This autumn I am watching Jack Lemmon movies and this week I’m writing about Fortune Cookie from 1966 starring Jack and Walter Matthau.
This was one I watched on a whim before I decided on the Autumn of Jack feature.
Jack plays a CBS cameraman named Harold “Harry” Hinkle who is hit by fiction football player Luther “Boom Boom” Jackson of the Cleveland Browns.
The hit is aired on TV and Harry goes to the hospital. While the injuries are fairly minor, Harry’s brother-in-law William H. “Whiplash Willie” Gingrich (Matthau), an ambulance chasing lawyer, pushes for Harry to pretend that his one leg is paralyzed so they can get a large payout from the insurance company.
Harry refuses at first but when his ex-wife Sandy sees the hit and calls to check on him, he quickly agrees if just to get her to come back with him.
The insurance company’s lawyers, O’Brien, Thompson, and Kincaid, suspect the paralysis is fake. Unfortunately, all but one of their medical experts say the injury is real because of a vertebra injury Harry sustained as a child and because Willie hired a paroled dentist to inject Harry with novocaine.
The one holdout medical expert, Swiss Professor Winterhalter, is convinced Harry is a fraud and thus begins the effort to prove that Harry is lying.
The movie is full of chaotic hiding, conniving, lying, and greed which are complicated for Harry by Boom Boom’s guilt and attempt to make amends for the injury he caused — even though the injury was a total accident.
TCM describes the movie as a satirical black comedy but I didn’t think it was as dark as some black comedies I have seen (which isn’t many).
Many people may know that Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were in ten movies together over the years. This was their first movie together, but it almost didn’t happen after Matthau had a heart attack two weeks into filming. The movie was delayed for a bit to give him time to recover.
It also almost didn’t happen because co-writer and director Billy Wilder had written the part for Matthau, but studio executives wanted someone with a bigger name. Jack suggested Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason.
Wilder held firm, though, and the rest was a longtime partnership between Jack and Matthau.
The two became close friends for the rest of their lives, with their last movie being The Odd Couple II in 1998 when they were both in their 70s.
While researching for this film, I came across a hilarious interview between a Seattle Times Reporter and them. Here is a little excerpt that shows how funny they were together.
Interviewer: “How did you two meet?”
“Matthau: I went into a deli in Brentwood – it was a Jewish deli – and there was Jack Lemmon and I said, `Hi, mind if I join you?’ He told me to sit down and I asked him what he was going to eat. He said, `I’m going to have fried shrimp and a chocolate frappe,’ and I said, `You’re going to have fried shrimp and a chocolate frappe in a Jewish deli?’ I figured he was nuts and as soon as I realized he was crazy, I fell madly in love with him.
Q: Jack, do you remember that same meeting?
Lemmon: Of course. It was at Sardi’s in New York. Matthau was leaning against a wall in the corner of the bar. I sat down at a stool near him and Bernie Hart, Moss Hart’s brother, introduced us. I could tell he was uncomfortable because he kept shifting his weight and I asked him what was wrong. He said he and his wife had gone to a party at Gloria Vanderbilt’s house the night before and it was so crowded that he couldn’t find a place to sit. So he sat down on the glass coffee table and it broke. There was glass everywhere and Walter said blood was spurting out from where he was cut near his groin. Gloria walked over, looked down at Walter and said, `Look what you’ve done to my coffee table.’
Rob Nixon wrote for TCM.com: “In filmmaker Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Wilder (Knopf, 1999), the Austrian-born director brushes The Fortune Cookie off as a movie made under contract, not one he particularly cared about. He even calls it ‘the beginning of my downfall.’ At the same time, however, he notes with pleasure the comic chemistry of Lemmon and Matthau and lists Matthau’s character, “Whiplash” Willie Gingrich, as one of the characters he was most reluctant to let go of upon completion of filming.”
Nixon added, “A couple of additional points in the argument that The Fortune Cookie is not the disappointment Wilder claimed it to be: The film is remarkable in its use – innovative at the time – of inter-cutting between television and film footage. And as Boom Boom Jackson, the sweet-natured player who crashes into Lemmon, Ron Rich is cast in one of the first major black roles in American movies that doesn’t depend on race as a story issue or plot point.”
A couple of other bits of trivia for you:
- Scenes were filmed at Cleveland Municipal Stadium during the Cleveland Browns’ 27–17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings on the afternoon of October 31, 1965.
- More than 10,000 Clevelanders served as extras.
- According to The Saturday Evening Post, additional footage was shot the day after the game with Browns players as themselves and the Vikings.
- Luther “Boom Boom” Jackson’s uniform number 44 was actually worn by Leroy Kelly, who was deemed “too small to pass for actor Ron Rich at close range”, according to the Post.
- Because of Matthau’s heart attack he lost weight between the early scenes he filmed and the later scenes, which you can see happen in the movie. Luther “Boom Boom” Jackson’s uniform number 44 was actually worn by Leroy Kelly, who was deemed “too small to pass for actor Ron Rich at close range”, according to the Post.
- The Fortune Cookie was Matthau’s 20th film since 1955, including roles in Elvis Presley’s King Creole (1958), Fail Safe (1964) and Ensign Pulver (1964), the sequel to Mr. Roberts (1955), in which Lemmon created the Pulver character and won and Oscar.
Have you ever seen this one?
Up next in my Autumn of Lemmon is The Apartment.
My complete list of movies for this feature:
Phffft (September 18)
It Should Happen To You (September 24)
The Fortune Cookie (Oct 2)
The Apartment (Oct. 8)
My Fellow Americans (Oct. 15)
The Notorious Landlady (Oct. 22)
The Odd Couple (Oct. 29)
Irma Dey Deuce (November 5)
Save the Tiger (November 12)
If you are interested in more reviews or blog posts about old movies, you can find a link to my past reviews at the top of the page and you can also visit The Classic Movie Blog Association.
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I haven’t seen this one, but it sounds like a hoot! Have you already reviewed “Some Like It Hot?” I absolutely love that movie, and Jack Lemmon is stellar in it! I can’t wait for the next one!
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