How to Steal a Million
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
Nicole Bonnet is the daughter of Charles Bonnet, a wealthy Frenchman who sells artworks from his impressive collection. The pieces are not genuine, however: they are forgeries, some of them made by her grandfather. When her father lends a prized statuette attributed to Cellini to a Paris museum, Nicole realises the sculpture will be examined by experts and the deception exposed.
Her attempt to recover it brings her into contact with Simon Dermott, whom she takes for a gentleman thief after catching him in her father's villa. She enlists his help to take the statuette out of the museum before it can be authenticated.
William Wyler directed this 1966 comedy, the twenty-first of the twenty-two films he directed, between The Collector and Funny Girl. Harry Kurnitz wrote the screenplay, and Fred Kohlmar produced for 20th Century Fox and World Wide Productions. Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole lead the cast as Nicole and Simon, with Eli Wallach, Hugh Griffith, Charles Boyer and Fernand Gravey in supporting roles.
Made for about 6 million dollars, the film returned roughly 4 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 32,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.5 out of 10 from 684 votes. A critics' rating of 7 out of 10 from 10 reviews places professional assessments close to the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- At the time of the robbery, Nicole is reading a biography of Hitchcock.
- The jewelry worn by Audrey Hepburn was provided by the House of Cartier.
- Walter Matthau was initially considered for the role of the eccentric millionaire Liland, but his requested fee did not suit the producers. George C. Scott was next in line, but he was fired for being late on the first day of shooting. Ultimately, the role went to Eli Wallach.
- The Kleber-Lafayette Museum was filmed at the Carnavalet Museum in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris, in the Marais district. The halls of the Kleber-Lafayette Museum were built on a soundstage in the Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. For $100,000, production designer Alexandre Trauner assembled a collection of fake paintings by great artists, and for another $50,000, he acquired authentic antique frames for them.
- After the alarm goes off for the second time, the head of security turns it back on. As he closes the box with the alarm switch, he receives a phone call from the minister. He walks to the phone, leaving the key in the lock of the box. When the head of security finishes his conversation with the minister and walks back to the box to turn off the alarm, the key is no longer in the lock.
- During a discussion in the attic, Father Nicole says: “Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.” This is actually true.
- During the film's showing in the USSR, all the movie posters in Karaganda, Kazakh SSR, were defaced – the phrase “Ask the Central Committee of the CPSU” was added to the title of the film “How to Steal a Million.” This was related to the investigation of the Soviet Fur Mafia case.
- The working title of the film was “How to Steal a Million Dollars and Live Happily Ever After.”
- Filming began with the scenes where the characters played by Hepburn and O’Toole hide in a museum storeroom in order to steal the “Venus.” It took 11 days to film these scenes. One of Hepburn’s biographers claims that the lead actors kept giggling on set and ruining take after take.
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Auditions in India
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