The Honey Pot
– In Venice, the millionaire benefactor Cecil Fox watches a Seventeenth Century play 'Volpone' and plo..
In Venice, the millionaire benefactor Cecil Fox watches a Seventeenth Century play 'Volpone' and plots a practical joke to play on his three former greedy mistresses. He hires the unemployed actor William McFly to act as his butler and stage manager and sends letters telling the mistresses he is terminally ill. The prime intention of Rex is to see the reaction of the women after the reading of his will but things do not go as planned.
29 Sep 1967
English
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Frederick Knott (play), Thomas Sterling (novel), Ben Jonson (play), Joseph L. Mankiewicz (written for the screen by)
Rex Harrison, Susan Hayward, Cliff Robertson, Capucine
Inspired by a performance of his favorite play, "Volpone," 20th-century millionaire Cecil Fox devises an intricate plan to trick three of his former mistresses into believing he is dying. Although the women are wealthy in their own right, all have good reason to covet his fortune. To assist him in his scheme, Fox hires William McFly, a gigolo and sometime actor, to act as his secretary/servant. Fox is soon visited at his "deathbed" by the three former mistresses: Merle McGill, a fading Hollywood sex symbol; Princess Dominique, who once took a cruise on Fox's yacht; and Lone Star Crockett, a Texas hypochondriac who travels with an enigmatic nurse/companion. As Fox and McFly act out the charade, things take an unexpected turn from comical farce to full-blown murder mystery.
United Artists