The Cheap Detective

The movie was titled "The Cheap Detective", according to screenwriter Neil Simon, "because the detective in those old films never got paid! Who paid Humphrey Bogart for finding all those crooks in The Maltese Falcon (1941)? He arrested Mary Astor and sent her and everyone else to jail. Who paid him? The character is always involved in danger not for the bucks but because it's his lifestyle."

Approximately 45 minutes in, Lou meets with the Madeline Kahn character in his office. A male member of the crew is visible, seated on a couch. He is in a pink shirt, wearing eyeglasses and appears to be reading a script. He is only visible for about a second, as the camera pans across the room. From contemporary photos it looks very much like Neil Simon himself.

Opening credits prologue: In 1939, the ominous grey clouds of war broke loose over Western Europe and rained down havoc and destruction . . . followed by humidity and gradual clearing.

In the Philippines, a small band of native guerrillas prepared secretly for the inevitable conflict that would soon engulf the East . . . This has nothing to do with our story.

Our story is about crime. Not the bad crime we face each day on our streets . . . but the good crime we came to know and love in a time when the world was innocent ... when murder wasn't something you were ashamed of ... when a bullet hole wasn't something disgusting . . . and when a man could betray a woman without feeling guilty. Our story starts in a fictitious city called San Francisco ... seven thousand miles away from Casablanca.

Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: Ann-Margret/Robert Mitchum/Tom Dreesen/Joseph Sorrentino (1978)