Movies Made Here: BUtterfield 8

Poor, poor Tappan Zee Bridge. Between the latest news of a suicide jumper and the examination of its rusty underbelly that got legislators pressing to get the whole thing taken down and replaced for any number of billions, when you hear about the bridge it’s not usually good news.

Alas, I’m afraid to report that BUtterfield 8, the film that won Elizabeth Taylor her first Oscar, is on our "Made Here" list because of a mere four-minute scene, the penultimate and perhaps most notable one. If you’ve seen the movie you know what I’m talking about, but you may not know that this (spoiler alert for those who haven’t) tragic car chase takes our star-crossed lovers over our very own – love it or loathe it – Tappan Zee.

The Tappan Zee of yesteryear, 1960 to be exact, hardly resembles our own. The bridge is just a baby here; construction began in 1952 and the span opened for traffic in 1955. Taylor, as Gloria Wandrous, the lady-of-the-night so earnestly trying to better herself with the love of a better man, finally flees from him over a strangely smooth and nearly empty bridge.

Her gloved hands nervously massage the steering wheel of her cute red Sunbeam Alpine as her speedometer passes 40mph and goes up to who-knows-how-fast as her wheels whine and shake. We see a "Route 9 Tarrytown" sign in her rearview. Her spurned man Weston Ligget, another great name which fits the character perfectly, races after her in his hulking gold Mercedes. She pauses for the 50 cent toll, a bargain, even if you did have to pay both ways. (Gas, by the way, is 27 cents at one station they pass. Sigh.)

This sprint over the bridge ends with her crashing through a closed-for-construction sign at some stretch of freeway and tumbling in her toybox of a car (which crumbles like paper) to her death. Many fans say it's the best car chase scene ever. Taylor, herself judged for her exploits with men, hated the whole movie which she begrudgingly made in the first place. Her character is sufficiently punished in this dated morality tale which refuses to let a once-fallen woman ever rise again; a stunned Taylor, who just died this year, took home the gold.

One persnickety factchecker has noted that Gloria shouldn’t have been on the bridge to begin with, which of course is a bummer if our misunderstood heroine needn’t have died. But it’s Hollywood and who cares if Gloria’s speeding westbound over the bridge on a trip that is supposedly going from NYC to Boston. At least we get to say they filmed that classic car chase scene here.

You can watch the scene itself for free here, or you can watch the whole movie, available for download ($9.99) or two-day streaming ($2.99) on Amazon.