I saw this movie all through the 70's and always liked it. I just bought the DVD and find thatm for the most part, the movie has aged very well. But one thing that I could'nt believe is that for all their trouble, the hijackers were asking for only- "One Million Dollars"! Unbelievable.
And even more funny is the mayor's response:
"One million dollars!?! - This city (New York) doesn't HAVE one million dollars!!
This is a great movie though. I highly recommend this one.
can't remember the movie but it was about that time - the early to mid 70's, one character says the city (New York) will pay, & the reply is "the city can't afford to pay for a cup of tea". Yes, New York was broke back then.
shareIt may have been a function of their need to carry the money out in relatively small (50s and 100s) denominations. If my math is right, each man had to carry out 3,750 bills and they apparently wanted to do it without carrying a case.
Still, considering they were facing life in jail, $250,000 per man seems kind of lame, even if it is around $1.1 million in 2006 dollars.
NYC was on the brink of financial insolvency in the 70s, too, so the Mayor's comment isn't unrealistic at all.
As part of the dialog about the $1 million ransom the hijackers were demanding, Deputy Mayor LaSalle (Tony Roberts' character) mentioned that the mayor should "empty one of his Swiss bank accounts" to pay it. I love this line and have used is many times when describing any large purchase someone (including myself) has without getting a loan to pay for it. It always gets a chuckle and nobody knows where I came up with it (unless they have seen the movie hehehehe)!
share$1.1M in 2006 dollars? Are you nuts? In 1974 the Dow Jones was under 600. In
2006 it was well over 11,000. Remind me to never make you my financial planner.
You'd better add a few million dollars to that 1.1.
That's a purchasing power comparison, not an investment outcome of investing the ransom money.
share>>>Still, considering they were facing life in jail, $250,000 per man seems kind of lame, even if it is around $1.1 million in 2006 dollars.<<<
>>>$1.1M in 2006 dollars? Are you nuts? In 1974 the Dow Jones was under 600. In
2006 it was well over 11,000. Remind me to never make you my financial planner.
You'd better add a few million dollars to that 1.1.<<<
I believe he means per highjacker. So the total haul would be $4.4 million.
Incidently, I wonder how difficult it would be for the city to pull together $4.4 million, or even $1 million, in 50s and 100s in one hour today, considering how much business and commerce is done electronically (credit/debit cards, wire transfers, direct deposit). Few people even pay cash for their subway fares today. How many banks really have that much cash laying around?
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"As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."
very good point...
that actually caught me that one, and its true, even me, a humble consumer, dont use cash as much as i used to even 10 years ago....
i dont reckon ANYONE could pull together a relative amount (im including inflation here) today....
immaturity and your life is alot like wine, the older it gets, the more it costs you
At an annual rate of return of 4% compounded over 23 years, $1 million would be worth about $2.5 million today.
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Yes, but that includes the invalid assumption of 4% interest.
In the 70s, due to stagflation, people were getting mortgages at 18%.
According to the Inflation Calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
$1M in 1974 inflated to ~$4.4M by 2008.
It was $1M total because he offered the lieutenant $250,000 as a bribe to let him go.
And inflation adjusted it would be worth more than $2.5M today. Still not enough to retire on.
$2.5M today. Still not enough to retire on.
The answer is the same as in the original movie...The Federal Reserve Bank of New York...it has billions of physical currency...plastic wrapped and on caged pallets...I saw footage what it looked like for the San Francisco branch of the Fed...4 billion in cash stacked on metal caged pallets and shelved like a Costco! After all...the money is/are Federal Reserve notes!
shareThat's right. In 1974, One million dollars was equivalent to five million roughly.
Use the inflation calculator
it would pay for a fun time in atlantic city.
🌴"I'm not making art, I'm making sushi." Masaharu Morimoto🌴
Or, as Dr. Evil and Bond baddies would put it, "One meeeeeelion dollars".
I dunno if they debate it in the film but in the book, Longman (Martin Balsam) want to demand more but Ryder (Robert Shaw) talks him out of it. He argues that a million is a round number the authorities will identify with and react to, and that it's "all the money you'll ever need".
I think the book line when the money's emptied out onto the floor is, "there it was, a million dollars, everybody's dream".
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Strikerdelta2's got a point: you do seem to lash out a lot in your posts.
shareActually in 1974, New York City was in a huge financial crisis--in bankruptcy. When NYC asked for aide from the feds, it led to the famous New York Daily News headline (1975), "Ford to New York: DROP DEAD." Even though there is a huge monetary discrepancy in what NYC sends the feds than receives back FROM the feds--a loss of about 13 billion annually!--(current figures.) It would be a similar situation if your very rich uncle, gave you lots of extra cash, without you asking for it over many decades, (not a loan a gift.) Then when your uncle hits a financial crisis, you say, "Drop dead, Uncle!" So the mayor in the film was right, the city didn't have a million dollars. Oddly enough, the New York Daily News, endorsed Ford for president in 1976! Politics DOES make strange bedfellows! But then again, the Daily News is a rag of a paper.
"Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup." Ludwig Van Beethoven
[quote]it led to the famous New York Daily News headline (1975), "Ford to New York: DROP DEAD."[/quote}
actually I believe the famous headline was "Ford to City ..."
For NYers there's only one "city" so it would have been a waste of space to fill out the name.
I think we're the green thingy.
Well as a born and bred Brooklyn girl, you're right there is only one city, (at least in North America.) New York, NY the town so nice they named it twice! As to the financial end of the argument, no one said the crooks were smart!
"Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup." Ludwig Van Beethoven
Dear Francienol:
I live in Brooklyn also, although I grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens back in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the funniest lines of dialogue in this film is the scene where the two radio car patrolmen are waiting outside the Federal Reserve Bank for the money and one cop says "What's taking them so long"? And his partner replies "That's a lot of money, Albert. You ever stop to think how many times you got to wet your thumb to count a million bucks?" Priceless. That's real New York humor.
Hugs,
Steve
P.S. I like your "handle"
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Well a million was a lot of money back in 1974; I read the book and recall that the Shaw and Balsam characters got $400,000 each while the other two just got $100,000.
Which is not too bad for a two hours of 'work'.
It is ridiculous....at least that NYC would care about that amount. However, at this time, before crazy celebrity culture TV showed regular people how much people had...might seem like a lot to viewers. There wasn't even the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" yet at this point and of course not what we have now to show us that what we make = nothing for these riches.
Still, NYC must have had at least a $200mil if not a billion budget even then.
"...There wasn't even the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" yet at this point..."
I find this comment extremely ironic. Check the title of the newspaper Jerry Stiller is reading in his first appearance.
In the 1970s, and early 1980s inflation was through the roof--like double digit inflation.
Consequently, 1 million dollars compounded at approximately 6% inflation rate...for 34 years (1974-2008) means that 1 million dollars would be worth approximately
7.3 million US Dollars today.
1,000,000 times 1.06 (y to the x) 34 = 7,251,025
"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain"
Still, NYC must have had at least a $200mil if not a billion budget even then.
Only a million? That's equal to over 4,000,000.00 in today's dollars.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
Seems like a million was a bit low for such a risky caper even in 1974.On the other hand in 1974 1,000,000 psychologically may have seemed like a lot to the average moviegoer.I believe in "The Day of the Jackal" that came out around the same time,the assassin(Edward Fox)was only offered 500,000 to kill the president of France, and the assassin planned to live on this for the rest of his life!!(I may be a bit off on the amount-its been a long time ago).Today we're blinded by the multimillion celebrity and prof. athlete incomes,the billion dollar bailouts and Madoff scams, and trillion dollar deficits.
Will see the remake but am usually disappointed when the original was so good.
A dollar went a lot farther back in the mid 70s. Anyone remember the scene in Taxi Driver, which came out in '76, where Travis buys the snacks and popcorn at the adult theater concession stand? He gets three of four candy bars, a soda, and a box of popcorn, and you see him lay two bills on the counter. I bet both of them were $1 bills.
God Is Imaginary
In '76 I started driving, and gas was 65 cents/gallon. (There was even a Pinto commercial where the lady asks for a dollar's worth of gas cuz the gas mileage was so good, and when the gas attendant laughed at her, she put him in his place by saying that, instead, she'd only take a gallon).
I saw an old Mod Squad, and there was a gas station in the background advertising gas at 39 cents.
Saulisa
A dollar went a lot farther back in the mid 70s. Anyone remember the scene in Taxi Driver, which came out in '76, where Travis buys the snacks and popcorn at the adult theater concession stand? He gets three of four candy bars, a soda, and a box of popcorn, and you see him lay two bills on the counter. I bet both of them were $1 bills.
God Is Imaginary
you could buy a brand new car for $4000,and a decent size house for $50,000.
shareConsider that they had to move the money! They couldnt be carting off wheelbarrows full of money down the street, they would have to blend in, hence the straps on their bodies rather then cases.
Though I agree that in 2009 (when I saw it) a million didnt seem like a lot but consider the averages:
1974: Roughly 28 new houses with 1 mil
Average Cost of new house $34,900.00
Average Income per year $13,900.00
Average Monthly Rent $185.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas: $0.55
Average cost new car $3,750.00
2009: Roughly 4 new houses with 1 mil
Average Cost of new house $232,880.00
Average Income per year $39,423.00
Average Monthly Rent $675.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas $2.73
Average New Car: $27,958.00
A cool million doesn't seem so shabby back in '74!
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