BUtterfield 8 is quite possibly my favorite Elizabeth Taylor movie. The title is typographed, with a capital BU and using the numeral number 8, my favorite number and symbol, resonates B.U.8 within me, and loosely based on the life of Greenwich Village Socialite, Starr Faithfull.  

Starr was rich, spoiled and privileged.  Reading about her upbringing in posh Greenwich Village, private schooling & trips abroad, I could only imagine her as the Paris Hilton of her day. The more I read about her, the more I wanted to know about her.

Starr grew up on St. Lukes Place, the designation for a beautiful block of Leroy Street in the lower West Village west of 7th Avenue, is worth visiting just for its charming vine-covered Greek and Renaissance Revival townhouses, but it also exudes some powerful cultural and historical caché. Line up the numbers of the houses, and the literary, artistic and political lives unfold - #1, once home of artist Theodore Roszak, #4, the house of Audrey Hepburn’s blind character in the movie Wait Until Dark, #6, Mayor Jimmy Walker’s dandy pad, #10, the Huxtables (exterior shot for The Cosby Show), #11, publisher Max Eastman and later, Timothy O’Leary, #12 once home to novelist Sherwood Anderson, #12 1/2 attorney Leonard Boudin and his daughter Kathy (Weather Underground), #14 poet Marianne Moore, #15 painter Paul Cadmus, and #16, Theodore Dreiser, who starred writing An American Tragedy here.  Starr also lived in #12 with her family but there is no mention of it here.  A beautiful, educated, rich woman from an affluent family, dead at 25, washed up on the beach of Long Island has been buried.

 tossed overboard with a liver full of Veronal, Starrs drug of choice, which she called “creamy dreamy”.  Veronal is basically barbituate in liquid form.  Beautiful, rich, educated and free-spirited could be a deadly mix.  Starr didn’t have guidance or a savior.  Her parents prostituted her out from age 11 to a relative.  Promiscuity prevailed, then drugs, to numb the pain. I hope my Tumblr does her justice.  It is my hope that it conveys the free spirit so very few women unleash.  If I had to life my life over, I would live it without compromise. 

BUtterfield 8 is a 1960 Metrocolor drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey.^[1][2] Taylor (28 years old) won an Academy Award for her performance. The film was based on a 1935 novel written by John O’Hara in the wake of the success of his critically acclaimed Appointment in Samarra.

The screenplay was adapted by John Michael Hayes and Charles Schnee from the 1935 novel, but the plot of the film bears only a superficial resemblance to the novel’s. O’Hara based parts on the mysterious death of Starr Faithfull in Long Beach, Nassau County, New York in 1931. Faithfull’s body was found on a beach, apparently from drowning. In the novel the heroine is killed by falling under a paddlewheel of a steamboat.