Elizabeth Taylor movies on TCM
Elizabeth Taylor can be found in 11 movies to be presented on Turner Classic Movies on Monday, Aug. 23, as part of TCM’s “Summer Under the Stars” series. (See below TCM’s full Elizabeth Taylor schedule.]
Curiously, even though Taylor is one of the biggest movie stars ever, she did appear in a few (to the best of my knowledge) still hard-to-find titles. Is Franco Zeffirelli’s Young Toscanini (1988) available on home video? Are Night Watch (1973) and Ash Wednesday (1973) easily available?
Unfortunately, none of these titles will be shown on TCM, but there’s one that most people probably haven’t heard of despite its stellar cast: Brian G. Hutton’s X, Y & Zee (1971), a bizarre psychological drama in which Taylor stars opposite Michael Caine and Susannah York.
Though hardly a great film, X, Y & Zee is an intriguing portrayal of dysfunctional human relations: Married couple Caine-Taylor, lovers Caine-York, and seducer/seducee Taylor-York. It’s definitely worth a look, especially since both Taylor and York are at their best. As a plus, the classy supporting cast includes Margaret Leighton and John Standing.
In spite of Joan Bennett’s presence (and she is very good), Vincente Minnelli’s Father of the Bride (1950) is the sort of family movie that could only be saved by an appearance of a mass of flesh-eating zombies. MGM’s perennial Andy Hardy sensibility is the stuff that nightmares are made of.
On the other hand, Life with Father (1947) – a Warner Bros. release – has enough oddball humor to make it very enjoyable. The fact that the film’s production values are first-rate, and that William Powell (as the unreligious father) and Irene Dunne are in top form is a great help.
Clarence Brown’s National Velvet (1945) left me cold, but Fred M. Wilcox’s Lassie Come Home (1943) left me misty-eyed. I cared more about that collie than about most humans in most MGM movies. (Though two-legged Dame May Whitty has a fine moment in the Lassie drama.)
Taylor looks beautiful and is surprisingly effective in George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (1951), costarring Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters. (Despite a Best Actress Oscar nomination, Taylor was less effective in another pairing with Clift, Raintree County, MGM’s attempt to create a second Gone with the Wind. Clift’s disfiguring car crash took place during filming.)
Taylor is less beautiful but even more effective in Mike Nichols’ Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), the kind of family movie that requires no zombies to make it more realistic.
In fact, the complex, engrossing, disturbing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hasn’t aged one day since it first came out nearly half a century ago.
Adapted by Ernest Lehman from Edward Albee’s play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also stars Richard Burton, George Segal, and eventual Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Sandy Dennis.
Elizabeth Taylor was reluctant to star in Daniel Mann’s Butterfield 8 (1960), the film that was to eventually win her a Best Actress Academy Award. (Taylor would win her second Oscar statuette for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
“It’s a terrible mean thing they’ve done to me,” the MGM contract player told UPI. “They have the power to keep me off the screen for the next two years unless I agree to do Butterfield and it looks as if that’s what they’re going to do.”
Taylor finally agreed to star as the tragic high-class sex worker Gloria Wandrous so she could be free to travel to Rome to film Cleopatra for 20th Century Fox. Her costars in Butterfield 8 are Oscar nominee Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top, 1959), and Eddie Fisher, whom Taylor had married following a scandalous affair – when it all started, Fisher was Debbie Reynolds’ husband.
Butterfield 8 turned out to be a box office success, but reviewers were unimpressed. Yet that year enough Academy members felt Taylor gave the best performance by an actress in a leading role that the actress found herself among the five nominees for 1960’s Best Actress Oscar.
A serious illness that led to a tracheotomy all but guaranteed her the statuette. According to Damien Bona and Mason Wiley’s Inside Oscar, fellow nominee Melina Mercouri considered asking the other Best Actress nominees – Deborah Kerr, Shirley MacLaine, and Greer Garson – to drop out of the race with her so Taylor could win unanimously, but ultimately decided against the idea.
Mercouri explained: “I was afraid to suggest it because then everyone would think I was just trying to make publications.”
Schedule (PT) and synopses from the TCM website:
3:00 AM Lassie Come Home (1943)
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox.
Color. 89 min.4:30 AM National Velvet (1944)
Cast: Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald Crisp, Anne Revere, Angela Lansbury.
Director: Clarence Brown.
Color. 124 min.6:45 AM Life with Father (1947)
Cast: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Elizabeth Taylor, ZaSu Pitts, Jimmy Lydon, Martin Milner.
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Color. 118 min.8:45 AM Father of the Bride (1950)
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor.
Director: Vincente Minnelli.
B&W. 93 min.10:45 AM A Place in the Sun (1951)
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Raymond Burr.
Director: George Stevens.
B&W. 122 min.1:00 PM The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Donna Reed, Walter Pidgeon, Roger Moore.
Director: Richard Brooks.
Color. 116 min.3:00 PM Butterfield 8 (1960)
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher, Mildred Dunnock, Dina Merrill, Betty Field, Jeffrey Lynn, Kay Medford.
Director: Daniel Mann.
Color. 109 min.5:00 PM Raintree County (1957)
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, Agnes Moorehead, Rod Taylor, Lee Marvin, Nigel Patrick.
Director: Edward Dmytryk.
Color. 173 min.8:00 PM Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Cast: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Dennis, George Segal.
Director: Mike Nichols.
B&W. 131 min.10:30 PM The V.I.P.s (1963)
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Margaret Rutherford, Rod Taylor, Elsa Martinelli, Orson Welles, Maggie Smith, Linda Christian.
Director: Anthony Asquith.
Color. 119 min.1:00 AM X Y & Zee (1972)
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Caine, Susannah York.
Director: Brian G. Hutton.
Color. 106 min.
Endnotes
Elizabeth Taylor movies’ schedule via the TCM website.