The V.I.P.s (1963)

'The Story of One Dramatic, Devastating Night!'

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In the good old days of the pea-souper, when London was still lit by gas (sort of), and Christine Keeler, a nineteen-year-old girl from Staines, was strutting her stuff at Murray’s Cabaret club, Heathrow was known as London Airport. The airport — formerly, an aerodrome — lies on ancient Middlesex moorland, to the west of London, the haunt of highwaymen, robbers and other ne'er-do-wells. It was here, in January 1734, that the Kingston Hounds chased, over the course of a mile, the last great wolf of England; even if, admittedly, they had most probably let the beast loose in the first place.

The V.I.P.s (1963) Oceanic Terminal: Britain’s largest film set…

Airports are transient, rootless places. There is an underlying sense of anxiety. Like the antiseptic business park in J. G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes (2000), or the Beaconsfield Services on the M40 — with its anonymous fast-food joints, fruit machines, public conveniences and carefully landscaped surroundings; a temple to plastic, ‘wood’ effect formica, glass and grass. In 2024, 83.9 million people passed through Heathrow Airport. Which, in today’s world, means security checks: shoe removal, frisking, the giant electronic staple; the hell of the check-in desk (“That counts as extra baggage, Sir”) and the long, long wait for your departure number to show up on the information board.

“A fog came down like the curtain at the Queen’s theatre…”

Back in 1963, before the days of mass transit and the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet, a whiff of glamour still lingered in the modernist halls of London Airport, where paparazzi lurked in the Oceanic Terminal’s Arrivals Corridor: for Serge n’ Jane, the Rolling Stones or the Polanskis. And BOAC (the British Overseas Airways Corporation) was so much smarter — in the English sense — than British Airways. The dark blue and silver livery, with the Speedbird motif in gilt. The association with Cunard (typography in gold), the air hostesses’ discreet, wafer-thin uniforms, designed by Sir Norman Hartnell in dark blue, with white gloves. In the cockpit, ex-Lancaster pilots sported DFC ribbons on their manly chests.

Of course, if you fly First Class in the early 21st Century, you’re in for a treat. There are multiple goodies. But in the 1960s, to fly First Class was to experience a different kind of luxury. A luxury, Instagrammers might describe as bespoke. I mean, the chance of running into a tail-coated butler in the British Airways First Lounge is remote, and somehow I doubt, these days, that British Airways would allow passengers to carry personal revolvers in the pockets of their ashtrakhan-collared overcoats, as Paul Andros (Richard Burton) does in The V.I.P.s (1963). It ain’t going to happen. For this was the rule of the BOAC-Cunard Vickers VC10, introduced in 1965, the smoothest jet airliner in the world, where the punters might tuck into Lobster Thermidor, Medallion of Strasbourg Foie Gras in Brioche or Escalope of Veal Duxelloise (I checked) off crested porcelain plates without a shiver or a rattle. Silver Service.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: Erotic Vagrancy…

Which takes us to The V.I.P.s (1963), an amusing — and at times poignant — melodrama, directed by the Hon. Anthony ‘Puffin’ Asquith (son of Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith), with a screenplay by Terence Rattigan and cinematography by Jack Hildyard. That’s the same writer/photographer combo featured in last week’s The Sound Barrier (1952). According to Rattigan’s biographer, Michael Darlow, The V.I.P.s (1963) is based on a true story. Travelling to New York, Rattigan found himself stuck in the VIP Lounge (“a fog came down like the curtain at the Queen’s Theatre”), surrounded by frustrated and angry First Class passengers. Which gave Rattigan an idea. ‘A compendium movie set in a VIP Lounge’, based on an incident involving Vivien Leigh, five years earlier, in which Viv had attempted to leave her long-suffering husband, Sir Laurence Olivier, for her lover, the younger Peter Finch. Thwarted by fog, Vivien changed her mind. Good news for Larry.