Several comments have been made about the photograph in my book depicting
Elizabeth Taylor taking a parking ticket from a Sunbeam Alpine in the film
Butterfield 8.
An article has just appeared in Classic Car Weekly about the use of Rootes Group
vehicles in films, and mentions several, about Butterfield 8 it states:-
The Coventry built sports car was chosen by MGM to play a leading part in its
high budget film Butterfield 8, with Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey.
The crash which was the climax of the film took months to plan and three days to
film. It came at the end of a 100 m.p.h. chase along New York Thruway, with
Laurence Harvey driving a big American Sedan and Elizabeth Taylor setting the
pace in her red Alpine. When she looked round to see whether he was gaining on
her, the Alpine crashed through a road closed sign and then went over a cliff.
To achieve the right effect a stuntman drove the Alpine off a specially-built
ramp, so that it could be filmed flying 70ft through the air and landing on its
wheels. The following day, after the rushes of airborne shots had been checked,
the car really was written off when it was dropped from a 60ft cliff for the
final shot. Although that Alpine had only a brief film career, it was at least
an impressive one.
Now, has anyone seen the film Human Jungle, is this what happened and did MGM
rename the film.
Regards
Chris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 09:18:31 CDT