Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday is a 1973 American drama film directed by Larry Peerce and starring Elizabeth Taylor. It was produced by Dominick Dunne. The screenplay by Jean-Claude Tramont focuses on the effect that extensive cosmetic surgery has on the life of a middle-aged married woman. Plot In a desperate attempt to save her faltering marriage, 55-year-old Barbara Sawyer submits to full-body plastic surgery in a Swiss clinic, then checks into an exclusive ski resort, Cortina d'Ampezzo, to await the arrival of her attorney-husband Mark. Reveling in her considerably younger and tauter appearance, she allows playboy Erich to seduce her. When Mark finally arrives, he makes an announcement that changes Barbara's initial plans forever. Cast Elizabeth Taylor as Barbara Sawyer Henry Fonda as Mark Sawyer Helmut Berger as Erich Keith Baxter as David Production Producer Dominick Dunne wrote, "There were problems on the picture right from the beginning. We kept getting more and more behind schedule. A lot of us were drinking too much, as was I, and a few were snorting too much, as was I … Elizabeth [Taylor] was chronically late …," sometimes as many as three hours late, but Dunne felt it would be pointless to try to rein in the star. Dunne also alleges that when he was a stage manager in 1950s New York, he had known the screenwriter as a pageboy called Jack Schwartz: "It made for complications on the picture, on top of the complications of being overschedule and overbudget."