Wichita's Vera Miles in "A Touch of Larceny" (1960)

Starring Wichita's, Vera Miles

"A Touch of Larceny" (Operation Robinson) is a 1960 black-and-white comedy film produced by Ivan Foxwell, directed by Guy Hamilton, and starring James Mason, Vera Miles and George Sanders. The film co-stars Harry Andrews, Rachel Gurney and John Le Mesurier, and is based on the 1956 novel "The Megstone Plot" by Paul Winterton, written under the pseudonym Andrew Garve.

"A Touch of Larceny" was nominated for the BAFTA award for Best British Screenplay, but lost to "The Angry Silence."

Vera Miles (Vera June Ralston) lived in Wichita, where she worked nights as a Western Union operator-typist and graduated from Wichita North High School in 1948. She was crowned Miss Kansas in 1948 and was the third runner-up in the Miss America contest.

Miles moved to Los Angeles in 1949 and landed small roles in television and film, including a minor role as a chorus girl in "Two Tickets to Broadway" (1951), a musical starring Janet Leigh, with whom Miles would co-star nine years later in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film "Psycho." She used her first husband's name, Miles, because there already was a Vera Ralston film actress. Miles eventually was put under contract at various studios. She once recalled, "I was dropped by the best studios in town."

Plot line:
After falling in love with an American woman, Virginia Killain, who is engaged to another man, British Naval Commander and former naval war hero Max Easton (James Mason), needs money to impress the sophisticated American woman (Vera Miles) with whom he has fallen in love and hatches a plan that will get him enough money to support Virginia in the lifestyle she is accustomed to. Easton's plan is to disappear for a time making it seem that he has defected to the Soviets, taking important Naval secrets from his job at the Admiralty, then return and sue the newspapers for slander. Not everything goes as planned for Commander Easton.

Cast
James Mason as Commander Max Easton
George Sanders as Sir Charles Holland
Vera Miles as Virginia Killain
Oliver Johnston as Minister
Robert Flemyng as Commander John Larkin
William Kendall as Tom
Duncan Lamont as Gregson
Harry Andrews as Captain Graham
Peter Barkworth as Sub-lieutenant Brown
Rachel Gurney as Clara Holland
Martin Stephens as John Holland
Waveney Lee as Marcia Holland
Charles Carson as Robert Holland
Junia Crawford - Susan
Henry B. Longhurst as Club Member

In its March 17, 1960 review by A.H. Weiler, The New York Times observed about the film: "Mr. MacDougall and his collaborators have devised civilized and, on occasion, mildly funny lines for their cast to speak.

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