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Mister 880

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Mister 880
Directed byEdmund Goulding
Screenplay byRobert Riskin
Based onTrue Tales from the Annals of Crime & Rascality
by St. Clair McKelway
Produced byJulian Blaustein
Narrated byJohn Hiestand
CinematographyJoseph LaShelle
Edited byRobert Fritch
Music bySol Kaplan
Production
company
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • September 29, 1950 (1950-09-29)
Running time
90 min
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$1,750,000[1][2]

Mister 880 is a 1950 American light-hearted romantic drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Burt Lancaster, Dorothy McGuire and Edmund Gwenn. The movie is about an amateurish counterfeiter who counterfeits only one dollar bills, and manages to elude the Secret Service for ten years. The film is based on the true story of Emerich Juettner, known by the alias Edward Mueller, an elderly man who counterfeited just enough money to survive, was careful where and when he spent his fake dollar bills, and was therefore able to elude authorities for ten years, despite the poor quality of his fakes and growing interest in his case.[3]

The film was based on an article by St. Clair McKelway that was first published in The New Yorker and later collected in McKelway's book True Tales from the Annals of Crime & Rascality.

Edmund Gwenn, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.

In real life, Juettner was caught and arrested in 1948, and served four months in prison.[3] Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made in his entire counterfeiting career.[3]

Plot

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Secret Service agent Steve Buchanan and his boss discuss their longest running case of 10 years, Case 880, which involves fake $1 bills, each with an obvious mistake: Washington is spelled "Wahsington". Though the bills are blatantly amateur in quality, people rarely look closely enough at the $1 bills to notice. Out of good-natured respect, the Secret Service nicknames the perpetrator "Mister 880," and his counterfeit notes are called "880s".

Going back to the original investigation, Steve finds that inquiries 10 years back stretch people's memories. Having tracked Mister 880’s spending patterns, Steve stakes out areas of Brooklyn and the Bronx where 880 bills have been found in the past.

Ann Winslow’s elderly friend and neighbor, William "Skipper" Miller, a junk dealer, passes her two counterfeit $1 bills in change when she pays him $5 for an ornament. When Ann unknowingly spends one of the bills at a business Steve is surveilling, she comes to Steve’s attention. To investigate her possible involvement without being obvious, Steve asks her on a date. Checking up on Steve, Ann learns from a business owner that he works for the Secret Service. Wanting to keep him interested, she takes out a book on counterfeiting from the library and on their dinner date plants false clues and uses outdated slang in conversation. Amused by her ruse, Steve tells her that he knows she checked out the book from the library. Judging that she acquired the bills innocently, Steve continues to see her romantically.

Hit with a $20 veterinary bill for his dog, Skipper again finds himself in financial difficulty. Having pawned all his junk merchandise, he resorts to printing $1 bills to make ends meet, a measure he takes only when destitute. Eventually, Skipper finds that local businesses have flyers showing how to identify 880 bills. Aware of the heightened risk, accompanied by his dog, Skipper buries his press and extra bills in the dirt cellar of his apartment building. Learning of Skipper’s destitution from their landlady, Ann arranges for his employment as a handyman.

Meanwhile, Steve is offered a job in France, where forgery of dollars is on the increase. He decides to turn it down: partly due to Ann, and partly due to the unresolved case 880. However, Ann, not Steve, first works out that Mister 880 is Skipper. In a moral dilemma, Ann is torn by loyalty to Steve and adherence to the law versus compassion for an elderly man who used the $1 bills to support himself and his dog.

Skipper’s playful dog leads a neighborhood boy to the cellar, where the dog's digging results in the boy's discovering the 880 bills, which he begins to spend. Questioning a series of neighborhood boys who received 880s, Steve finally is led to Skipper.

Though Ann pleads for leniency for Skipper, Steve believes that counterfeiters must be punished to protect the integrity of currency. He cannot bring himself to ignore the law. Steve arrests Skipper, who admits his crime and accepts his arrest philosophically. Interrogated by police, Skipper rationalizes that he didn’t cost anyone a significant financial loss, since he rarely passed more than $1 to any one person. Though eligible to enter a veteran’s home, he calculated that it cost the government $82.70 a month for each recipient, whereas he survived on $40-$50 a month, subsidized by his 880s, saving the government money.

Skipper stands trial. Ann’s friend, a lawyer, tries to plead Skipper’s case pro bono, but Skipper disclaims his fabricated account, admitting that he bought the press and made the plates himself. Oddly, “intransigent” Steve, the arresting officer, pleads for leniency, arguing that though Skipper committed a crime, he did not act out of greed, had no prior offenses, and should not be treated as a criminal. Steve reads a commendation citing that Skipper is a Navy veteran who volunteered in 1918 at age 41, receiving a decoration for bravery. The judge could pass a sentence of 15 years, but instead gives Skipper 1 year and a day, making him eligible for parole in 4 months. Fined $1, Skipper checks the bills in his pocket before paying, with Steve confirming which bill is genuine.

Cast

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Awards and nominations

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References

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  1. ^ "Top Grosses of 1950". Variety. January 3, 1951. p. 58.
  2. ^ Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History Rowman & Littlefield, 2002 p 223
  3. ^ a b c Bryk, William (February 16, 2005). "Little Old Moneymaker". New York Sun.
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