Sweet Bird of Youth

While 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.'"

This 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.

Referenced in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Mark Harmon/Caitlin Weierhauser (2019)