Aging movie star Alexandra del Lago, also known as Princess Kosmonopolis (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), fears her career is over due to her fading youthful looks. She takes up with a handsome youn... Read allAging movie star Alexandra del Lago, also known as Princess Kosmonopolis (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), fears her career is over due to her fading youthful looks. She takes up with a handsome young man, Chance Wayne (Mark Harmon), who once had promise as an actor, but who has fallen in... Read allAging movie star Alexandra del Lago, also known as Princess Kosmonopolis (Dame Elizabeth Taylor), fears her career is over due to her fading youthful looks. She takes up with a handsome young man, Chance Wayne (Mark Harmon), who once had promise as an actor, but who has fallen into the life of a gigolo. Together, they travel to Chance's home town, where he hopes to re... Read all
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- TriviaWhile a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in December 2019, Mark Harmon told a story about Elizabeth Taylor from the set of this movie: "She was such fun. She had a thing in her contract: she worked eight hours a day, and that was it. She'd arrive in the morning, and she was in wardrobe and made up, and she'd get out of her car, and she was ready to work. And then she had a woman who would come on the stage at eight hours and she'd just go [taps his watch], like this, and wherever we were she'd stand up and go, 'good night,' and was gone. And then we'd work for another six hours. And then I ended up doing all my closeups that first week with a stand-in , which is hard because [she's] a nice person, but [she's] not an actor, right? I was having a hard time, and I went to the producers and said, 'I've got a problem here,' and they said 'what do you want us to do about it, it's in her contract.' And I said [shrugs]. So now it's Monday and were on a location out in Altadena somewhere and for some reason that day she's been there two hours longer than her time and everybody knows it. It's like a working crew, so she's sitting on a couch, I'm standing right behind her, I'm on my mark, people are moving lights, and she's just sitting there like this [he crosses his hands on his lap]. And noise and people, you know, production, and all of a sudden in a voice about this loud [indicating his own moderate speaking tone] she says, 'all i have to say'--and everybody stops. and she waits until it's dead silent. And she said, 'is today, I have been here two hours longer than I am supposed to have been.' I'm standing behind her, and I go, 'Hey, Elizabeth, all I gotta say is welcome to the fucking club.' And she turned on me, with those blue eyes, and she went 'Oooh!' And I said, 'No, I'm not pitching you any grief at all, I'm really not. But here's the deal: you go home and we work another eight hours, and we're never going to get this done.' And she turned around, she just sat there very still, for twenty minutes, sat there. They come out, they go, 'we're ready,' she goes, 'Good night,' and she got up and left. So I'm looking to get fired, right? Next day, and from that point on to the rest of that picture, she's there every moment of that film to do everything there is to do. And at the wrap party, which she had at her house, with [her] Butterfield 8 Oscar and [her] Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf [Oscar] standing on that mantel, she wants to meet [everyone] at the door, and as you leave, she has a present for you...and she wants you to open it as she gives it to you. Its a sterling silver frame with a cast and crew picture, that says 'Thank you very much, Elizabeth Taylor.' And she gives me a little box, and I open it up, and it's a 1959 Hamilton Sea-Lectric watch, solid gold, and on the back, you flip it over, it says 'M.H., Two Hours, Tick-Tock, Love E.T.'"
- GoofsThis remake is set in the late 1950s. Yet Alexandra del Lago pays with a credit card, not with checks as in the original play and original film. Also some of the costuming, especially Heavenly's, is much later in style than the 1950's-early 1960s.
- Quotes
Princess Kosmonopolis: By the time I was your age, I was already a legend
- ConnectionsReferenced in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Mark Harmon/Caitlin Weierhauser (2019)
Mark Harmon is not as charismatic as Paul Newman very few are. But he brings his own brand of sexy swagger to the role of Chance Wayne who is now the kept boy of fading film star Alexandra Del Lago played here by screen legend Elizabeth Taylor.
Taylor and Harmon are driving up the gulf coast of Florida and come to his home town where he was run out years ago after disgracing the daughter of Rip Torn the town boss played by Cheryl Paris. As the town gossip goes Paris was left with a social disease and under his express orders Torn had a hysterectomy performed on Paris. Mind you though the talk in such places as barbershops and hair salons leave some doubt as to how Paris got disgraced. Still and all the poor kid in town is a most convenient whipping boy.
So after years of drifting and getting by on looks and charm Harmon is in town with Taylor and he's looking for her to be his meal ticket to fame and fortune. Only this meal ticket proves to be bogus and Harmon gets some rough and ugly justice and his good looks and charm will now be for naught.
Rip Torn who was Junior Finley on both Broadway and on film now plays Boss Finley, the part Ed Begley got a Best Supporting Actor for. Torn is a big more subtle than Begley, but he's just as malevolent, maybe more. This version brings more of the politics of the late Fifties into the drama as Finley who has state wide ambitions is a rabid segregationist in the style of George Wallace and Lester Maddox.
This version of Sweet Bird Of Youth is a fine introduction to the work of Tennessee Williams and I'm glad it's now on DVD so that current audiences can enjoy.
- bkoganbing
- Jul 30, 2015
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