was frustrating because by her estimation and by nearly every estimation i have read about this since she should have already won by then specifically for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof it was clear to her that her record with the Academy was marred by personal biases they wouldn't deny her talent by withholding a nomination but as more rumors poured out about new affairs with cast mates they wouldn't necessarily reward it either Elizabeth justifiably dissatisfied was eager to complete her contract at MGM but before she could leave she had to fulfill one last contractual obligation Butterfield in Butterfield 8 Elizabeth place a quote party-girl which basically means prostitute who finds herself caught in the middle of not one but two love triangles one of which is with a rich and married man Butterfield 8 although based on a novel ended up as a thinly veiled vehicle for slut-shaming Elizabeth I have yourself her characters skulks around in skimpy nightgowns and declares herself the [ __ ] of the world as her community scorns her lifestyle audiences couldn't help but understand what they were seeing because the analogies were so lazy right down to casting Eddie Fisher one for all and all for one the question is which one the kind of treatment Elizabeth receives in Butterfield Aid oddly mirrors a certain logic legislated in early films by the Hays Code in order to preserve the codes moral standard films had to portray bad behavior in a negative light so for example women in films who defied cultural norms related to sex or marriage had to be punished so audiences wouldn't want to echo their choices that's why a lot of women in old movies die in freak car crashes or suddenly fall ill or end up on the street this also happens to Elizabeth's character in Butterfield 8 she sleeps around and guess what she also dies in a car crash harkening back to this old timey logic that she got what she deserved in other words audiences were trained to expect the downfall of sexual women and you can't help but feel like Elizabeth was living in some bizarre real-life version of this logic herself where the public wanted her to personally suffer for what she did to Debby watching Butterfield 8 so obviously exploit Elizabeth's reputation and punished her for it by proxy on-screen reads like the public branding her with a red a Butterfield ADA isn't a great movie in fact you could say it's bad Elizabeth hated Butterfield 8 and vocally disparaged it for the rest of her life when I'd seen the film in a screening room can I swear on this I wrote in lipstick like Gloria did on the mirror piece of [ __ ] so why after years of being denied an Oscar for great roles did Elizabeth finally went for something so subpar in comparison to put it bluntly pity after filming Butterfield 8 Elizabeth accepted the role of Cleopatra for a whopping 1 million dollars the first actress to ever earned so much but immediately upon arriving in London to begin shooting she suffered a series of critical health setbacks that landed her in the hospital food poisoning and accidental sleeping pill overdose the flu and then one night one of Elizabeth's nurses notice that she was turning blue they rushed her again to the hospital to discover that she had contracted pneumonia and needed an emergency tracheotomy had that procedure not occurred Elizabeth would have died suddenly with her life at stake the conversation about Elizabeth shifted dramatically now she was poor Elizabeth clinging to life not a ruinous nymphomaniac hunting for homes to wreck all of this happened to coincide with the beginning of Oscar voting period one of the most bankable stars in the world had been an inch from death and inevitably the wave of sympathy affected voters by the time the ceremony rolled around Elizabeth was out of danger health-wise she arrives that night in a beautiful gown but with her trademark jewelry noticeably scarce she chose not to wear a necklace openly revealing her brand-new tracheotomy scar for the world see and finally after over a decade in the business she want all is this acceptance speeches a performance all its own clutching meekly to the arm of Eddie Fisher she hobbles to the stage and faintly whisper as a short thank you before retiring backstage it's incredible truly only Elizabeth Taylor could pull something like that off and leave you wanting more she knew she didn't deserve that Oscar and she knew she got it because she almost died won the Academy Award but the next day I still said I wanted from my track yeah I mean it was a piece of garbage shirley maclaine knew too famously joking to The Hollywood Reporter I lost to a tracheotomy but having wanted an Oscar forever and because she thought she'd earned one by then it wasn't like Elizabeth was going to refuse it Elizabeth story teaches us that the Academy doesn't put on blinders when it comes to voting personal narratives matter and if things had been just a little different we might be talking about Shirley MacLaine right now this Oscar was about retroactively recognition about turning a new leaf and mostly probably reevaluating a strained relationship after a health scare but Elizabeth came away the winner and we can't say with a career like that that she didn't deserve it thank you for watching if you'd like to see more videos like this check out my channel and don't forget to Like and subscribe thank you bye you

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 168,162

Rating: 4.9441009 out of 5

Keywords: elizabeth Taylor, oscar, academy award, best actress, 1961, butterfield 8, shirley maclaine, the apartment, cleopatra, eddie fisher, debbie reynolds, best actress oscar, hollywood, classic movies, cat on a hot tin roof, elizabeth taylor interview

Id: 4N_wK71wIBI

Length: 10min 43sec (643 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 15 2018