Know Your Money (1940) Online

I rarely watch the shorts on TCM when they are interspersed between features. And in this case, I was about to turn it off, though as the film progressed I found I was unexpectedly intrigued by the movie. That's because although the subject matter seemed a little dull at first (counterfeiting), the way this was so deftly handled impressed me. Instead of over-hyping and making the good guys seem like super-heroes OR making the dialog seem like an episode of DRAGNET, this film was extremely realistic for the time. And where I usually expected to see unrealistic Hollywood heroics that defy logic, the characters seemed to act like I would have expected real Secret Service agents to act. This way, the film is almost like a tiny time capsule of the age instead of fiction. Intelligent, well-paced and above all, interesting! A short subject film well worth your time.

This was a short (20 min) that was played today on TCM in between movies.

It starts out with an officer telling the viewers that the short that is about to be played is a dramatized version of a counterfeiter in action.

The short then tells a story about a gang of counterfeiters and how they make their money and pass it on to unsuspected people.

I thought it was quite good, for the time. Kinda sappy at times, but all in all it brought a good message to the 1940s public, "Crime doesn't pay."

. . . for folks who did NOT get off-the-books multi-hundred-million dollar "gifts" from their KKK community organizer Daddies to enable them to become third generation sex traffickers, but STILL want to rip off American taxpayers for as much loot as they possibly can. Toward the end of KNOW YOUR MONEY, it's revealed that the dumb clucks of the featured "Dominic Ring" have been churning out bogus ten spots with an "I" check letter. All of us who learned the ABC's of dough in kindergarten will recall that "I" bills emanate from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, which has less cash on hand than any of its 11 sister institutions. A self-respecting funny money passer should be savvy enough to distribute bills marked "G" for Chicago or "E" for Richmond, especially East of the Rockies. "I" bills stick out like sore thumbs everywhere, except maybe Duluth. Secondly, no one can make a career of following a weekly route, always cashing in crisp but moist-inked tens or twenties to purchase items costing 25 cents or less (especially using stranger kids as "straw buyers" for these suspicious transactions!). This KNOW YOUR MONEY episode of MGM's "Crime Pays" series probably has provided valuable leads on avoiding common mistakes to all subsequent major criminal cartels doing business in our USA Homeland, with the possible exception of Today's infamously clumsy rump cushion crime syndicate.

Know Your Money (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Part of MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series, this short takes a look at how the Secret Service makes sure counterfeit money doesn't end up switching hands in America. The film centers on a small group of people passing around fake ten-dollar bills and how the Secret Service eventually catches them. This entry in the series takes great pride in telling us we're actually seeing how counterfeit money is made and passed around. We get a title sequence at the start of the film letting us know what we're watching is real and that adds some fun to the movie. I'm a big fan of this series and this here is yet another worthy entry as it contains some good thrills as well as telling a good story. The performances are all quite good, the direction tight and in the end this is well worth viewing if you're a fan of crime dramas.