Coins in an old Movie - The Maltese Falcon (1941) Thanks to DVD technology, it is now possible to "freeze" frames on an old movie. This picture is from the 1941 Warner Brothers film "The Maltese Falcon". Shady Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), arriving from the Orient, is visiting detective Sam Spade's (Humphrey Bogart) office where Cairo's pocket goods lay on a table. The coins are hard to identify but some appear to be copies of Chinese square hole "cash" coins. The shiny coin at the bottom right might be a China 1936-39 nickel 20-cent coin with Sun Yat Sen's portrait. The larger coin to it's left might be an older Chinese 1/2 dollar coin. I put all of my "Coins in Old Movies" posts on a website at: Coins in Old Movies
Willie, I used this thread,since I think it was your last "coins in old movie" one,to tell you that I just watched "Swing Time" with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.There is a scene where Fred,playing Lucky the gambler,places a bet at a blackjack table and places a silver dollar on top of his chips.I think it was a peace dollar but if you ever get a chance,check it out.
I'm also looking for a DVD of the film "Greed", the 1924 version of "McTeague". I have seen a videotape of the film and in it one of the characters handles several US gold coins.
I heard in the movie "Pearl Harbor", there's a scene where betting is taking place on a boxing match. And the guys betting are using Hawaii overprint notes prior to them even being issued. Oops.
When I saw the movie in the theater, it DID look like they were using Hawaii overprints, but when I freeze frame the scenes where you can see the notes on the DVD they are not overprints. (of course it could be possible that they corrected the error between the time it was shown in the theaters and when it was released on DVD. The views of the currency are very brief and could easily have been digitally corrected. They would have only had to alter a handful of frames.
