After taking off the month of October, I am now back on my Warren Oates kick.  The latest Oates film that I watched was Crooks and Coronets, a heist comedy that stars Oates and Telly Savalas as two career criminals plotting a robbery in England.

Crooks and Coronets starts with Herbie Haseler (Telly Savalas) getting released from prison.  Waiting for him is his partner-in-crime, Marty Miller (Warren Oates).  Because Herbie wants to go straight and doesn’t want to do any more time, he is not happy to learn that Marty stole a car just so he could pick Herbie up from prison.  Leaving the car behind, Herbie and Marty walk to a meeting with their old boss, New York gangster Nick Marco (Cesar Romero).  Nick reminds Herbie and Marty that they owe him money and tells them that they can not go straight until they pay him back.  Nick sends them to England to rob the estate of Lady Sophie Fitzmore (Edith Evans).

After arriving in the UK and meeting with Nick’s English counterpart, Frank Finley (Harry H. Corbett), Herbie and Marty infiltrate the Fitzmore estate.  Marty pretends to be a security expect while Herbie says that he is a librarian who is interested in cataloguing the Fitzmore library.  However, once they meet the kindly and eccentric Lady Sophie, neither one of them can bring themselves to rob her.  Instead, Marty helps Sophie fly an old World War I airplane while Herbie turns Fitzmore mansion into a tourist attraction.  When Nick and Frank show up and demand to know what the hold up is, Herbie and Marty have to find a way to stop the robbery.

Crooks and Coronets is never exactly memorable but it is amusing throughout.  The main reason to watch it is for the performances of Edith Evans, Telly Savalas and Warren Oates.  Though this is not one of Warren’s better-known films, it was a personally significant one for him.  It was while filming Crooks and Coronets that Oates met British actress Vickery Turner.  Turner played the role of Annie, a tour guide who helps to protect the mansion from Nick and Harry.  She did not have a big role but she did look great in a miniskirt.  She and Warren Oates were married in 1969 and, after they were divorced in 1974, she went on to have a very successful career as a novelist.