The Honey Pot (1967) on Netflix
Cecil Fox, a millionaire in Venice, stages his own deathbed and welcomes three former lovers, each hoping to inherit his fortune. The actor William McFly assists, posing as a servant.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.7/103,353 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes57%
Trailer
Plot summary
Summoned to his Venetian palazzo, three former lovers of Cecil Fox expect to find him dying: Princess Dominique, who is penniless; the fading movie star Merle McGill; and the Texas millionairess Lone Star Crockett Sheridan, who brings her nurse, Sarah Watkins. Each guest arrives with a valuable timepiece as a gift. Fox is not alone in the house; the actor William McFly, hired by him, poses as his secretary. The illness is a pretense, a practical joke modeled on the play Volpone, in which a swindler fakes a fatal illness to cheat three would-be heirs, and McFly, once a law student, knows it. The women size each other up, and Mrs. Sheridan declares herself Fox's common-law wife, telling the others to expect no inheritance.
Cast
- David Dodimeadas Mosca
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Honey Pot (1967)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo died of misdiagnosed hepatitis while the film was still in production; his assistant Pasqualino De Santis was hired as the third cinematographer but refused to take screen credit.
- After the first week of filming, Joseph L. Mankiewicz fired his cinematographer Piero Portalupi and replaced him with Gianni Di Venanzo, whose diffused lighting broke from the conventional style used for comedies.
- Rex Harrison decided at one point that he wanted to play William McFly, the part that went to Cliff Robertson, so Mankiewicz looked at Christopher Plummer, Cary Grant and Robert Redford for the role of Cecil Fox before Harrison stayed in his original part.
- Rex Harrison's wife wanted the role of Sarah Watkins, but Mankiewicz turned her down in favor of Maggie Smith; devastated by the rejection, she tried to kill herself by overdosing on barbiturates.
- Anne Bancroft was offered the part of fading movie star Merle McGill but turned it down to star in Michael Cacoyannis' Broadway staging of John Whiting's The Devils, so Edie Adams was cast instead.
- Mankiewicz's draft framed the story with dream sequences for each major character; when United Artists and Charles K. Feldman found the device too confusing, he removed it from his next draft but kept the dream sequences for the three mistress characters.
