The Essentials ~ Classic Movies

CYNTHIA (1947) ~ Elizabeth Taylor

To kick off our classic movie genre, we discuss a movie by the illustrious, Liz Taylor. Her performance in one of her little known movies, Cynthia was superb. Cynthia was Elizabeth Taylor's coming-of-age film. Cynthia is the story of a sickly, sheltered teen who rebels against her parents' overprotectiveness, finds a boyfriend, goes to the prom, and gets her first kiss. Like Cynthia, the 15-year old Elizabeth had been sheltered and coddled by her mother and by the studio. Like Cynthia, she could not live a normal life, didn't have friends, and longed for independence and romance.

Mary Astor, who played Cynthia's mother, watched her young co-star closely, and made some astute observations. "She was beginning to be conscious in a very normal, teen-age way of her own beauty. She was also bright. Very bright. Head-of-the-class type of brightness," Astor later wrote in her memoir, A Life on Film. "Elizabeth was cool, and slightly superior. There was a look in those violet eyes that was somewhat calculating, as though she knew exactly what she wanted and was quite sure of getting it."

Cynthia one of Taylor's "unjustly forgotten triumphs of tact, sympathy, pathos and insistent self-assertion. It is one of the most likeable movies of adolescent independence." (****) 4-Star Rating

Legal Notice

By sharing your comments with BubbaGumpMedia's Digital Cafe, you grant a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information to BubbaGumpMedia. Management of this information is also granted and will be at the sole discretion of BubbaGumpMedia, including data storage on BubbaGumpMedia's Project servers and incorporation into other works as well as into any media now known or later developed including without limitation in published books. If you choose not to grant BubbaGumpMedia these rights, it is strongly suggested that you do not submit information to this website. BubbaGumpMedia reserves the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to remove information from the BubbaGumpMedia Digital Cafe website at any time at its sole discretion. No image from this site may be used for any purpose without expressed written authorization, with one exception; you may post one image as a link to this site.