''The Fortune'' is a 1975 American
black comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...
starring
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure. He received numerous ...
and
Warren Beatty
Henry Warren Beatty (né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, ...
, and directed by
Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born Michael Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014) was an American film and theater director, producer, actor, and comedian. He was noted for his ability to work across a range of genres and for his aptitude fo ...
. The screenplay by
Adrien Joyce focuses on two bumbling
con men
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, confidence, irresponsibility, and greed. Researchers have de ...
who plot to steal the fortune of a wealthy young heiress, played by
Stockard Channing in her first film starring role.
Plot
Nicky Wilson (Beatty) and Oscar Sullivan (Nicholson) are inept 1920s scam artists in Northeastern United States who see pay dirt in the guise of Fredericka Quintessa "Freddie" Bigard (
Stockard Channing), the millionaire heiress to a
sanitary napkin
Sanitation refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and treatment and disposal of human excreta and sewage. Preventing human contact with feces is part of sanitation, as is hand washing with soap. Sanitation systems ...
fortune. She loves the already married Nicky, but because the
Mann Act
The White-Slave Traffic Act, also called the Mann Act, is a United States federal law, passed June 25, 1910 (ch. 395, ; ''codified as amended at'' ). It is named after Congressman James Robert Mann of Illinois.
In its original form the act mad ...
prohibits him from taking her across state lines and engaging in immoral relations, he proposes that she marry Oscar and then carry on an affair with the man she wants. Oscar, who is wanted for embezzlement and anxious to get out of town, is happy to comply with the plan, although he intends to claim his spousal privileges after they are wed.
Once they reach Los Angeles, the men try everything they can to separate Freddie from her inheritance without success, but with sufficient determination to arouse her suspicions. When she announces her plan to donate her money to charity, Nicky and Oscar conclude that murder might be their only recourse if they're going to get rich quick. Eventually arrested for the murder, Nicky and Oscar confess everything to the Los Angeles Police Department. This leads to unusual complications when the arresting detective meets the very-alive Freddie, who passed out and was oblivious to the entire "murder", and is shocked to hear the story.
Cast
Production
When
Warren Beatty
Henry Warren Beatty (né Beaty; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker, whose career spans over six decades. He was nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including four for Best Actor, four for Best Picture, two for Best Director, ...
was unable to stir interest in his and
Robert Towne
Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz;''Easy Riders, Raging Bulls'' by Peter Biskind page 30, 1999 Bloomsbury edition November 23, 1934) is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He started with writing films for Roger Corm ...
's screenplay for ''
Shampoo
Shampoo () is a hair care product, typically in the form of a viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in solid bar format. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product into the ...
'' about a befuddled but seductive hairdresser, which he had been developing since 1967, he bundled it with the more appealing ''The Fortune'' and convinced
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
head
David Begelman
David Begelman (August 26, 1921 – August 7, 1995) was an American film producer, film executive and talent agent who was involved in a studio embezzlement scandal in the 1970s.
Life and career
Begelman was born to a Jewish family in New Yo ...
to finance both films. The fact that
Carole Eastman
Carole Eastman (February 19, 1934 – February 13, 2004) was an American actress and screenwriter. Among her credits are screenplays for Monte Hellman's ''The Shooting'' (1967), Bob Rafelson's ''Five Easy Pieces'' (1970) (for which she was nom ...
, writing under the pen name Adrien Joyce, had yet to complete her 240-page script fazed Beatty less than it did director Mike Nichols, who needed a box-office hit after ''
Catch-22
''Catch-22'' is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chr ...
'' and ''
The Day of the Dolphin
''The Day of the Dolphin'' is a 1973 American science fiction thriller film directed by Mike Nichols and starring George C. Scott. Based on the 1967 novel '' Un animal doué de raison'' (lit. ''A Sentient Animal''), by French writer Robert Merl ...
'', both of which were critical and commercial flops.
The working relation between the screenwriter and director was amiable until Eastman objected to the many cuts Nichols was making to the script and his determination to make it less
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
and more
slapstick
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...
, and she was fired from the production.
[Turner Classic Movies](_blank)
/ref>
Nichols wanted Bette Midler
Bette Midler (;''Inside the Actors Studio'', 2004 born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, actress, comedian and author. Throughout her career, which spans over five decades, Midler has received List of awards and nominations received by Be ...
to portray Freddie, but he changed his mind when, seemingly unaware of his career, Midler insulted him by asking what films he previously made. He ultimately cast relative newcomer Stockard Channing, whose credits were limited to a few television appearances and a minor role in the Barbra Streisand
Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand (; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success in multiple fields of entertainment, and is among the few performers List ...
film ''Up the Sandbox
''Up the Sandbox'' is a 1972 American comedy-drama film directed by Irvin Kershner and starring Barbra Streisand.
