Mrs. Pollifax-Spy (1971)

Fifty-one years ago today, the film Mrs. Pollifax-Spy premiered. I actually watched this last night on Amazon Prime. It is just really great. It is Rosalind Russell’s last film and she even adapted the screenplay, credited under a pseudonym. You really must watch this.

Title: Mrs. Pollifax-Spy
Directed by: Leslie H. Martinson
Written by: Dorothy Gilman (novel), C. A. McKnight (screenplay)
Starring: Rosalind Russell
Music by: Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography: Joseph Biroc
Edited by: Fred Bohanan, Gene Milford
Distributed by: United Artists
Release date: 12 May 1971
Running time: 110 min.
Country United States

Mrs. Emily Pollifax of New Jersey goes to the CIA to volunteer for spy duty, being in her own opinion, expendable now that the children are grown and she’s widowed. And being just what the department needed (someone who looks and acts completely unlike a spy), she’s assigned to simple courier duty to pick up a book in Mexico City. She finds this easier said than done. The film’s tagline summizes the person of Pollifax: ‘Before she joined the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax thought Red China was a set of dishes’.

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