Producer, writer, and director Joseph Jacoby had originally conceived the idea for The Great Bank Hoax after meeting Israel Katz, the colorful accountant for legendary movie mogul Joseph E. Levine. Jacoby and Levine had been discussing the possibility of Levine distributing Jacoby's film Hurry Up, or I'll Be 30 (1973), but Levine would not commit to the project. To give him a push, Jacoby paid a visit to Katz, whom friends said had great influence over Levine.
Jacoby found Katz an intriguing character right away. When he called him to set up a meeting, Jacoby was taken aback by Katz's willingness to meet with him right away. "Joe Levine's accountant was so unbusy that I could just drop by, just like that, any time I wanted?" recounts Jacoby in his 2006 memoir Boy on a String. "I thought that's what he meant, though, and therein lay the essence of Israel Katz. He put the suggestion to you, and you made of it what you would. He gave you just enough to surmise, infer, imagine, intimate, or assume anything without him ever making a direct commitment or offering any confirmation, except to acknowledge conclusions you might come to, which he invariably had led you to. If you needed to believe in the good tooth fairy, for example, he by no means would have discouraged you, and might even have led you to her, smiling, swirling his cigar, swamilike, until finally, he would point it at you, as if to punctuate, at long last, your arrival. Best, you thought, to leave it up to him. Smiles all around. And here - have a cigar. You could never make heads or tails out of him."
Jacoby always had actor Burgess Meredith in mind to play Jack Stutz, the character he had based on Israel Katz in The Great Bank Hoax. "I felt he could assume Katz's physicality," says Jacoby in his memoir, "but more importantly, I knew that Katz had earlier represented him, as well as (lyricist) Alan J. Lerner. I had heard the story that Burgess had sold his house and property to Lerner for one dollar and that Lerner, in turn, subsequently sold it to Katz for the same amount. When I asked Burgess if the story was true, he bowed his head sheepishly with a nod of having no more of an understanding of what had happened then than now. At that very moment, there was a shared simpatico, and I knew I had my actor."
After bonding with Jacoby, Burgess Meredith quickly agreed to appear in The Great Bank Hoax. "Ya know," Meredith said to Jacoby, "you've got to be pretty brave to make this picture." When Jacoby asked why, Meredith replied, "Well, in the first place, there are no car chases, nobody shoots anybody, nobody even yells at anybody, and nobody gets laid. But--if you want to make it, I'll make it!"
While The Great Bank Hoax may not have done the box office business that he had hoped for, Jacoby was grateful for the experience of working with Burgess Meredith. "I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn much from Burgess," he says, "a man of enormous vitality and curiosity, and of many more and varied interests in life than one might expect of the brilliant actor that he was, and to have been able to call him my friend long after the picture was finished."
Producer: Joseph Jacoby, Ralph Rosenbaum
Director: Joseph Jacoby
Screenplay: Joseph Jacoby
Cinematography: Walter Lassally
Music: Arthur B. Rubinstein
Production Design: Gary Weist
Film Editing: Ralph Rosenblum
Cast: Richard Basehart (Emanuel Benchley), Burgess Meredith (Jack Stutz), Paul Sand (Richard Smedley), Ned Beatty (Julius Taggart), Michael Murphy (Manigma), Arthur Godfrey (Bryer), Charlene Dallas (Cathy).
C-87m.
by Andrea Passafiume