Paul Zindel's screenplay, based on the novel by Anne Roiphe, focuses on Margaret Reynolds, a bored, young wife and mother who ...
''.
Because the start of principal photography on '' One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' was delayed, Jack Nicholson
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure. He received numerous ...
, who had worked with Nichols on ''Carnal Knowledge
Carnal knowledge is an archaic or legal euphemism for sexual intercourse. In modern statutes, the term " sexual penetration" is widely used, though with various definitions.
Biblical source
The term derives from ''carnal'', meaning "of the fles ...
'', was available for the role of Oscar Sullivan. During filming, the actor was forced to deal with two events that impacted his personal life. First, a fact checker working on a biographical piece for ''Time'' discovered that the woman Nicholson believed was his sister was actually his mother, and the woman who raised him was his grandmother. Then his close friend Cass Elliot
Ellen Naomi Cohen (September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974), known professionally as Mama Cass and later on as Cass Elliot, was an American singer and voice actress. She was a member of the singing group the Mamas & the Papas. After the group brok ...
died in her sleep, and rumors about the cause of her death circulated in the media. These two events, linked with the film's eventual failure, made ''The Fortune'' a subject that Nicholson never discussed in interviews and biographies.
The film was shot on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and on a segment of street constructed in the corner of the former RKO Forty Acres
RKO Forty Acres was a film studio backlot in the United States, owned by RKO Pictures (and later Desilu Productions), located in Culver City, California. Best known as Forty Acres and "the back forty," it was also called "Desilu Culver," the "RKO ...
back lot where the "Stalag 13" sets for TV's ''Hogan's Heroes
''Hogan's Heroes'' is an American television sitcom set in a Nazi German prisoner-of-war (POW) camp during World War II. It ran for 168 episodes (six seasons) from September 17, 1965, to April 4, 1971, on the CBS network, the longest broadcast ...
'' were located. The apartment building was a ''The Day of the Locust'' set. Nichols did not direct another film for seven years.
Reception
Critical reception
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...
of ''The New York Times'' called the film "very funny", "manically scatterbrained", and "a marvelous attempt to recreate a kind of farce that, with the notable exceptions of a handful of films by Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor.
Edwards began his career in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon began writing screenplays and radio s ...
and Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (; ; born Samuel Wilder; June 22, 1906 – March 27, 2002) was an Austrian-American filmmaker. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Holl ...
, disappeared after World War II." He added "''The Fortune'' does have sequences that sag, and there are moments when it's obvious that farce is not exactly the native art of any of the people involved. One occasionally is aware of the tremendous effort that has gone into a particular effect, though that doesn't spoil it for me. The endeavor is nobly conceived in an era that has just about abandoned farce in favor of parody, satire, situation and/or wise-crack comedy, all of which Mr. Nichols already can do with – perhaps – too great an ease. ''The Fortune'' will probably be compared to ''The Sting
''The Sting'' is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss ( Robert Shaw).'' Variety'' film review; December 12, 1973, pag ...
'', because of the overlapping of the eras and the con-man theme. Incorrectly, though. ''The Sting'' is an adventure. ''The Fortune'' is farce of a rare order."
''Time Out London'' stated it starts promisingly as a sardonic comedy...but once in California lethargy settles in. The film becomes almost static, a series of stagy, glossy tableaux: such lack of momentum may be an adequate assessment of the characters' limited capacity for development, but it has a disastrous effect on the film's pacing. Events degenerate into miscalculated farce and underline Nichols' continuing slick superficiality. Adrien Joyce's much hacked-about script sounds as though it was once excellent: a pity everyone treats it so off-handedly.
Channel 4 called it a "flat-footed attempt to revive the 1930s screwball comedy" but liked the leads, commenting "The trio's timing and delivery almost rescue the movie from degenerating into bad farce."
''TV Guide'' rated it four stars, calling it "an offbeat but often hilarious comedy" and adding, the film "works well through the fine performances of the leads and the superb timing of director Nichols." It concluded, "Full of period and period-sounding music, ''The Fortune'' is cold to the core – agreeably disagreeable amusement."''TV Guide'' review
/ref>
Awards
Stockard Channing was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress.
See also
* List of American films of 1975
References
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fortune, The
1975 films
1970s black comedy films
American black comedy films
American screwball comedy films
Columbia Pictures films
1970s English-language films
Films directed by Mike Nichols
Films scored by David Shire
Films set in Los Angeles
Films set in the 1920s
Films with screenplays by Carole Eastman
1975 comedy films
1975 drama films
1970s American films