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.
One million was a hude amount in early seventies.
My father take home pay then was $15 per week & we managed to live on it. The buying power of $1 million was greater than it would be today.
I haven't done the the math but I would guess that $1 million would be worth around $30 million or so in 2009.
$1,000,000.00 in 1974 had about the same buying power as $4,550,432.90 in 2009.
He's taking the knife out of the Cheese!
Do you think he wants some cheese?
Minimum wage in 1970 was $1.65 an hour or $66.00 a week. Your father probably brought home about $15 a day, not a week, if he made say $2.50 an hour.
shareActually, 1 Million dollars for four people was an extremely significant amount of money. After this kind of theft, they would leave the country and end up where the cost of living is pennies on the dollar compared to costs in the US.
shareRather than looking at just price index, it might be better to look at NY prices. Back in the early 1970s, the average rent for an apartment in Manhattan was $300/month. Now its around $4000: an 13 fold increase. By this standard, $1 million would be the equivalent of $10+ million today.
Another standard: I just googled and the average price of a NY apartment is 1970 was $45 p/ sq ft. Now it's $1200/sq ft. Assuming a 1000 sq ft apartment, $1 million back then would buy you 22 apartments. Now not even 1.
Either way you look at it, $1 mill back then would have set you very comfortably for life.
Also, for the average movie goer in 1972 $1 million would seem an outrageous amount. Remember, we didn't get billionaires until the 1990s (ignoring Rockefeller): a million was viewed as the apex of wealth.. Had they made the ransom more than that, the 1970s audiencemay have rubbished this movie as being too ridiculous and outlandish.
The ravages of inflation...even movie screenplays can't escape.
shareThis type of thinking is all too common among movie viewers when watching old movies. I suggest all those unfamiliar with inflation and its effects consult the US Labor Department's inflation calculator when they are curious about the money sums mentioned in old movies. Link is http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl.
shareAnother good site is Measuring Worth:
https://www.measuringworth.com/
I go there all the time when I'm watching old movies and somebody mentions a price or salary.
*****
Maybe it's because I've always had a weakness for lost causes, once they're really lost.
One million bucks was a hell of a lot of lettuce back in 1974.
I've been chasing grace/ But grace ain't easy to find