Very Important Person 1961

Sir Ernest Pease, James Robertson Justice, a brilliant but acerbic scientist, is the centerpiece of a television program based on This Is Your Life, and the show moments place him back among old friends. He remains oddly detached from one figure in particular—the senior British Army officer he once knew—and the program nudges us toward a memory that refuses to surface. As the lights dim and the audience watches, a vivid flashback unfolds the moment when war, secrecy, and an extraordinary plan pull Pease into a perilous chain of events.

In 1942, Pease oversees vital aircraft research during the Second World War. To gain first‑hand insight into the environments where his equipment will operate, he must accompany a bomber mission incognito. To preserve his cover, he travels as Lieutenant Farrow, James Robertson Justice, a Royal Navy public relations officer. The mission veers off course when the bomber is struck over Germany, and against a crewman’s warning, Pease is sucked out of the plane through a breach in the hull, only to parachute to the ground and survive the fall.

Captured and placed in a prisoner-of-war camp that houses many Royal Air Force officers, Pease initially arouses suspicion because of his flawless German. His true identity eventually comes to light to Group Captain Travers, Norman Bird, the senior officer in the camp, who recognizes Pease’s importance and quickly makes his escape a priority for the camp’s escape plot. Within Pease’s shared hut, his fellow inmates include Jimmy Cooper, Leslie Phillips, a devout man of faith; “‘Jock’ Everett,” Stanley Baxter, a West London undertaker in disguise, and “‘Bonzo’ Baines,” Jeremy Lloyd, a resourceful and stubborn inventor. The mix of wit, courage, and a dash of desperation sets the stage for a daring if risky plan.

Pease is offered a dramatic route to freedom: a tunnel escape with two other prisoners. He doubts that the pair will stay free for long, and indeed they do not. Yet Pease devises a more intricate scheme, intending to vanish after a staged escape and then walk out of the camp hidden among Swiss Red Cross observers. The plan hinges on Everett masquerading as Major Stampfel and escorting the delegation in disguise. An escape committee led by Wing Commander Piggott, John Le Mesurier, questions the feasibility of such a bold ruse, but Pease remains determined to see it through, convinced that a careful ruse will yield a safe passage home.

The plan nearly collapses at the last moment when a sharp-eyed inmate, known as Grassy Green, is revealed to be an undercover Luftwaffe officer. He takes the group at gunpoint but mistakes Everett for Stampfel, and the mistaken confrontation is narrowly resolved. The misstep is resolved, and Pease, Cooper, and Baines manage to slip away from the camp and begin the long trek back toward safety.

Back in the present, the television program resumes, and Pease is rejoined with the people he left behind—Baines, now a leading designer of women’s foundation garments; Cooper, a missionary serving in India; Everett, a West London undertaker; and Stampfel, who has since become a popular entertainment manager at a British holiday camp. The life paths of these once‑inmates, shaped by wartime escape and secrecy, reveal how a cast of inmates and friends can be transformed by experience, duty, and the quiet kindness of those who believed in a chance for freedom.

This tale blends historical echoes with a tightly plotted wartime escape, anchored by Pease’s sharp intellect and his willingness to bend rules for a greater aim. The film’s strain remains human—an officer who must choose between personal identity and the broader mission of survival, and a group of unlikely allies whose fates intertwine as they navigate the dangers of a war that demands both cunning and courage.