Would you want your daughter to marry these men?

When Warren Beatty was unable to stir interest in his and Robert Towne's screenplay for Shampoo, about an amoral hairdresser he had been developing since 1967, he bundled it with the more appealing The Fortune and convinced Columbia Pictures head David Begelman to finance both films. The fact that Carole Eastman, writing under the pen name Adrien Joyce, had yet to complete her 240-page script fazed Beatty less than it did director Mike Nichols, who needed a box office hit after Catch-22 and The Day of the Dolphin, both of which were critical and commercial flops.
The working relation between the screenwriter and director was amiable until Eastman objected to the many cuts Nichols was making to the script and his determination to make it less satirical and more slapstick, and she was eventually fired from the production.[1]
Nichols wanted Bette Midler to portray Freddie, but he changed his mind when, seemingly unaware of his career, Midler insulted him by asking what films he had previously made. He ultimately cast relative newcomer Stockard Channing, whose credits were limited to a few television appearances and a minor role in the Barbra Streisand film Up the Sandbox.[1]
Because the start of principal photography on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was delayed, Jack Nicholson, who had worked with Nichols on Carnal Knowledge, was available for the role of Oscar Sullivan. During filming, the actor was forced to deal with two events that impacted his personal life. First, a fact checker working on a biographical piece for Time discovered that the woman Nicholson believed was his sister was actually his mother, and the woman who raised him was his grandmother. Then his close friend Cass Elliot died in her sleep, and rumors about the cause of her death circulated in the media. These two events, linked with the film's eventual failure, made The Fortune a subject that Nicholson never discussed in interviews and biographies.[1]
The film was shot on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and on a segment of street constructed in the corner of the former RKO Forty Acres backlot where the "Stalag 13" sets for TV's Hogan's Heroes were located during the Desilu days. Nichols did not direct another film for seven years


The Fortune is a 1975 American comedy film starring Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty, and directed by Mike Nichols. The screenplay by Adrien Joyce focuses on two bumbling con men who plot to steal the fortune of a wealthy young heiress, played by Stockard Channing in her first film starring role.