The 1960 film "Psycho" was released 50 years ago this week. It was the first film to show real US $100 bills after the US Treasury ended the prohibition on displaying US currency and coins which had been in effect since the 1930's. In the film, Janet Leigh steals $40,000 in $100 bills from a real-estate firm. That amount was enough to buy a good sized house then. Some of the bills are displayed when she purchases an automobile for cash, and later in a motel room.
Cool factoid! Maybe the Mod's can put this in the Paper Money forum of CT so more of the Paper folks can see it. Here's a pic I dug up.
i had no idea, they had a rule against it. i never seen that movie till a few months ago. no clue how i let it go that long, but watching the horrible remake with vince vaughn sparked me into wanting to see the original. they still sometimes use fake money in newer movies though..
If I'm not mistaken, it's also the first film to show a toilet being flushed! lol Strange how some things like that were never shown in movies before hand.
I love Hitchcock, but I haven't seen Psycho. I hear its more horror type move than his others, which I would call more suspense type. I detest Birds, which is one of the stupidest worst movies I've ever seen, but I've liked every other movie of his I've seen (probably about 15 or so).
Psycho is coming to bluray later in the year. I can't wait to check it out in HD! When I was in high school (90s), one of my teachers showed us Psycho one day! Extremely unexpected, but great nonetheless.
Ive always wondered why the treasury prohibited real notes from being shown anyone know the reasoning?
The official explanation was so as to not aid counterfeiters by showing a picture of real money. Actually the creation of the image on the filmstock. The theory being that if a counterfeiter go a hold of the filmstock he could enlarge it and use it for making a printing plate. (Stupidity in government is not a new development.) And from the image shown above I'm not convinced those are genuine notes.
The official explanation was so as to not aid counterfeiters by showing a picture of real money. Actually the creation of the image on the filmstock. The theory being that if a counterfeiter go a hold of the filmstock he could enlarge it and use it for making a printing plate. (Stupidity in government is not a new development.) And from the image shown above I'm not convinced those are genuine notes.
There were real $100 bills in Psycho. Why spend money to counterfeit them just for the film. And get into real trouble. Alfred Hitchcock did sneak a real $10 bill into the 1951 film "Strangers on a Train". It is in the scene where the two women are watching a tennis match.
I don't consider Psycho a horror movie at all. It's a suspense movie that just happens to have Norman Bates in it. I was probably 36 or so when I first saw it (the movie's marginally older than I am), and I love it now. And yes, The Birds is, well, for the birds.
Due to the Treasury's denial of the use of real money in movies or stage production the prop houses produced and stockpiled prop money for such use. The prop money only resemble real money superficially. Since it usually was printed in black and white and didn't actually copy the currency it is not considered to be counterfiet and is perfectly legal. There is even a book that catalogs prop money. And of course prop money is still used in movies where a large amount of "cash" is needed, and often just for security reasons unless a close up will show the money. They used prop currency in the movie Titanic, but a genuine 1912 barber dime. In the movie Pearl Harbor I'm fairly sure they used prop currency in the battleship boxing scene, but they made a mistake. In the theater version they used Hawaii overprinted notes for the scene. Those were not issued until a couple months AFTER the Pearl Harbor attack. In the version released on DVD they corrected that and the visible notes are no longer overprints.
The $100 bills in "Psycho" are real. Why go to the expense of making exact copies when real bills could be obtained from any bank. The Treasury Department prohibited using real money in films because it considered filming money to be copying currency. A few films in the 1950's did show real US money, they were about Treasury and Secret Service agents, and the films would have a disclaimer that they had permission to show real money. Counterfeiters would not use blurry filmed images of money to make copies; they would obtain real bills and copy them. Alfred Hitchcock did manage to sneak a real US $10 bill into his 1951 film "Strangers on a Train". It appears in the scene where two women are watching a tennis match.
