Word: morleys
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Aaent 8¾%. To make a contemporary spy thriller without sneaking in a nod to James Bond would apparently be an unthinkable breach of custom. In Agent 83A, the amenities are ticked off with ease when Robert Morley, as an epicene intelligence chief, routes Bond's records into a file drawer marked "Deceased." That takes care of 007, but leaves 8¾% with only fractional assets...
Needing a dupe to carry out a delicate mission in Prague, Morley hires an unpublished writer (Dirk Bogarde). "I'd be a lot happier if he'd been to a decent school," says Morley's aide in dour appraisal of the new man. Bogarde believes that he is a trade representative sent to pick up a message from a Czechoslovakian glass factory. Instead he picks up the Communist intelligence chief's voluptuous daughter (Sylva Koscina), one of those girls to whom defection and seduction are practically synonymous. Of course, the two fall in love...
Though some of their adventures stir excitement, 8¾% never quite makes up its mind whether to be a spoof or a spine-tingler. But just before the giddy lovers emplane for England, Morley offers a verdict about the plot. He assures everyone that the sought-after secret document was only a scrap of paper, and the whole business just a routine bit of counterespionage. Precisely...
Most of the time, though, Genghis just idles along in Peking, where the Chinese let him in on the discovery of gunpowder. Other odd bits of wisdom are supplied by Emperor Robert Morley, who apparently can't tell one Oriental from another, since his dynasty resembles a road-show Mikado. The high pooh-bah in charge of comedy relief is Kam Ling (James Mason), sporting almond eyes, malocclusion and a washee-quickee accent. As befits a ham, Kam Ling is sliced up just before a lively duel to the death between Jamuga and Genghis. Hordes of loyal Mongol mourners...
Scrambling fact in a free-for-all of oldtime comedy styles, Magnificent Men invents a Great London-Paris Air Race in the year 1910. The competition, sponsored by British Publishing Tycoon Robert Morley, soon becomes a contest between a rugged U.S. barnstormer (Stuart Whitman) and an airborne English aristocrat (James Fox), each determined to win the day and the tycoon's daughter, Sarah Miles, precisely the sort of flibbertigibbet Josephine who might lose her heart-and through frequent entanglements, her hobble skirt-to a daring young man in a flying machine...