The V.I.P.s
The film is omnibus with four stories set at Heathrow, two dramatic and two comic. The main story has filthy rich tycoon Richard Burton seeing off his wife, Elizabeth Taylor. He thinks she's off on a holiday to Jamaica, but really she's running off with Louis Jourdan, a playboy.
The second story involves businessman Rod Taylor off to New York to sign a deal to save his company. He has to sign the deal and get the money to cover a check, otherwise he's committed a felony. His devoted and mousy secretary, Maggie Smith, is secretly in love with him.
The comic stories involve Orson Welles as a larger-than-life film director who is trying to get to Switzerland to avoid paying British taxes. He's accompanied by a ditzy Italian actress, Elsa Martinelli.
Finally, there's Margaret Rutherford as a cash-poor duchess on her way to Miami to take a job so she can save her family home.
This is all pretty sudsy, as three of the four stories require the participants to get out of town. Of course a dense fog rolls in, delaying all flights, so Burton finds the note Taylor has left him and returns to try to win her back, Taylor realizes he's ruined if he doesn't get the money to cover the check, and Welles stands to lose a million dollars if he can't leave the country (I'm not sure why he doesn't hop a train to Paris). The stories intertwine in an agreeable fashion.
Besides being the first film that Liz and Dick made as a couple, The V.I.P.s is notable for Rutherford, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar as the dotty old duchess. She is a delight, and really the only reason to recommend the film, although Taylor is luminous (did the camera love any woman more?) and Burton is solid as a man who never faces defeat finally having to face it.
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