Barbara Harris

Plaza Suite is a confection of three witty comedic tales, all starring one of America's finest comic actors, Walter Matthau. The scene is Suite 719 of New York City's Plaza Hotel. In the first vignette, Matthau's wife (Maureen Stapleton) discovers that he is fooling around with his secretary. In the next story, Matthau portrays a producer who calls an old flame for a rendezvous - but the lady has more on her mind than romance. In the final tale, Matthau and Lee Grant are frustrated parents of a bride-to-be who has locked herself in the bedroom - moments before the wedding!

Alfred Hitchcock's final film is understated comic fun that mixes suspense with deft humor, thanks to a solid cast. The plot centers on the kidnapping of an heir and a diamond theft by a pair of bad guys led by Karen Black and William Devane. The cops seem befuddled, but that doesn't stop a questionable psychic (Barbara Harris) and her not overly bright boyfriend (Bruce Dern, in a rare good-guy role) from picking up the trail and actually solving the crime. Did she do it with actual psychic powers? That's part of the fun of Harris's enjoyably ditsy performance.

A connoisseur of conning, Lawrence Jamison is running the ultimate royal scam on the Riviera--he's posing as a deposed prince raising funds for the freedom fighters of his stricken homeland. But his "hustling highness" gets royally flushed when a pretender to his throne turns up. He's Freddy Benson, a small-time scam artist who has enough on Jamison to make a mess of the monarchy. So the rivals make a wager--the first to extract $50,000 from the next woman they see, wins. And the loser goes into exile.