Is it true that whenever US money is shown on TV, it cannot be real? I heard there was some stipulation about this…long before color copiers, high resolution screens, etc., etc., etc… Is this really true? Sometimes, it looks fake, but other times it looks legit! Any SDoper TV gurus out there? - Jinx
Where did you hear this?
As far as I know, it’s real. I’ve never seen money on cops, realtv, etc. ever being blurred out.
There are blanket laws against photographing paper currency.
The reason for them is that, before scanners & color copiers, the first step in counterfeiting was to photograph a bill using special light-sensitive, photographic metal plates which when developed could be used in an offset printer.
So the easiest thing to do was to just make it illegal to photograph paper money. According to a Nova episode, it is legal as long as you enlarge the print 150%.
Although using it in a movie is a lot different from photographing it for obvious counterfeiting purposes (i.e. doing a close up of one bill in a studio) it still can be considered ‘photographing’ currency so studios avoided doing it just to be on the safe side.
But I believe the Secret Service isn’t quite so strict about it anymore.
Not to mention the fact that it adds a lot of security complications to have a briefcase filled with real money on a movie or TV set.
And if you use fake bills you can’t try and make them look too ‘real’ because that’s kinda called, um, counterfeiting! That’s why that generic, ‘eagle in the center’, obviously fake, play money was often used.
I recall once seeing an episode of “You Bet Your Life” with Groucho from the 50s. A foreign contestant said the secret word and got paid off for it. She exclaimed “Oh! This money is counterfeit!” Groucho explained that it was illegal to show real money on TV.
I checked the US Treasury website. I checked every other website I could think of. Hell, I even Asked Jeeves. The best I could come up with online was “laws vary from country to country, check the laws for your country’s currency.” Big help.
Hail Ants, I’ve been on quite a few sets where United States Currency was used in shots. Heck, I’ve SHOT those shots. The laws pertain much more to 100% full sized reproduction of currency. Yes, yes, you can nitpick and say that you’re ’ reproducting it’ in a movie shot.
It’s irrelevant that you shoot a shot of it. If you did a shot, and then tried to use the exposed negative to MAKE Counterfeit Currency, it’d be beyond lousy. Hence, there is no conflict.
As far as shooting a shot with a briefcase full of currency, Production typicall loads the case with $ 1’s or fakes, then pads the top with true currency. They’re better off using true currency, than xeroxing it for the reasons given up in this thread.
Movie sets are closed places. Security ranges from good to insanely tight. I think I’ve shot around a few grand, nothing more. Everyone there can be seen, and is accounted for. A briefcase with say, $ 1,000.000 in hundreds would be kept by the Prop Dept. , or by someone in Production, used in a shot, then taken away. Theft on set of such things is something I never ever have heard of.
Cartooniverse.
If you look carefully, well…not even so carefully…in “I Love Lucy” episodes, there are many instances where Lucy holds up bills that are clearly fake. Showing the backs of these bills on TV, without a doubt there are no USA paper bills that look like that. I’ll keep looking in older sit-coms to see if this was the trend at the time. I had heard this from a movie-nut friend of mine, but it could be just all gossip, and not gospel! 
- Jinx
I grew up in the 70s when every other TV show was a police/PI show (Barnaby Jones, Rockford, Starsky & Hutch, SWAT, Cannon, Hawaii 5-0 etc.) These shows almost always featured briefcases or bags of money and it was always that ‘play money’ you could buy at the store.
I think it was one of those unwritten rules that nobody ever broke until the more realistic & stylish 80s shows (Miami Vice etc.) kind of had to.