Elizabeth Taylor in "The Girl Who Had Everything" (1953)

Elizabeth Taylor in "The Girl Who Had Everything" (image from JSR Pages)

REVIEW:
Elizabeth Taylor at the age of 20, at the height of her beauty, again distributed by M.G.M. in a film produced strictly to make money. Her role was not intended to gain artistic recognition. The film' title is almost inspired by the real life of the actress. In 1952 Elizabeth Taylor was supposed to be the girl who had everything: beauty, glory, a new contract with M.G.M., a new husband...she was soon to become a mother and was able to convince M.G.M. to continue to pay her own mother, Sara Taylor, as her assistant. Moreover, her starpower forced M.G.M. to get Michael Wilding (her then-husbund) under contract, just to keep her happy. But maybe things were not quite exactly as they seemed. Elizabeth Taylor's idol and raw model was Anna Magnani, the great Italian actress, and nobody would have imagined that Elizabeth Taylor wanted to play composition roles and get rid of her image as a sex-symbol. Instead, M.G.M. was always ready to cast her in a new film in which she was supposed to be only beautiful. Bette Davis would later say that if she had the beauty of Elizabeth Taylor, she could have never managed to become a good actress, the way Taylor succeeded.

FILM TITLE
"THE GIRL WHO HAD EVERYTHING" (U.S.A./M.G.M./1953)

PROMO
A rich and beautiful high society girl falls for a mobster! (M.G.M.).

OVERVIEW
Watching the television news with Steve, her father (William Powell), the attention of beautiful, rich and independent Jean Latimer (Elizabeth Taylor) is irresistibly attracted to the main character in the breaking news: Victor Raimondi (Fernando Lamas), suspected for cheating the I.R.S., the gangster that was to be soon investigated by the U.S. Senate. Jean asks her father, who is a famous and powerful lawyer to represent Raimondi and, indeed, due to her father's defense, the Senate committee acquitts Raimondi. In fact, the lawyer who had done all the job was her father's associate, the future husband of Jean Latimer, Vance Court (Gig Young). From now on "the girl who had everything" must deal with many conflicting situations: her father's battle with alcoholism, the love between her and the gangster who'd escaped the law and the bitter situation between her and her fiance...Her father had warned her that he had proof that Raimondi was indeed a criminal and a killer, so his daughter has to solve a dilemma: what comes first, law or love?

CAST
Elizabeth Taylor (Jean Latimer), Fernando Lamas (Victor Raimondi), William Powell (Steve Latimer), Gig Young (Vance Court), James Whitmore.
DIRECTED BY
Richard Thorpe.
SCREENPLAY
Art Cohn, from the novel "A Free Soul" by Adela Rogers St. Johns.
PRODUCED BY
Armand Deutsch.
PRODUCTION DATES
between July-August 1952.
RELEASED
March 1953.
DURATION
69 minutes.
GENRE
drama, gangsters.

TRIVIA
- Fernando Lamas was the father of Lorenzo Lamas;
- William Powell's last appearance in an M.G.M. film;
- before the start of the production, Elizabeth Taylor, already married to British actor Michael Wilding, announced she was pregnant, which led to the speeding of her shooting scenes;
- screenwriter Art Cohn and Mike Todd, the future husband of Elizabeth Taylor, both died in a plane crash in 1958;
- the title used until the premiere: A Life of Her Own.

Watch TRAILER here.