Mister 880

The old man known as the Skipper is loved by everyone in the neighbourhood and harms nobody. What nobody knows is that he has been printing counterfeit one-dollar bills for twenty years. The printing is careless; even Washington's name is misspelled. That is exactly why the Secret Service cannot catch him: nobody is looking for a counterfeiter this bad. The file has been open for twenty years. The film comes from a real case, the file on Emerich Juettner, who counterfeited only one-dollar bills for twenty years and was caught in 1948. Edmund Goulding directed; Edmund Gwenn plays the old man and was nominated for an Oscar for the part. Burt Lancaster and Dorothy McGuire are on the side following the case. The story is not interested in punishing a criminal; it is interested in the law not knowing what to do with this man. The comedy comes from there, and the ending is not as sweet as you would expect.