General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Fortune (1975 film)

The Fortune is a 1975 American comedy directed by Mike Nichols, starring Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Stockard Channing, about two 1920s con men who scheme to obtain the fortune of an heiress, a plan that extends to murder. It was produced by Columbia Pictures and released in New York on 20 May 1975.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Mike Nichols; screenplay by Carole Eastman, credited under the pseudonym "Adrien Joyce"¹
Cast	Warren Beatty as Nicky Wilson, Jack Nicholson as Oscar Sullivan, Stockard Channing as Freddie Bigard¹
Release	New York opening 20 May 1975; Los Angeles opening 25 Jun 1975; 88 minutes, MPAA rating PG¹
Budget and pay	Production budget $3.5 million; Channing was paid a $20,000 salary¹
Gross deal	Nichols, Beatty, and Nicholson were to receive ten percent of the movie's gross earnings "from the very first dollar"¹
Reception	40% Tomatometer from 15 critics and 34% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; the film was a box-office failure²^•³
Aftermath	Nichols did not direct another film for seven years; Channing received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year – Actress⁴^•¹

Spoilers

Plot

A title card opens the film, explaining that the Mann Act, the 1920s American law forbidding the transport of a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, was greatly feared at the time, and that men who wished to flee with a woman they could not or would not marry would occasionally resort to extraordinary measures.¹

In 1920s New York, Nicky Wilson (Beatty), a fortune hunter, picks up his rich girlfriend Freddie Bigard (Channing) outside her family's mansion and collects his friend Oscar Sullivan (Nicholson); a justice of the peace marries Freddie and Oscar so the trio can travel to California without violating the Mann Act, since Nicky is still awaiting a divorce.¹^•³ Freddie is the heiress to a sanitary-napkin fortune, and the men hope to inherit her money; complications follow when Oscar falls in love with Freddie and Freddie becomes convinced the pair's interest in her is financial rather than romantic.⁵^•² The Times (UK) critic Kevin Maher later singled out "a slapstick traffic jam on a midnight bridge" among Nichols's set pieces.²

Production

Screenwriter Carole Eastman, an Academy Award nominee for Five Easy Pieces (1970), envisioned Beatty and Nicholson in the lead roles as she wrote, and both actors accepted the parts written for them.¹^•⁴ Her screenplay ran 240 pages and was unfinished; she bristled at Nichols's attempts to cut it and disapproved of the production's veering from satire to slapstick, and she was ultimately fired from the production, which continued without her.⁴ She was credited as "Adrien Joyce" after the falling out over Nichols's cuts.³

Casting the heiress. Stockard Channing, who had previously appeared in one uncredited role in The Hospital (1971), was cast as Freddie after performing a table reading with Beatty and Nicholson "as a favor" to Nichols; although directed to read the lines without acting, she was highly animated, and the male actors responded well to her energy.¹ Nichols had interviewed singer Bette Midler for the role before choosing the relative newcomer Channing.⁴

Financing. Beatty had nurtured the project as far back as the making of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). When no one in Hollywood wanted to make a comedy about an amorous hairdresser, his pet project that became Shampoo (1975), Beatty bundled it with The Fortune, forcing Columbia president David Begelman to finance both films; Columbia had green-lit Shampoo only because The Fortune was expected to be a sure thing.⁴

Principal photography began on 8 Jul 1974 with a twelve-week shooting schedule. Filming took place mostly at Culver City Studios in Los Angeles, with location work including Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Santa Monica Beach, and moved to New York for the final days of shooting; it wrapped on 10 Oct 1974.¹^•⁶ The film was shot in Panavision by John A. Alonzo, the cinematographer of Chinatown, with production design by Richard Sylbert and editing by Stu Linder.³^•¹

Reception

Critical reception was mixed, and the pans out-sang the praise. In a positive notice dated 21 May 1975, the New York Times described the film as "very funny" and "maniacally scatterbrained," with particular praise for Channing and Nicholson, but a review in The New Republic, published 5 Jul 1975, argued that the strong acting of its two stars went to waste on a weakly written script.¹ Vincent Canby gave the film a thumbs up, while Daily News critic Jerry Oster decried "a painful illustration of the limits of the star system."⁴ Jay Cocks, reviewing in Time, called it "a bleak, frostbitten farce, desperate for invention and rather a sham," adding that the barely 90-minute movie "lingers badly."⁵ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 40% Tomatometer from 15 reviews and a 34% Popcornmeter from more than 250 audience ratings.²

The film was a box-office failure and was swiftly relegated to the company of famous flops such as Cleopatra, Heaven's Gate, and Ishtar.³^•⁴ It was considered a misstep for all involved: for Nichols, who would not direct another film for seven years; for Eastman; and for its above-the-title stars.⁴ The Film Society of Lincoln Center, programming a 2015 tribute screening, described it as one of Nichols's lesser-known and most underrated comedies, made just before his hiatus from filmmaking.³

Legacy

Channing's performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year – Actress, and Film Comment credits Nichols with discovering her in this film.¹^•³ The Film Society reads the picture as a knockabout comedy retake on the claustrophobic ménage à trois of Nichols's Carnal Knowledge (1971).³ Eddie Harrison's later review called it "worth a look as one of the last gasps of the now-unfashionable screwball genre," noting Scatman Crothers's fisherman cameo and an appearance by Christopher Guest.⁷ A small cult has grown around the film, with the Coen Brothers among its few but vocal supporters.⁴ The film is available on streaming and home video, including Blu-ray.⁸

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026