Mister 880

Mister 880 is a 1950 American light-hearted romantic drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Burt Lancaster, Dorothy McGuire and Edmund Gwenn, about an amateurish counterfeiter who counterfeits only one dollar bills, and manages to elude the Secret Service for ten years. The film is based on the true story of Emerich Juettner, known by the alias Edward Mueller, an elderly man who counterfeited just enough money to survive, was careful where and when he spent his fake dollar bills, and was therefore able to elude authorities for ten years, despite the poor quality of his fakes, and despite growing interest in his case. The film was based on an article by St. Clair McKelway that was first published in The New Yorker and later collected in McKelway's book True Tales from the Annals of Crime & Rascality. Edmund Gwenn, who played the title role, won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. In real life, Juettner was caught and arrested in 1948, and served four months in prison. Juettner made more money from the release of Mister 880 than he had made in his entire counterfeiting career.