Stamps In The Movies!

There are two motion pictures that I can remember that involved stamps and stamp collecting.

The first is 1963's Charade, with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn trying to track down a missing fortune. There are some old stamps -- does anyone know if they were real or made up for the movie -- and an outdoor stamp market in Paris that looked fascinating. The movie was shot 45 years ago so I wonder if that stamp market still exists.

The other is more recent, 1993's Heart and Souls with Robert Downey Jr. part of which has one of the deceased souls having to get a sheet of zeppelin stamps he once helped steal back to their rightful owner before he can move on.

Does anyone know of any others?

***Title Modified By Mod***

I don't remember either seeing either movie, but my family went to Paris on vacation when I was 13 or 14. We lived in Germany and I actually went to Paris and to what I assume is that very outdoor area.

I can remember rows and rows of dealers selling stamps and packets on tables and in little booths. There was also a similar place in Zurich when we went there.

Probably made an impression on you, Greg. Were you already collecting at the time? Do you mind saying what year that was?

It did make an impression on me. I loved the place and wish that sort of thing still existed. The closest thing in existence today are the stamp shows.

I don't mind telling you when it was - it was 1963 or '64.

I saw the NBC show Vegas last night and they had a 7 million dollar stamp featured it was supposedly a 1867 mixed grill. Does anyone know if this exist or was it made up for the tv show? I only saw a quick shot of the stamp and it looked like Franklin. They also showed a couple of other stamps too.

Good thing you started this topic, I was going to start one about stamps on tv, movies are close enough.
LeAnn

You probably mean z-grill, on a one-cent blue Franklin, Scott 85A. Yes that does exist. It is the rarest United States stamp of which only two copies are known. The nicer of them is owned by Mystic Stamp Company in Camden, NY. It has a reputed worth of 2.5 million dollars.

With that said, it's possible that they made up the mixed grill and 7 million dollar figure as a piece of fiction based loosely on the reality of the 85A z-grill stamp.

Digging up this old topic, I recently saw a stamp-related movie I had never heard of before. Air Canada has "Penny Gold" as one of the choices on its seat-back entertainment systems this month.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070524/

Not a fantastic film at all, nor does it really fit in its "Silver Screen Classics" category, but interesting to find it as an in-flight movie nonetheless. In short, a murder mystery with possession of the rare (fictional) Penny Gold stamp as the central motive.

Ryan

For anyone who was a kid, like me, in the late 80s, early 90s, you can't forget "Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller".

If you watch it today, it is corny as hell! But it is a goody-goody story about a kid in Canada who gave away his dad's bluenose stamp to his nasty friend "Tommy Tricker", that coincidentally has a man on the mast on the stamp. Evidently the man is a real man, who through some hocus pocus got onto the stamp, and was stuck because of something I can't remember.
The boy finds the instructions on how to get on the stamp in an old stamp album and decides to go on a search for the missing stamp, by traveling around the world on stamps (China, Australia, etc.).

I probably got some details wrong but I haven't seen the movie in a year (yes, occasionally I watch it... must be when I have a fever but I tend to enjoy watching).

Movie on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096282/

Charade is one of my favorite movies, and the fact that there are stamps involved, makes it phenomenal!

Portrait of Alison (1955) [US title: Postmark for Danger]
Directed by Guy Green

Writing credits :
Francis Durbridge (story)
Guy Green
Ken Hughes

Cast (in credits order)
Terry Moore .... Alison Ford
Robert Beatty .... Tim Forrester
William Sylvester .... Dave Forrester
Josephine Griffin .... Jill Stewart
Geoffrey Keen .... Inspector Colby
Allan Cuthbertson .... Henry Carmichael
Henry Oscar .... John Smith
William Lucas .... Reg Dorking
Terence Alexander .... Fenby
rest of cast listed alphabetically
Sam Kydd .... Bill, the Telephone Engineer (uncredited)
Robert Raglan .... (uncredited)

Plot Summary for Postmark for Danger (aka Portrait of Alison) (1955)

A car plunging over a cliff kills its two occupants identified
as newspaperman Lewis Forrester and actress Alison Ford
(Terry Moore).

Surviving Lewis are his two brothers, Tim (Robert Beatty),
a portrait painter, and Dave (William Sylvester), a pilot.

Scotland Yard discovers that Lewis' death was engineered
by a gang of international diamond smugglers he was about
to expose. Before he died, he had sent someone in London
a post card with a sketch of a woman's hand holding
a Chianti bottle.

Alison's father, John Smith (Henry Oscar) commissions
Tim to paint her portrait from a photograph.

While Tim is out, the supposedly-dead Alison enters
his studio, but flees when she finds the body of
Jill Stewart (Josephine Griffin), Tim's favorite model.

Scotland Yard Inspector Colby (Geoffrey Kene) suspects
Tim because whatever alibi evidence Tim presents vanishes
before the Inspector can confirm it.

Reg Dorking (William Lucas), a used-car dealer tries to blackmail
Tim, offering the post card sent by Lewis. Alison surprises Tim
in his studio with the news that the girl killed with Lewis must
have been a hitch-hiker, as she had left the car before the crash
upset because Lewis had charged her father as being part of the
diamond-smuggling ring. She finds her father and he confesses
to being as charged. In a phone call with a man named Nightingale,
he says he is through with the ring, but leaps to his death when
Alison leaves. Tim gets possession of the post card after a brutal
fight with his brother Dave, who confesses he is in the gang also.

He turns the card over to Scotland Yard who discover it is a list
of the smugglers written in invisible ink. Alison goes to Tim's
studio where she surprises Nightingale who begins to strangle her.

acknowledgement: Blair RCSD

Wasn't there a movie some time ago called "Brewsters Millions" with Richard Pryor where in order to inherit a massive forture he first had to spend a fortune by consuming it - not having any assets to show for it - and he could not give it away or destroy the assets? As I recall his last act of desparation to spend his remaining money was to go into a stamp store and buy an "Inverted Jenny" rare stamp and then lick and put in on an envelope as postage and mail the letter. At least I think that was the plot.

Stamps have been the subject of poetry since the street-ballads of
Paris, 1653 extolled the Petite Poste of Renouard de Villayer.

Nearer the present time (1842) the first poetic reference to
stamp collecting was published by Colonel Sibthorpe in Punch:

"When was a folly so pestilent hit upon,
As folks running mad to collect every spit upon
Post-office stamp that's been soil'd and been writ upon?
Oh for Swift! such a subject his spleen to emit upon."

As you may expect, A Canadian was the first
to be very naughty, and put a movie stamp on a letter

He needed a good defence attorney.......Raymond Burr

Scouter, you are correct... the plot was in order to inherit 300 million he had to spend 30 million in 30 days.
he purchased a Inverted Jenny and sent a post card to someone using it.

modern. I read the plot summary for charade.
I can only assume that the rare stamps that were used must have the location of where the gold was hidden.
I guess someone would have to see the movie and try to get a look at the stamp.
It would have had to been some french stamps, seeing it was in Paris and the letter was postmarked.

Au contraire.

"The stamps depicted in the film are fictional counterparts of actual rare stamps, but have their values raised by one. The stamps they represent are the Swedish orange 3 skilling, the "Hawaiian Missionaries" 2 cent blue and the 81 para blue Romanian "cap de bour" on blue paper, in total worth about USA$3.6 Million in 2007."