The Fortune Cookie

Harry Hinkle works as a television cameraman on the sidelines of a professional football game when he is knocked over in an accidental collision with a player. The injury is minor, but Harry's brother-in-law Willie Gingrich, a lawyer who chases cases for a living, sees a chance to claim a large insurance payout by exaggerating the damage. Harry is reluctant at first, yet he agrees, partly because he hopes his estranged wife Sandy will come back to him. The scheme puts him at odds with the honest football player who caused the accident, and Harry finds the deception harder to sustain than he expected.

Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote the screenplay with I. A. L. Diamond, the partnership behind several of his earlier films. It is the seventeenth of the twenty-two features Wilder directed, arriving after Irma la Douce and before The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Jack Lemmon plays Harry, Walter Matthau plays Willie, Ron Rich plays Boom Boom Jackson, and Judi West appears as Sandy. The credited cast runs to forty-one performers, and the film was produced by Wilder, Diamond and Doane Harrison for United Artists with Jalem Productions and Phalanx Productions.

Made for about four million dollars, the film took roughly seven million at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 7.6 out of 10 from twenty-eight reviews, while on TMDB it scores 7.2 out of 10 from 361 votes, showing broad approval from both professional reviewers and general viewers.