The Flim-Flam Man (titled One Born Every Minute in some countries) is a 1967 American comedy film directed by Irvin Kershner, featuring George C. Scott, Michael Sarrazin, and Sue Lyon, based on the 1965 novel The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man by Guy Owen. The movie has well-known character actors in supporting roles, including Jack Albertson, Slim Pickens, Strother Martin, Harry Morgan, and Albert Salmi. The movie is set in the countryside and small towns of the American South, and it was filmed in the Anderson and Clark counties, Kentucky, area. It is also noted for its folksy musical score by composer Jerry Goldsmith. The movie's title song "Flim Flam Man," written by Laura Nyro, later became a hit for Barbra Streisand.

Plot

Mordecai C. Jones – a self-styled "M.B.S., C.S., D.D. – Master of Back-Stabbing, Cork-Screwing and Dirty-Dealing!" – is a drifting confidence trickster who makes his living defrauding people in the Southern United States using tricks such as rigged punchboards, playing cards, and found wallets. He befriends a young man named Curley, a deserter from the United States Army, and the two form a team to make money. In their escapades, they wreck a town during a hair-raising chase in their stolen car, steal a truck loaded with moonshine whiskey that they sell, break out of a sheriff's office, and discover a riverboat brothel. In the ending scene, Mordecai explains how he sees himself.

Cast

Production

The movie was filmed on location for the most part in Central Kentucky during the second half of 1966. Exterior filming was done in a number of locations including near Frankfort, Midway, Winchester, Irvine, outside Georgetown, and several other places. Filming involving trains was done in conjunction with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and for a smaller part the Southern Railway System. Some interior filming (the inside of the Packard home and campsite sequences) was done on a sound stage specially built in Lexington, Kentucky at the Vaughn Tobacco Company warehouses. Filming locations included:

Awards

William Rose was nominated for the Best American Comedy Writing award given by the Writers Guild of America.

Reception

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said: "The movie was shot on location, largely in Kentucky, and it gains a real feeling of authenticity. These are real crossroads stores and real wide-eyed rednecks, watching the city slicker shuffle the cards. And a lot of the episodes are hilarious. I announced some time ago, in connection with Casino Royale (1967) I think, that chase scenes had just about had it as laugh-getters in the movies. Wrong again. There is a chase scene in this one that's a classic. The flim-flam man, dressed as a minister, and his pupil, dressed as an accident victim, steal a car and lead the sheriff on a brilliantly photographed chase down the sidewalks and through the watermelon wagons of the South. ... There are also some nicely directed scenes in which Scott gradually overcomes the suspicions of his victims, wins their confidence, allows his straight man to win a few bucks and then, oh, so innocently asks a tobacco farmer if he'd care to speculate as to which card was the queen."

Box office

According to Fox records, the film needed to earn $6,400,000 in rentals to break even and made $3,525,000, meaning it incurred a loss.