Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 131-132: A Tribute to Elizabeth Taylor Part 1

Sadly earlier this year we lost a big film legend in Elizabeth Taylor. Even sadder is the fact that I haven't really watched a lot of her films save National Velvet and The Flintstones when I was younger. So I have used the 1950s Oscar Hunt to watch five her films all nominated for Best Picture during this decade to kick off the first three.

Liz Taylor really made her name in the aforementioned National Velvet but then was still considered a child star but she had to wait till 1950 for what many think as her first adult role in the original version of Father of the Bride a nominee at the 1951 ceremony. Obviously I'm very aware of the Steve Martin remake but have never seen the original starring Spencer Tracy as the father and Taylor as his daughter who gets engaged to Don Taylor's Buckley. Obviously the film shares a lot with the remake but what there is much more of an emphasis on is how much the wedding will cost Tracy's Stanley Banks and his wife Ellie played by Joan Bennett. It also doesn't strike me that the relationship with the daughter is as strong as it is in the remake despite this there is a good chemistry between Tracy, Bennett and Taylor as well as the two actors playing their sons. Tracy's comic voiceover is particularly affecting including in one of the opening scenes where he tries to remember which one of Taylor's potential suitors Buckley is. Tracy is also able to show off his slapstick side in a very long scene in which he tries to try on his old suit which is far too tight for him and which he ends up ripping. From the wedding onwards I recognised most of the scenes from Stanley worrying what he has to say in the church to the fact that he never gets to say goodbye to his daughter until she leaves. I feel that the film isn't quite as funny as it thinks it is but it is still very sweet and you believe that the Banks are a real family going through with a real wedding. To be fair Taylor doesn't have a lot to do apart from look very pretty and sulk occasionally when she feels her wedding is being planned by other people. An interesting Oscar nominee in that is predominantly a comedy film but nonetheless a great film.

A year later Taylor starred opposite Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun again a film nominated for Best Picture and once again Taylor missed out on an acting nomination although Clift and fellow co-star Shelley Winters were both nominated. The film starred Clift as George Eastman a poor relation to a wealthy industrial family. George meets his uncle and cousins and is introduced to Taylor's society girl Angela Vickers instantly falling in love. However he feels he isn't good enough for her and instead starts working in the family factory and beginning a casual relationship with Winters' Al. Al and George go out a couple of times and then George is moved up the social ranks and eventually starts seeing Angela but things are complicated when Al reveals she is pregnant and wants to marry George telling him she'll reveal all to his new friends if he doesn't. Desperate for a happy ending with Angela, George sets out to kill Al while on a boat but instead he can't go through with it but when she accidentally drowns he covers it up and is eventually arrested for her murder in the end he doesn't get A Place in the Sun that he so desperately wanted to share with Taylor. As a romantic melodrama, A Place in the Sun was a great film but I'm not sure if it was Oscar-worthy while Clift and especially Winters both deserved their nominations I feel that Taylor was cruelly snubbed here as every time she breezed onto the screen it lit up. A scene in which she realises she is in love with George happens so smoothly that Taylor is able to show the audience her feelings just using her eyes. It's a bit odd to think that Taylor was only 17 here playing against Clift who was over twelve years her senior but their chemistry does work and you do really understand why George would risk everything for Angela because at the end of the day it is Elizabeth Taylor!

Another year and another Oscar nominee for Liz this time in the swashbuckling adventure Ivanhoe. This was during the time in her career when Taylor wasn't getting the roles she wanted and in terms of this film she wanted the main romantic lead Rowena which went to Joan Fontaine and instead she had to settle playing Rebecca the girl who loved Ivanhoe from afar but could never get him and was forced into a relationship with George Sanders' Norman soldier De-Bois Gilbert who knew that Ivanhoe could never love her. In fact this was Taylor and Fontaine's film both women giving strong performances making the women more than just love interests and a lot more interesting than the lead man. Yes Robert Taylor's pioneering hero who was trying to fight King John's men and reinstate Richard the Lionheart was in fact incredibly bland. 15 years removed from the Errol Flynn era this almost seemed like a back-step for the 1950s cinema. I'm sure that the studio heads wanted to revisit these blockbusters to film them in Technicolor but this did nothing for me and went downhill when Robin Hood had to step in to help Ivanhoe and introduce all his Merry Men. The final scenes in which Taylor is falsely accused of witchcraft were poorly but together and I didn't really care about any of the characters coming away from it. Taylor really wanted bigger films than a supporting role in a mediocre epic thankfully in a few years later she would get that chance.